including Beech Bottom Dyke and Sandridge Road Wastes
Bernards Heath Infant and Nursery School celebrated Global Families Day on November 14th with Peter Burley and Alan MacKnight representing the Friends of Bernards Heath. They brought along with some very tasty berry jam (photo inset) using fruit foraged from the Heath. It was a good opportunity to publicise the Action Day on the 17th November (see post above).
Thank you everybody who helped with our Action Day on November 17th 2019
A lovely sunny but cold November Action day attracted a good number of helpers, who:
1 and 2 Collected litter and other rubbish – including a sleeping bag
3 cleared a section of hedge in Heath Farm Lane
4 cleared a substantial fallen branch close to Luton (Spinney) Lane.
Early morning photos from the Lower Field, Bernards Heath. Photos: MN.
Starting from outside, the red-brown bark surrounds yellow sapwood with brown heartwood in the middle. The bark brings the leaves’ products of photosynthesis down to build a new layer of the sapwood each year while the sapwood conducts water upwards from the roots to the whole tree canopy. Heartwood is dead sapwood and only contributes strength to the trunk and branches. The proportions are different in branches (below).
The bark started to heal over the stumps, but before this was complete, the wood had rotted. Bark can only lay down new wood on a sound surface. Poplar is not rated as a ‘durable’ wood, meaning that dead wood does not resist decay well.
Going back to the second picture, on the left is a branch stump which successfully healed over. The blackened cut surface was partially exposed by a felling cut. In contrast, on the right is a pocket of rot which started when a branch was cut off. It eventually closed over, but never quite healed properly, as can be seen (below). A slight ‘witness’ occurs to this day in the bark surface, although, without seeing the cut stump, it would not be apparent.
Oh, you want to know how old the tree was? The picture (below) shows the rings marked (very faint) in 10’s
They add up to 110, give or take a few. So the tree started life about 1910. The two healed-over branches were cut some 50 years ago, around the time that the old fire station was built and possibly connected with clearing low-growing vegetation in the vicinity of the access road.
Lastly, a piece of branch from up in the tree canopy below shows some really good growths of moss and lichens (pronounced litch-ens or like-ens). Lichens are combinations of a fungus and an algae living as one organism.
On the left is of the north-facing and damper side and on the right, the south-facing and drier side.
Roger Miles, Heath Tree Warden
Until a few days ago, just to the left of and in front of the old fire station were two trees,
a sycamore and a very large poplar. Probably a hybrid black poplar, to be more precise
(to left in picture above, leaves shown below).
This young Beech tree was felled just off Harpenden Road on or around 29th July. We have been planting trees on the Heath over the winter, so it is disheartening when this happens. Do you know anything about it? – if so, contact FoBH chairman by clicking FoBH Mail in the right-hand column.
On the left above the tree as it was and on the right the location. The tree was cleanly sawn off with a handsaw and left as shown.
Images from Google Street View dated April 2019 and Google maps.
You may recall that these parchmarks on the Upper Field appeared last year during a period when there was little or no rain. In the current spell of dry weather the marks are appearing again. The photo is a view towards Boundary Road
Let’s Play at Bernards Heath is a new fund-raising charity, formed to make a lasting change to the existing tired playground on Bernards Heath. For more information see the website. You can support the charity by going to the website and in other ways too.
This really nice logo for the charity was designed by a child at Bernards Heath Infant and Nursery School. Read more ›
This large ash tree recently came down partially blocking this path to the WW2 water tank, which can just be seen in the background. The tree broke off near the top of the roots, see inset image. Fortunately, it did not fall towards the tank, which is still threatened by a large sycamore only inches away. The Council has agreed to deal with the ash tree.
Continue reading “Ash Trees feel the strain”
This bench, which faces Heath Farm Lane, was badly damaged by an attempt to burn it. Now RM, with help from some pupils at Sandringham School, has done an excellent job of repairing it. The wood is English oak, which is very expensive – it fact it would cost several hundred pounds to make a bench like this, not counting labour.
Unfortunately, there have recently been other incidents of senseless vandalism. Attempts to burn other benches and rubbish bins as well as spray painting – it only spoils the Heath for the majority of users.