Trees

This post is going to be very London centric (the Ontario London of course), but I'll try and make it more global, at least where possible.

As I've mentioned before London Ontario is nicknamed the Forest City and a tree is the London city logo. There's a good reason for this, London is covered in trees. I'm not exaggerating, there are a crazy number of trees, almost every street is lined with trees. In the older parts of the city they are massive ancient trees, OK maybe not ancient but a good couple of centuries old.

Its not as if they are the stereotypical pine or spruce trees that I'm sure people imagine are in Canada, there's a wide variety of trees. Lots of maple sure, Canada is blessed with lots of maple trees, from the sugar maple, to red maple (after which the Canadian flag is based) and many others in between.

There are a lot of ornamental trees too, this picture shows an ornamental apple tree, with tiny red apples. I've not tried eating one of the apples, but I have eaten an apple from another ornamental tree with apples that were a little smaller than a cox's orange pippin (it wasn't terrible).

Victoria Park in central London is chock full of trees of many different species, maples, horse chestnut, oak, pine and spruce, I even found a Ginko Biloba tree one day. The problem with the trees in the park are they are old, really old, they are close together and they are suffering from disease and competition from the other trees. Its a shame, but the park services will have to do something about it eventually.

Speaking of disease. This picture is of a tree close to our apartment building (that's it in the background) and you can clearly see that there's a diseased growth on the side of the tree. Its not unusual around the city in the more mature trees. Some of it is down to the age of the plants, some is down to earlier management of the trees that left them unprotected from parasite incursion. This has led to a lot of trees dieing and having to be cut down. There's a city truck that carries around a wood chipper throughout the non snowy season, that takes care of the dangerous trees that need to be cut down. Its a good system but is does show how badly many of the trees are suffering around here.


Here's one last picture. Around London's downtown there are a collection of metal trees painted in gaudy colours and "planted" in areas that are a little less tree covered. Apparently these sculptures caused a real stink when they were commissioned by the London District Business Association. They're not terrible to look at, but honestly, what was the point, its not like London lacks real trees. Still, its art I guess.

I really do like the fact that London is covered in trees, it makes things a lot more pleasant (except when the trees rain or snow on you, or when they hit you with masses of seeds, or the pollen makes you sneeze), they provide much needed shade in the summer and help block out some of the noises of the city (especially in the myriad parks in the city) and they provide a nice home for the local black squirrel population and of course the local birds. They even help to reduce the overall temperature in the city (thanks to transpiration).

Excuse me, I think its time to go out and find a tree to hug, one that's not overly diseased anyway.

Assuming you are so inclined I have a bunch more pictures on my Flickr account.