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Willow

  • Writer: Crone
    Crone
  • Aug 28, 2022
  • 2 min read

So, here's a thing. We are building screens to allow people to watch birds without scaring them.


The screens in some places are made of fence panels and in others of feather boards. The fence panels seem largely to be reused, but the feather boards are timber that has been purchased.


Conservation organisations have very limited resources - both in terms of finance and people. So it is understandable that the quickest and cheapest means of completing an important task will be chosen.


Yet, of course, there is a cost to quick and easy. Just as there is a cost involved in buying a fast food meal rather than cooking from scratch. And that cost includes the environmental impact. I don't know where the feather boards originated - but I did see that a load of posts had come from Estonia.


Now, on site there is a lot of willow. Young willow is bendy and the shoots are straight - especially if you do some coppicing - and especially with certain smaller species (like osiers). In the past, these were used to make baskets.


I had this idea - and I know it's unrealistic and utopian and silly - that it would be good to organise first a couple of days of learning how to coppice willow, with some woodcraft expert teaching members of the public and volunteers. Over a couple of days, you'd get quite a lot done. Then a few years later, you'd cut and soak the willow ahead of a few more workshops to learn willow weaving skills. A willow weaver - like someone from this organisation - would come along and teach members of the public to make screens. The screens could then be used on site.


Funnily enough, at a course the other day, the tutor said that if one is working on a site that includes carr (wet woodland) one should be able to distinguish the various different types of willow. Ummm... I think the one on the front page is white willow and this is... a sort of sallow...


Incidentally, poplars are very closely related to willows. And the tutor of the course had never heard of a variegated one. Nor did his book reference that - but check this out:


It's a lot smaller than my other poplars... but it is variegated!!



 
 
 

2件のコメント


maplekey4
2022年8月30日

p.s. I really don't know but I wonder if the variegation "blotchy" is an early stage of some type of leaf miner larvae. Just a thought. https://extension.umd.edu/resource/leafminers-trees-and-shrubs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_miner


いいね!

maplekey4
2022年8月28日

My gosh I found willows mentioned in 2 tragic situations -


https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/othello/quotes/symbol/the-song-willow/

https://myshakespeare.com/hamlet/act-4-scene-7-video-note-ophelias-death


Your idea for coppicing and weaving willow sounds good to me!!

いいね!
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