This group of Ash Trees on the other side of the River Thames look wonderful at the moment on their soft blanket of fallen leaves.
But no ash tree however big or small is safe. National new stories say that the Chalara fraxinea fungus, which causes leaf loss and crown dieback and leads to the death of ash trees, has spores borne on the wind and could soon blow our way. So I have started treasuring the ash trees while they are still with us. More ash tree pictures in the spring.
One of the easiest ways of helping to control tree fungus is simply to sweep up and burn leaves as soon as they fall. Not perhaps feasible in a forest situation, but certainly possible here in our parks.
The ash grove how graceful, how plainly ’tis speaking
The harp through its playing has language for me.
Whenever the light through its branches is breaking,
A host of kind faces is gazing on me.
The friends from my childhood again are before me
Each step wakes a memory as freely I roam.
With soft whispers laden the leaves rustle o’er me
The ash grove, the ash grove alone is my home.
How graceful, but very vulnerable.
Just read in Oxford Mail, a whole ‘row’ of recently planted Ash trees has succombed to the new virus and have to be destroyed. (as Saplings).
http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/10036885.Trees_destroyed_as_disease_discovered/
Should have read a fungus (spores) rather than ‘Virus’…..