THE RESILIENCE OF TREES

There is an apple tree outside our back door. The old tree was quite large (you can see the thickness of the old trunk in the picture). But bits of it were dead, and the rest was hanging over the hedge in a lop-sided sort of way; so I cut it down two years ago.

I quite expected that to be that. However, far from rotting into nothing, up popped 10-12 new shoots last spring. Since I didn't want a dozen trees where one had stood before, I chopped down all but two of them last autumn. These two are doing well, and have just burst out into bud this week (see below).

You would think that something that has had its head (and arms and legs) vigorously chopped off would find it difficult to survive, let alone bounce back. But this tree has done so, and I am impressed. All it needs to do now is to produce apples this autumn, and we'll have a nice tree with fruit, and at a height where they can be easily picked.

Walter Blotscher