Corky

Yesterday morning, I happened to notice that one of the small trees on Clayhill Green, maybe three metres high, was not looking very well, and went to take a closer look. To discover that the branches and trunk looked very corky, to the point where the tree might well be a young cork oak, not something one comes across very often, at least not in this country.

Back home, I asked Bing and he turned up reference 1, where the damaged cork leaves look very much like those snapped above, with the damage seeming to be a result of frost, leaf miners, or some combination thereof.

PS: more information about cork oaks is to be found in the Euforgen website, at reference 2. With Euforgen being a subsidiary of Forest Europe of reference 3. Not clear whether our current membership derives from our membership of the European Union - but if it does, we will presumably need to reapply if we want to stay onboard. I wonder how strong the Brexiteers are on forest cooperation? Do they take the view that they are they just another bunch of tiresome do-gooders trying to stop us importing infected and infectious, but perfectly usable, timber from the US?

Reference 1: https://hortographical.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/cork-oaks-assessing-winters-damage/.

Reference 2: http://www.euforgen.org/fileadmin//bioversity/publications/pdfs/1323_Cork_oak__Quercus_suber_.pdf. Including a handy distribution map, which does not include the UK, nor indeed much of France, and which does show Portugal as being the centre of the cork tree world. But maybe global warming will push its distribution north.

Reference 3: https://foresteurope.org/.