On our permaculture walk this weekend we found a monkey-puzzle tree and a pheasant, neither indiginous to Scotland but both seen to be doing well. There is a sapling monkey-puzzle close to this big one but its not known if somebody has planted this or if it has seeded itself. The pheasant is probably deliberatly reared for shooting and I don't know if they breed wild. We also learned how to identify some deciduous trees by their bark formation and the shape of growth(when they have no leaves) and looked at emerging hedgerow plants, spring must be here! The weather forecast for this week is predicting -10C but I am refusing to believe this because I no roof on the house and am feeling chilly as it is!! The greenhouse themometer is showing -1C this morning.
5 comments:
Oh goodness, Claire! No roof on your house?! Bundle up! Stay as warm as you can.
We had a monkey puzzle tree growing next to a redwood in our frontyard growing up. An exotic for us and it did very well indeed and set up lots of little trees underneath it's canopy. I still remember being very scratchy to climb under; I was always into exploring odd places that were difficult to get into... I kind of didn't like it for that reason.
gorgeous photos!
some of the field operators for the oil company i work for adopted a wandering pea hen discovered on one of the oil leases last summer. no, they're clearly not native. she must have been an escapee. when no one saw her for several days in the fall, all becamed VERY concerned, and the fellows put out an All Points Bulletin for her (Rita is what they called her) and they searched till she was found. with winter coming, and the certainty that she wouldn't survive the winter without help, one of them took her home to his farm, where she is now happily cohabitating with the chickens.
lucky Rita, I think she should do very well living with the chickens!
interesting to know the monkey puzzle will self seed, there must be something local that polinates it,
Hi again, Claire! Not sure if that was a true comment by me. (The memory's not too clear and the monkey tree is long gone -- I mostly remember the itchy, scratchy branches!)
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