Pollards, the forgotten art-discussion

[Kat1e]

I will be back later as have to go out but lots of questions to ask. How old are trees usually (as a minimum) before they can be pollarded? How does pollarding relate to coppicing in terms of suitable tree species and also habitat offered for fungi/beetles etc? As well as eventual timber output? Sorry for the 'noob' questions- do feel free to direct me to reading on the subject if you'd like a discussion with someone who has more of a clue what they are on about!

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

This is interesting but i am little lost..

 

What are you actually trying to say?

 

As huck says Pollarding was a practice undertaken for various reasons to retain the source of firewood and food.

 

That practice is seldom undertaken for those reasons now,now its a heritage reason- veteranising isnt pollarding. Making trees look like how they used to look is a very different function than managing a resource that you need to survive..

 

But i am still not sure what you are getting at..

 

What i am getting at is that ancient man was an acute observer of nature

 

he had such insight that he could use "intuition" of natural proscess to his advantage.

 

that pollarding although sometimes resulted in the death of a tree it was understood that it wasnt the end of the world, it was natures way anyway.

 

that he observed a great many details of tree form and function that we are trying to reproduce and understand froma "scientific approach"

 

that sometimes, faith in insight is undervalued.

 

and that decay is not to be feared, but revered

[Kat1e]

 

cool profesion, i think in time a great many disciplines will come together and make great strides due to "cross examination" of intertwined subjects.

 

its amazing what happens when somone from an entirley differnt field comes into a discussion and adds "personal insight" to the debate.

 

look at claus, he was an engineer, radical dude

 

Yes I am perpetually fascinated by the links between several of my areas of interest that initially seem totally unrelated.

[testcricket01]

interesting thread, i was only last week saying at work that i dont think we do enough pollarding these days.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

Yes I am perpetually fascinated by the links between several of my areas of interest that initially seem totally unrelated.

 

i have a lot of respect for Mr fay, he is really pushing this concept to its limit, he well earnt his award for contribution to arboriculture IMO

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

I will be back later as have to go out but lots of questions to ask. How old are trees usually (as a minimum) before they can be pollarded? How does pollarding relate to coppicing in terms of suitable tree species and also habitat offered for fungi/beetles etc? As well as eventual timber output? Sorry for the 'noob' questions- do feel free to direct me to reading on the subject if you'd like a discussion with someone who has more of a clue what they are on about!

 

Kat1e, NO ONE is out of place in any discussion, and your contribution is valued and appreciated, you ask away, i am here for the duration.

 

What use is knowledge if not to share pass on and develope?

 

We are all members of the same classroom, and i am not so arrogant to think i have all the answers i am just not afraid to be wrong or be embareesed, for each time that i am wrong i recieve an education.

[gibbon]

Interesting reading.I'm also not to sure what your piont is. I struggle with writing not thinking so it can be diffeicult to get my thoughts accross on paper at times. I think that the ecological benifits of old pollards are a result of an old practice rather than the reason for doing it in the 1st place. Veteran trees are a declining resource now, but in years gone by old and standing dead wood habitats would have been more common and not always a result of mans pruning styles.

 

I've met tribes people in tropical Africa and the Americas and have seen 1st hand evidence of the collection of materials from trees. In both regions the trend was to collect a usuable amount of material (bark is what springs to mind) without killing the whole tree, so that the resource can be re-used. I suspect that this is how pollards were developed, use what you need without killing the tree.

 

Idea and pruning methods will always change and evolve. I don't think that pruning styles from 20 years ago or more were all bad, but we are hopefully moving forward. As our stocks of old trees decline, it becomes more important that we understand how we can best retain them and secure the next generation of veterans. I do doubt that our ancestors pre-empted the results of their pruning in terms of habitat value and thats why it was done.

[Catweazle]

There are two ways of looking at this image, discuss what you see here, please i would like to understand what YOU all see.

 

A tree that's about to fall over ? A tree that could be cut at 4m to provide a bat home ?

 

I'm guessing, I'm just an amateur.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

Interesting reading.I'm also not to sure what your piont is. I struggle with writing not thinking so it can be diffeicult to get my thoughts accross on paper at times. I think that the ecological benifits of old pollards are a result of an old practice rather than the reason for doing it in the 1st place. Veteran trees are a declining resource now, but in years gone by old and standing dead wood habitats would have been more common and not always a result of mans pruning styles.

 

I've met tribes people in tropical Africa and the Americas and have seen 1st hand evidence of the collection of materials from trees. In both regions the trend was to collect a usuable amount of material (bark is what springs to mind) without killing the whole tree, so that the resource can be re-used. I suspect that this is how pollards were developed, use what you need without killing the tree.

 

Idea and pruning methods will always change and evolve. I don't think that pruning styles from 20 years ago or more were all bad, but we are hopefully moving forward. As our stocks of old trees decline, it becomes more important that we understand how we can best retain them and secure the next generation of veterans. I do doubt that our ancestors pre-empted the results of their pruning in terms of habitat value and thats why it was done.

 

I am not suggesting they "preempted" the habitat perspective, merely that they knew imitiating it had many benifits and eliminating it aslo. hence seperation of valuable butts. if they did not understand fully the proscesses involved they would not have been able to alter the growing environment for their purposes.

 

and that in copying the proscesses they "enhanced" bio diverse habitat by "forcing it" and multiplying that habitual set of prosceses the trees go through naturaly in nature. those habitats would have evolved slowly developing in the orest, but mans actions enhanced their avaliabiltiy and in turn promoted diverse life.

Edited December 22, 2009 by Tony Croft aka hamadryad

[Catweazle]

and that in copying the proscesses they "enhanced" bio diverse habitat by "forcing it" and multiplying that habitual set of prosceses the trees go through naturaly in nature. those habitats would have evolved slowly developing in the orest, but mans actions enhanced their avaliabiltiy and in turn promoted diverse life.

 

I know that man had created unnatural habitat that has been in place so long that species have developed to exploit it. Coppicing is a good example, butterflies have evolved over a thousand years to live in newly cut coppice, our technological age has left the coppice to stand in the last 50 years and the butterfilies cannot evolve quickly enough to survive elsewhere.