This willow tree in the park is very old. Maybe a hundred years or so. Look how its bark is gnarled and twisted. It is a great friend of the park and is home to many different insects and birds. One year, a female mallard duck even made a nest on the flat top of the tree!
The willow keeps on growing because every few years, it’s friends cut off all of its branches!
This really does encourage the tree to grow strongly.
We call the removal of the branches ‘pollarding’.
This week, it was the old willow’s turn to be pollarded. You can see the cut stumps where the branches used to be.
Woods have always been important to people. In the 17th century, new forests were planted to provide enough timber for the boats for the Royal Navy.
People have pollarded woodland trees for thousands of years. It was their main source of wood for building, making furniture, for charcoal and for fuel to heat their homes.
Wood is a very useful sustainable resource, when managed in this way. It is sustainable because the tree carries on growing and making new wood.
Pollarded willow wood is special. It is used to make cricket bats and weave baskets. For generations, this provided income for poor families in Somerset.
It is also a good way of making new fences. This is because cut branches of willow will grow new roots when they are placed in water.
The cut stems will grow into new trees and can become a hedge when they are planted closely together.
The photograph shows two volunteers from the Friends of Trendlewood Park preparing willow branches to build into a new hedge in the area near the playing fields.
They place the cut ends of the branches into water.
In a few months’ time, when the weather is warmer, this hedge should be growing strongly and could grow for many years.
- This species of willow is called the brittle willow, because branches break off easily. Suggest why it is an advantage to the willow for these branches to be able to grow into new trees.
- This species of willow has two ways of reproducing. It flowers and makes seed and also can propagate through fallen branches. Find out why it is useful for the species to be able to reproduce in these two ways.
After the story:
Just after I finished writing this story, it was announced that young trees grown from seeds of the Sycamore Gap tree are to be given to charities, groups and individuals as “trees of hope“. This ancient sycamore tree, from Northumberland, was cut down in September 2023.
This is a lovely, kind idea. The tree lives on, not only through its seeds, but also in the new stems that are growing from its cut stem. This shows the power of nature to recover and re-grow. Life is resilient, it does not give up.
