Every other morning at the moment, there are news reports of accidents caused by difficult driving conditions and, occasionally, roads blocked by fallen trees.
The trees in question have almost certainly been blown over by the wind. Yet, if you had looked at them the day before you would have asserted that they were in fine health, with a decent grip of Mother Earth.
That happened in the village last year when an apparently healthy mature beech tree keeled over and flattened several cars in the process. No one was hurt, may I add. Now, how could that have happened?
These memories come back to me as, daily, I watch pictures on TV of flooded fields, woods and hedgerows.
Think about it: A perfectly healthy, well-rooted tree stands in water for weeks on end. What happens to soil when it is totally saturated? It turns to mud.
How do tree roots “grip” mud? When that waterlogging is bad enough, going on long enough, surely the tree looses its grip, a very strong gust of wind occurs and the tree blows over.
Do you think that is fanciful? I think it is a distinct possibility.
One of the other problems that can occur after severe winter weather, of the freezing temperatures kind, is bark splitting.
Many different kinds of trees can be affected; non-native species are more likely to suffer the worst.
I’m thinking of Acers, some fruit trees, ornamental Prunus, Magnolia, Sweet Bay, Eucalyptus and even Lilac.
Splitting can be caused by drought, water logging and/or freezing temperatures.
Let me tell you a story with a bit of a digression that I’ve probably regaled you with before now.
Back in the early 80s, we did a Beechgrove Garden Roadshow at Braemar.
The question session lives fondly in the memory and I am reminded of it even yet by people who were in the audience.
Story number one was about a busy lizzie, passed up to the panel for us to try and find out what was wrong with it.
After long deliberation and shaking of heads, we all agreed that “it wis deid”.
The questioner (a fine specimen of a gent, the Ballater scaffie by profession) made it all clear by admitting that he had saved it from a dustbin earlier in the day “jist to test us oot”.
Question number two was simple: What would you put on an east-facing wall?
Deliberations were interrupted by a shout from the audience: “Try Snowcem!”
It’s not all hard graft, ye know.
Now to the real point. The local heidie at that time was also the official Met Office mannie and, in our chat with him, up came the story of the previous winter, when the night temperature fell to -27C.
He commented: “I came down to the square at midnight and could hear the sap cracking within the trunks of these mature trees.”
In other words, the very sap was freezing.
I doubt if there will be any splitting as a result of low temperatures this winter, but who knows what is yet to come.
The splitting is caused by that expansion and contraction of fluids within the tissues as a result of freezing and melting (remember your studies related to the latent heat of freezing of water, way back in third year at senior school?)
Cracking also occurs after very dry summers, this time caused by lack of water. The tissues shrink and lignify, losing their elasticity, then when the rain comes the cracks appear.
What’s to be done? Given time, bark wounds will callus over and, indeed, the official advice is to leave them be – don’t cover with tree-wound paints.
Question: Why, then, are such materials available in the marketplace?
Are we all wasting our money?
For once, I am going to stick my neck out by first asking another question.
If you were to suffer a significantly nasty gash in your arm, would you give it a clean and leave it open to heal naturally?
The odds are that you would protect it for fear of an infection getting in there to cause even more trouble.
There’s your answer. Wound paint may not do the healing, but it does protect the tissues from further damage.
Cosmetically, it looks better, too. My clever friend George Anderson’s reply to that is: “You would be as well to rub in some earth.’
Funnily enough, there is a grain of truth in that, too.