Here's the article I wrote for the Spring issue of Chatterbox - a little taster for a real-life Ketton Tree Walk, which will hopefully be happening early this summer!
I’m often struck by the beauty and variety of Ketton’s many trees. We hear a lot about trees at the moment: the drive to plant more to capture carbon and help tackle climate change; the campaigns to protect the ones we’ve got; their many benefits to wildlife and to us. Imagine what Ketton would look like without these majestic giant plants – unthinkable! With this in mind, Ketton Green Spaces Group had hoped to have organised a guided Tree Walk by now, but the pandemic has got in the way rather. So until we are able to offer you a real one, let me take you on a “virtual” Tree Trail from your sofa! (We also have smart phone Tree Trails on our website on https://kettongreen.wixsite.com/kett - they cover far more than I have space to do here. Click on the + by Projects in the Menu. Once you’re in, click on the tree symbols, then on the title at the bottom to open the info, and on the photos at the bottom to scroll through them.)
Let’s start in Aldgate, heading down Station Road towards the Chater bridge. On either side we have Priory Field and Stable field – both now
managed by the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, but before that owned by the Burroughes Family. It is to Mr Burroughes, who moved to the area in the late 1800s, that we owe many of Ketton’s surprisingly exotic trees. Those majestic Giant Redwoods – a group of eight in Stable Field and five by Chater Bridge – are said to have been planted by him. So they can’t be much more than 100 years old. Mere babies, compared to their Californian counterparts. In their native range in the Sierra Nevada, these giants, also known as Wellingtonia, can reach up to at least 3,200 years old, 34 metres around the trunk and 95 metres high (over twice the height of St Mary’s spire!) At the base of their trunk, the fibrous resin-free bark can be up to 60cm thick, making it extremely well adapted to survive the natural forest fires in its habitat. They really are a long way from home here, but they provide a moment of awe as one looks up (and up… and up…) when passing by.
On a different scale, in the park at Hall Close we see the new community orchard. This was planted by Ketton Primary School children and other members of the community in 2018 and 2019, with help from Stamford Community Orchard Group and the Royal Forestry Society’s Teaching Trees programme. It will be a source of fruit for everyone to use once the trees are more mature, plus the blossom will be alive with the buzz of bees and hoverflies in the spring. Nearer the river Chater, there are some willow “sets” planted at the same time, also intended for community use (for materials for willow sculpture) once they’re bigger. These are literally just sticks of willow put into the ground – they take root, thus growing from a cutting rather than seed. That’s not to say that willows don’t have flowers and seeds - they do, like all of the broadleaved trees – it’s just that they can reproduce this way too. Interestingly, their flowers, called catkins, will also provide pollen and nectar for hungry bees out foraging early in the spring. Hang on a minute, I hear you say. Catkins are wind pollinated! Why would insects be visiting those? Well, it turns out that some willows are actually insect pollinated, and also that the strict divisions into “wind pollinated” and “insect pollinated” flowers we were taught in school is a little more blurred in reality. Several wind pollinated trees are good pollen sources for insects, including Oak and Alder.
Some of the other trees in Hall Close were planted in the 1990s by the Ketton Tree Group. As the successor to this group, KGSG is keen to continue this legacy of tree planting. This winter we planted a nuttery along the edge of the football ground. Six nut trees in the walnut family were kindly donated by Clive Simms, who until recently ran a tree nursery nearby. In around 15 years or so, these trees will be old enough to harvest nuts: another community resource. We also added 50 young native trees to Football Copse (between the football field and Pit Lane - originally planted to mark the Millennium) and coppiced some of the trees there. Coppicing is an ancient practice where you cut a tree down close to the ground, then it grows back up again (as long as it’s protected from grazing). This is repeated on rotation. It used to be a common way to get timber in Britain, but now it’s mostly used to benefit wildlife, as it temporarily opens up the canopy to let more light in. We’ve now made a gap in the fence round the copse, so feel free to go and explore!
As we move on to the wooded part of Ketton Quarry Nature Reserve, the tree cover consists more of native trees, and less of the introduced or exotic species. It may feel a bit wilder, but if you look closely you can see signs of human intervention, like in most (if not all) of our “natural” landscapes in Britain. Those beautiful beeches are in surprisingly straight rows, showing that they were planted. If you look around, you’ll see lots of dead wood, both on the ground and standing. This is essential to a functioning woodland ecosystem. For a woodland to be truly full of life, it conversely needs lots of dead wood! The rotting branches, tree holes and cracks provide food and homes for countless living things in the food web, from fungi to beetles, woodpeckers to bats. An important lesson in resisting the urge to “tidy” semi-natural landscapes.
Do let us know about the wildlife and scenery you enjoy seeing when walking locally – our new Twitter page is ready and waiting for your photos. Just include @GreenKetton and we can re-tweet.
Jemma Cuthbert is the secretary for Ketton Green Spaces Group, and Education Officer for the Royal Forestry Society’s Teaching Trees Programme.
Comments