Nature on your doorstep in March

I-Naturalist photo of Cherry Plum

THIS MONTH’S CHALLENGE: It has to be an invitation to revisit iNaturalist. Our project now has a fabulous total of over 1000 observations, with an ever increasing percentage being research grade. I’m wondering if we can reach 1500 observations by the summer.

THIS MONTH'S TIP:
Caring for trees: in an urban environment, trees may well be under extra stress. The Tree Council recommends regular check-ups of young and established trees to look out for tell-tale signs of problems, like dieback in the crown, and trunk decay (loose bark or fungi are indicators). Pruning established garden trees can remove diseased wood and make the trees more vigorous and improve their structure; while deadwood is a really important habitat. There’s lots of detailed information about tree care on the T ree Council website .

FIVE FASCINATING FACTS ABOUT TREES

Trees and plants communicate with each other using a massive network of underground fungi, known as the ‘wood wide web’. If a tree is being attacked by insects, it can use the wood wide web to ‘warn’ other trees along the network to trigger their own defences
The oldest tree in England is probably the Crowhurst Yew in Surrey which may be up to 4000 years old.
The world’s tallest tree is a redwood in California known as Hyperion. It’s 115m tall, which is higher than the Sky Plaza in Leeds. Redwoods were introduced to the UK by the Victorians and there are perhaps 500,000 growing here. But the tallest tree in England isn’t a redwood; it’s thought to be a common beech in Derbyshire which is 45m tall.
The UK tree with the widest girth may be the Bowthorpe Oak in Lincolnshire - which is 13 metres in circumference and supposedly has space in its hollow trunk for 39 people!
There are 60 different native species of tree in the UK. Native species are those which colonised the UK following the last ice age and were not introduced by humans.

All information is from CPRE website and Woodland Trust website

THIS MONTH'S UK Citizen Science project is:
Treezilla - the Monster Map of Trees. There may be as many as 1.5 billion urban trees in the UK, but fewer than 10% are recorded in databases, and this project is looking to rectify that. There’s been plenty of mapping in Leeds, but not in our area!

All events