Trees are awesome... people? Not so much...

I felt kind of guilty about the last entry and in particular the picture. I have asked Zofia for permission to use it... I just didn't really wait for her to say it was ok... which makes it not ok I guess... But I hope she can forgive me, and if she does not she has my word that I will take it down immediately.

Anyhoo... I wanted to show you I have some pictures of my own of more or less abused trees and how they deal with it.

The first pictures were taken outside the hospital in Lund. The protections around the tree has most likely got hit by a car and thereby got this deformed. It did it's job and protected the tree, but the people responsible for the trees did not do theirs. Instead of replacing them the tree guards have been left pressed against the tree for a good two or more years, forcing the tree to try to grow around the metal.

Now the tree would most likely have survived, but I was still glad to see the guards removed and replaced when I visited last fall... A couple of years too late, but they got it done. ;P

There were trees planted in the same manner as these along street after street in a newly built area. You can't see it too well in this picture but the trees are literally planted less than a meter from the house with their branches growing into the spouts and roofs. We got sent there to prune these poor bastards and we did what we could, but it felt like time wasted. The trees were planted inches from lightposts, electrical cabinets and as I said before... the houses... They had no proper growing ground and will never become fully grown before they die or has to be taken down so they won't do any damage to the houses.

I just want to know one thing: Who let this landscape architect graduate?

This isn't really man-made... But for some reason the stem started dying, perhaps it got injured and fungus got into the wound or the tree simply became too old... In any case the trunk started withering away from the inside, but remained standing from the living parts in the outer parts of the trunk. (Please excuse my explanations. My English isn't really that great when it comes to gardening and technical terms). Anyhoo, what then happened was that the crown of the tree sent down shoots and created a new sort of trunk. Surviving no matter what, it seems...

Lastly, this is man-made and awestriking. At Östra Kyrkogården ( I think, if my memory serves me right ) they have created this colonnade of limetrees all grafted together. I can't even begin to describe how that meticulous work has been achieved but it is beautiful... more than a dozen trees in each row all fused into one. Our teacher wasn't sure, but it is quite likely that if one of the trees got a serious injury to its trunk or roots the other trees, being connected to it, would help support it and give it nourishments as it is still part of the one huge man made tree... now that is pretty awesome don't you think?

Yea, I'm such a green-nerd...