Hunting for the big ones!

In the 6 years I have lived in Darlington I have noticed some fine trees on my doorstep and I thought I would create this blog so that those with an interest can see whats on their doorstep. There are some really nice trees in the area including a big Ash on the village green, not necessarily old but it has quite a spread. There are two fine old Wellingtonias in the South Park which were planted in the 1800s and are quite large, with low sweeping branches. Also in the park is a stand of mature Elms that have remained dutch elm disease free it seems-quite rare these days! I'm not sure if they are English Elms or hybrids; I must take a closer look next time I'm there.

Just recently I took a walk along the Denes area which has a kind of woodland walk that eventually leads into the town-its kind of an oasis filled with trees, some native, many ornamental, all impressive!

At the entrance to the Denes, in the village, there is a large Lawson's Cypress. This is a common conifer often planted in gardens in the hope it will be a small green globe. But in time it becomes a tall spire, very tree like, and definitely not suited to that patch in the front garden!

Its only when allowed to grow like this that they reach their full potential.

Further on there was another, but it was so dark and crowded in there that all one could see was the trunk and a few bits of foliage, complete with cones. Note the nice root flair!


Of course its not just conifers that you find in there, and a little further on there is this tall narrow Beech. It seems that its foundations have been undermined at some point as a lot of its roots are exposed.

Close up of its roots:
Another impressive tree is this Turkey Oak (Quercus cerris), an introduced species related to our native Oak but with different shaped leaves. this one has more room to spread its wings than the Beech and looks fabulous. Also it is growing atop a bank so that a person seeing it while in the Denes has to look up, yet anyone outside near the road is nearly level with its lower trunk!

While I was taking these photographs I had the kids with me, and we soon stopped when we surrounded by Horse Chestnut trees-we were in the middle of a conker grove and my 3 year old daughter loves to collect them! Of course there are a lot more trees in this walkway, including ancient Silver Birch complete with Witches' Brooms, strange growths found on some trees where the branching is a lot finer than normal, and smaller leaves. You can see it here on the right most branch, a black fuzzy ball.I will post more pictures as I find noteworthy trees, as well as using this as a kind of 'Trees in the News' section.