Thursday 27 November 2008

Wasted timber

We were walking through a part of Epping Forest this morning called Strawberry Plain.

The Tree Spirit of this mad, old Hornbeam was not amused to see . . .


. . . oak trees which had been cut down by one of the Forest gangs and left to rot where they've fallen.


That's the thing that really pisses me off about the way the Forest is managed.

No real reason for the trees to be cut down in the first place.

They call it "biomass" - I call it a wanton waste.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's sickening! It makes me so angry to see this happening across the board...and it is.

Suffolks's parks and gardens have stopped all removal of wood from it's dumping ground, and now most lays on the ground rotting. I recently watched them (not for long as it was painful) chip a whole yew tree that must have 200 yrs old by the size of the butt. There's a word for them that I won't post here.

Your picture is even worse because I can use Oak of that size all the time. Oh well.

Anonymous said...

Shame about the oak left to waste; but what kind of oak is that? I see it's mostly sapwood, over here an oak of that diameter is mostly heartwood, with a small band of sapwood, maybe 1 1/2" wide...

Robin Fawcett said...

You're right Peter, now I've had another look at the photo - perhaps it's Turkey Oak (Q.cerris).

There's quite a bit of it in the Forest and they have a go at trying to eradicate it every few years as it hybridises easily with the other Oaks and also provides the alternate host to the wasp which causes the Knopper Gall.

Woodland Antics said...

Hi Robin,

Love the hornbeam with its tree spirit, nice photo.

strange to see it left lying there. Not even in a 'shabitat' pile. Perhaps they are coming back for it later? But I'm always a bit too optimistic. Isn't it a bit straight for Turkey oak? and is that rot at the core of the stem? looks too dark to be heartwood and it seems to be moving out along some of the rays. If so perhaps they have an hyperactive tree inspector on patrol?

Woodturningblog mentioned chippers. They are a menace to society in my opinion. What is the point? Use more fossil fuel to do what nature would have done, and to render the wood unusable. Second only to leafblowers. Rant over (for now).

cheers

Mark