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Tree Clippings
Woodland musings, first published in the newsletters of the Pennine Woodland Group.
Trees for Life
Accepted climatic forecasts predict a warming of around 3ºC in the next century. Species like oak need periods of winter chilling and would be unable to set seed in some present sites. All species would need to shift their range around 500 feet towards the uplands, impossible for many species given isolated sites and lack of time. Diversity of species and varieties will be essential to our mostly "man-made" woodlands if they are to adapt their characters and survive.Adhering slavishly to only native species is therefore counterproductive, but if you are unwilling to introduce "exotic" timber to your woodlands why not make fruiting species your excuse? Climatic change means many species, hitherto shy croppers in the West Pennines, will become viable. Hickory nut trees or Turkish Tree Hazel look less "foreign" than monkey-puzzle nut trees, while species like walnut (believed to have been introduced to Britain by the Romans) are already at home in Britain.
There are a wide range of edible berries, nuts and hips available from ordinary native species, but why not plant a plum tree, or apple, pear or hazel cultivars alongside your species varieties? Heavy-fruiting cultivars of sweet chestnut are becoming available, and there are more palatable cultivars of rowan berries. Any fruiting species will attract wildlife. Redcurrants are avidly eaten or mulberries will divert the birds from your cherry cultivar. Planting a selection of shrub fruits which thrive in a woodland environment, will ensure there is some left for you!
For information on disease-resistant apples, other topfruit and shrubs, rootstock choices, edible rowan, chestnut cultivars, unusual fruit and nut trees etc. contact the Agroforestry Research Trust.
Forest Fruits
At blackberry time, consider other fruits your woodland can produce. Fruits edible if cooked include sorbus species, elder, sea buckthorn (mineral rich; makes an excellent tonic) cornelian cherry, junipers, guelder rose, flowering quince, bird and rum cherries, medlars and even snowberries. Though wild tree fruit is often cooked, crab apples will readily pollinate no-prune sweet apple varieties and you can plant dessert berry cultivars. Wild cherries and myrobalan and bullace plums do well - or try hardy cultivars like the Hessle pear from windswept Yorkshire.Berries of Hawthorn species are edible, also oleaster, amelanchier and mahonia and berberis berries such as b. aggregata and b. vulgaris - b. wilsoniae fruits have a more acid, lemony flavour. The native scotch or burnet rose has very sweet black hips; those of eglantine, dog rose and prolific rugosa roses are all edible. Rosehip pulp can be prepared by steeping two pints of rosehips in a quarter of a pint of wine or water, covered in a cool dark place for six to eight days, stirring occasionally. Sieve, and add three quarters of a pound of sugar per pound of pulp - cook to a suitable consistency. Berries such as elder are delicious with apple, or preserve by boiling up a pound of elderberries with seven ounces of sugar, bottling and sealing while boiling hot. A good hot toddy for a heavy cold.
If you prefer sloe gin to crabapple jelly try a traditional French liqueur of wild sour cherries (griottes or guignes noires). Prick them with a needle, put into a bottle, add sugar to a third of the way up and brandy to cover, seal firmly and leave in the dark for at least six months. Cheers!
Nut Harvest
Nuts store longer in their shells, but after shelling they can be stored up to two months in an airtight container or for a similar period as nut butter, made by processing six ounces of roasted nuts with a tablespoon of sunflower oil. Like oily fish, nuts protect against heart disease, and your woodland can provide a wide selection.Our own local native is corylus avellana. You'll get a few hazelnuts from coppice or hedging, but cultivars, some of which are crosses with c. maxima (filberts) give better yields: the Agroforestry Research Trust has information on hardiness, prococity etc. Even hardier, hybrids with American species can be had from Nutwood Nurseries; or try the taller Turkish or tree hazel. Rogers Nurseries of Pickering supply only hardy fruit cultivars and have a good choice of hazels. They also offer a walnut known to fruit well in Yorkshire. Nor are almonds necessarily too exotic for the Pennines- Clive Simms' unusual fruit nursery has one that fruits in Sweden.
Chestnuts fall into two types, the sweet "marron" type being too tender for northern climates, but precocious high-yielding roasting sorts are available from Nutwoods, Clive Simms, or the Agroforestry Research Trust. Related to the impractical pecan are pignut and shagbark hickories, which fruit well in good years.
All the above will bear alone but their male and female pollen can be released at different times and a related companion will improve fruiting. There are many very hardy self-fertile nut pines, but the monkey-puzzle has male and female flowers on separate trees. If you've room for both sexes, the female trees even in Scotland bear delicious nuts, which you can taste in trial packs from the Agroforestry Research Trust.
Edible Woodland
My mother remembers picking and eating hawthorn shoots on the way to school - known as "bread and cheese". Young beech leaves have a fresh, lemony taste, and a liqueur, "beech leaf noyeau", is made by packing leaves and/or buds into a jar, covering with gin, and steeping for two weeks - then add a dash of brandy and sugar dissolved in water to taste. Young silver birch leaves have an aromatic, bitter flavour, or herbal tea can be made of leaves, twigs and buds. Young leaves of lime (stalks removed) are good eaten in salads and sandwiches, and limeflower tea is well known. Fresh lime flowers and young fruits eaten together apparently make a good chocolate substitute.Teas can be made of leaves of ash, elm, rowan, white willow, dog rose and juniper. Flowers of elder, apple, lime, rowan, bird cherry, sloe, robinia, hawthorn, cornelian cherry, roses and lilac are edible, as are the cooked leaves of bird cherry and rugosa roses, and a wine can be made from oak leaves.
Most birches and maples, including our own acer campestre, have edible sap, as do most hickory, lime, juglans (walnut) species, and italian and red alders. In desperate times the inner bark of white willow, white poplar, aspen, scots pine and red alder has been ground into bread.
Elder flower champagne sounds more appetizing - put 8 large heads of elder flowers in a bowl with a gallon of water, one-and-a-half pounds of white sugar, the rind and juice of a lemon and two tablespoons of white wine vinegar. Strain 24 hours later into bottles, lightly cork - leave in a cool, dark place and drink after two weeks.
Shade and Shelter
The sight of a large cow trying to creep into the shade under a raised henhouse underlined for me the importance of shade to livestock. Certain trees help by also repelling irritating flies: working horses used to be rested beneath walnut trees for this reason, and elder leaves are also a good fly-repellent. Evidence can be found locally of former row-planting along drystone walls similar to the many fodder pollards which the poet Wordsworth thought gave the Lake District a "pleasing sylvan appearance", which was actually as manmade as the present-day barer landscape there. Double-stake tall tubes to prevent livestock damage, or plant behind fence-lines against existing posts; many species will appreciate the better light and space here as opposed to within woodland, and adjacent pasture will benefit from the mineral-rich leaf fall.The first hedges were probably strips left as boundaries or shelter in cleared woodland and would provide a source of fruit and nut crops and small diameter timber for utensils etc. Add fruiting trees or shrubs to existing hedges and plant new ones as wildlife corridors to complement woodland. Inaccessible and decrepit drystone walls can have a length replaced with hedging to improve shelter and release stone to repair the rest.
A well-designed shelterbelt gives downwind protection to an area twenty times the height of the tallest row of trees. 140m of shelter 9m deep can protect 6-8 acres in its lee and 1-2 acres upwind, incidentally providing within itself optimum "woodland edge" conditions for wildlife and fruit production. Up to 30% of available land can actually be given over to productive woodland strips in this way without lowering overall crop yields, since these (including of grass) can be doubled by virtue of the shelter afforded adjacent land.
Woodland Apples
Many people believe apples are only suitable for garden or intensive culture, but this is not so. Varieties listed here fruit wholly or partially on branch tips and so do not need pruning, and are sufficiently disease-resistant to obviate the need for spraying.Rootstock choice is important as many are bred for gardens. Avoid dwarfing M27 or M9, which have brittle roots and need permanent staking. They are susceptible to drought and will not tolerate grass beneath. Most nurseries now offer M26, which has better anchorage and tolerance and makes a tree 8-14 feet high, or M106 for a tree 16-20 feet, more tolerant of heavy clays. Both will need staking for between 5 and 7 years. No staking is required for M111, making a supremely tolerant 20-24ft tree, or for the usual commercial orchard standard M25, growing to 24 feet.
Apples will be sweeter and crops heavier given some sunlight, while cookers like Grenadier will stand more shade. Recommended for the North of England are Irish Peach, Lady Sudely, Fortune, Lord Lambourne, Tydeman's Early Worcester, George Cave and Ellison's Orange, while Golden Noble and Pearl have frost-resistant flowers and Bess Pool flowers very late, making these also suitable.
Notably disease-resistant are Grenadier and Golden Noble (cookers), Discovery, Winston and Beauty of Bath: some otherwise suitable varieties like Worcester Pearmain might need to be sprayed, particularly against apple scab, which is exacerbated by a humid woodland environment.
Compatible pollinators are necessary for Beauty of Bath, Discovery, Golden Noble, Bess Pool, Pearl and Irish Peach - be guided by catalogue descriptions of flowering times. Others will fruit better if pollinated, perhaps by existing crabapple trees, and crab cultivars are available on the rootstocks listed.
The Plum Family
While some plums and true gages really only thrive in the South of England, others are suitable for woodland edge in colder climes. Plum rootstocks are hardy and tolerant, though dwarfing Pixy will not stand drought and needs permanent staking, so look for silverleaf-resistant Myrobalan B, giving a tree of 22 to 24 feet, or the semi-dwarfing St. Julien A for a more precocious tree of 14 to 15 feet.Among cultivars recommended for the north, Pershore and Marjorie's Seedling are resistant to silverleaf. Also dual-purpose are Oullin's Gage, Belle de Louvain, Golden Transparent, Warwickshire Drooper, Early Laxton, Czar; and Reine Claude de Bavay and Laxton's Gage are good dessert varieties. Laxton's Gage, Czar and especially Victoria tend to be prone to silverleaf, but all will set crops alone, although the cooker Wyedale needs a pollinator. To get heavier yields these cultivated plums can be pruned, in summer to avoid silverleaf, though the crop may then need thinning to avoid cropweight breaking the branches. Pruning is not strictly necessary as a good proportion of fruit forms on old wood - other plum species do not require pruning.
For even more rugged conditions, the Agroforestry Research Trust lists improved varieties of our own cherry plum which are available (some needing pollinators); also mirabelles, or French cherry plums. Mostly self-fertile or partially so, damsons, bullace and quetsche are the most tolerant. Used for cooking, these need less sun to ripen and a variety of cultivars can be had. Farleigh or Merryweather damsons are particularly hardy - sufficiently so to be grown as windbreaks in their native Yorkshire.
Pears
Sheltering woodlands offer the opportunity to plant pears. One is told to improve the soil for fussy dwarfing Quince rootstocks, and while established woodland will already have good leafmouldy soil remember you can plant seedling pear rootstocks, which give a tall, hardy, long-lived, less prococious but much more tolerant tree.Cooking varieties need less sunshine to ripen sugars but are only good for cooking, while "dessert" varieties are really dual-purpose, so if you can choose a sunny, sheltered location so much the better. Some hardy cultivars will set some fruit on their own but you can plant more than one variety to cross-pollinate, or use existing Pyrus Communis (wild pear) trees for pollinators. Alternatively, ask a nursery to graft two or more compatible varieties on one tree and you can give that tree pride of place for sun and shelter. Initial pruning to induce spur formation is beneficial, but pendulous varieties like Jargonelle are tip-bearers and shouldn't be pruned heavily anyway.
Disease-resistance avoids having to spray the trees: scab is the most important pear disease and unfortunately Conference and Williams, otherwise recommended for growing in the North of England, are susceptible. The following are all resistant to scab and recommended for planting in the North of England:
Hessle is a variety from the Yorkshire village of that name and is renowned for cropping well in cold areas; it is partially self-fertile like Improved Fertility. Gorham and Louise Bonne of Jersey must have pollinators, while Jargonelle and the cooking variety Catillac need two. Jargonelle is a good pear for the north and not as sun-demanding as some.
Nut Pines
Many nut pines are hardy enough to include in windbreaks, like the dioecious (male and female flowers on different trees) monkey-puzzle tree, whose nuts may be used "like chestnuts". Nuts of many pinus species can be eaten raw or cooked, ground or whole, or a high quality oil can be pressed from them, when the residue is a good cattle feed. They have been eaten for millennia - those in the shops are nearly always Pinus Pinea (the Stone Pine). Most species do not produce nuts for 20 to 25 years, though Pinus Pinea starts at ten years old and P. Armandii at twelve. Some species' cones have to be heated to release the nuts, others are harvested by simply shaking the tree and collecting the nuts on sheets.The Romans first planted P. Pinea in Britain as food for the troops, though like several pinus species which do well here this prefers the south of the country. Recommended for the north-west are Chinese White Pine (P. armandii), Swiss Stone Pine (P. cembra), Jeffrey Pine, Korean Pine and Siberian Pine. Contact Nutwoods Nurseries or the Agroforestry Research Trust for more information. Remember they all represent excellent wildlife fodder if you don't intend to collect the nuts yourself.
Try this Pine Kernel Sauce: Make a roux of one and a half ounces of butter and two of flour, add four ounces of crushed pine kernels then five fluid ounces of milk plus fifteen of water slowly, stirring over low heat until the sauce thickens. Excellent used instead of cheese sauce for a leek and mushroom lasagne (using one pound each of cooked leeks and mushrooms seasoned with one and a half tablespoons of marjoram and one of tamari or marmite), mixed and topped with more whole pine kernels and ground black pepper for a delicious vegetarian meal.
"Green Manure"
A green manure tree is one whose leaves are particularly rich in nutrients which are made available to adjacent pasture or crops when its leaves fall. Some are all-round benefactors, while others are accumulators of particular minerals. Among the former are hazel, lime, alders, willows, beech, silver birch, black locust, sea buckthorn and siberian pea tree.Potassium and phosphorus, important for fruit formation, are concentrated by acer, fagus, carya, juglans, salix and malus species, while tilia and betula are accumulators of phosphorus.
I have seen sheep suffering from acute calcium deficiency seek out dandelions and sorrels to eat - these are rich sources of the mineral, which is also concentrated in quantity by carya, (hickory) and tilia species, acer nugundo and a. saccharum, black locust, broom and black walnut.
Nitrogen-fixing species can be distributed about an orchard in a ratio linked to canopy area of potential beneficiaries and are often used as nurse-trees: many are ideal for use in windbreaks. Alders are supreme; others are sea buckthorn, robinia, caragana, cytisus, eleagnus, genista, lespedeza and shepherdia species.
With wetter winters preventing access to land for muckspreading, the potential for using green manure and nitrogen-fixing trees in pasture is obvious, particularly on difficult slopes or in nitrate-sensitive areas. Such trees can be pollarded and cropped and will provide welcome shade for stock in increasingly extreme summers. The possibilities for contribution to adjacent crop health is recognized by current research into strip-cropping between rows of trees, where shelter is also a factor and the trees themselves either provide additional crops or are interplanted with fruit cultivars or timber trees.