Forests and Woodlands

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The first characteristic to look for in your tree is the shape of the leaves. Each species has its own very distinctive leaf pattern. Most are instantly recognizable from this quality alone, although there are a few that you may find a little tricky, such as hornbeam and elm, and a few of the exotic species introduced from other countries, but you will soon get the hang of the main native species.

Start by collecting a selection of leaves, either from the ground or directly from the tree itself. Once you have these leaves back at home there are several ways you can incorporate them into your log – start with the ideas opposite and more are given on the following pages. You can then move onto exploring the bark (see pages 16–17 (#ubfe70c64-a317-4504-a29c-3ec1c0e80539)), seeing how old it is (pages 18–19) and drawing its profile (pages 20–21 (#u703acfde-5909-4e12-96c6-47b2ae67fab8)).

To make your tree log, use a scrap book or collect some loose pages or some clear plastic pockets. You can keep adding to your file as you find more information and evidence.

YOU WILL NEED

> leaves

> sticky tape

> watercolour paint

> paintbrush

> paper

> shoe-cleaning brush

> shoe polish

> blotting paper

1 Use your leaf like a stencil. Place it on paper and fix the stem with sticky tape.

2 Carefully paint over the leaf, just going over its edges. Let it dry.

3 Slowly lift the leaf and, hey presto!, you are left with a perfect outline of your leaf.

4 You can also use a stiff brush to apply some dark shoe polish to one side of your leaf. Dead leaves that have fallen from a tree work best for this approach as they are stronger and more rigid.

5 When it is well covered, turn the leaf over and press it firmly onto a plain sheet of paper to leave an imprint. Press some blotting or kitchen paper over this to sop up any oily residues.

Make leaf lace (#ulink_12d6a59a-3e1c-57f2-bdc0-1e6155e2386c)

If you have been sifting around in the bottom of a pond or ditch, you may occasionally stumble across a stunningly beautiful phenomenon – that of a leaf that has had all the soft parts nibbled away to leave a net-like web of veins. These veins are all that is left of the leaf’s plumbing. The tubes and pipes are what the sap of the plant flows through, carrying essential chemicals around the plant’s body.

There is a rather simple and fun way of recreating this effect to order. Not only are they a beautiful thing to have in your tree log but they can also be mass produced, painted and used in many creative ways, such as on a collage picture and to decorate cards.

Nick’s trick

* Pressing leaves is the same as pressing flowers. You can either use a professional flower press – a stacked sandwich of alternating cardboard and blotting paper between two boards with bolts in each corner – or you can use a heavy book or two to weight down the layers.

* The most important thing is to place your leaf between some absorbent material like blotting paper or kitchen towel. Sheets of plastic will also stop any plant sap from oozing out and ruining your book cover or pages.

* Change the blotting paper every other day and after a week or so your leaves will be preserved. I like to store mine in individual plastic envelopes with a label on the outside of each one saying what it is and where the trees were growing.

YOU WILL NEED

> leaves

> washing soda

> a pan of water

> a soft paint brush

1 Fill your pan with water and add about 2 dessert spoons of washing soda for every 500ml of water.

2 Place the pan on a gentle heat until it is simmering, then take the pan away from the heat and place your leaves in the solution.

3 Leave them submerged for a good 30 minutes, making sure all of the leaves are under the surface. Then gently wash the leaves with fresh water by placing the pan under a slowly running cold tap, letting the water flush out the soda mixture and soft debris.

4 You should now be left with beautiful transparent leaves. To remove the soft material surrounding the veins, place the leaves on a saucer and gently brush with an artist’s paintbrush. Leave to dry on some kitchen towel.

The texture of bark (#ulink_a5507656-1b85-50ac-a34d-ae7ba4d8fdfb)

Another distinguishing feature of a tree, and one that remains even in the winter when most leaves would have dropped, is the texture of the bark. The quickest and easiest way to record this is to make a rubbing – see Nick’s trick, below. The other way of recording your tree requires a little more effort, but it produces a really smart, three-dimensional model of a section of tree trunk – and that is by making a cast of it (see opposite).

Hold the crayon or pastel on its side for the most effective technique. This really helps to bring out the textures underneath.

Nick’s trick

* Carefully tape a piece of paper to the trunk of the tree and then colour over it with a crayon or pencil (dark looks best on white paper, but white chalk on black paper is pretty stylish, too).

* In this way you record all those textures and patterns and soon you will start to recognize a combination of these features and the colours. I have a friend who is a blind naturalist and he can tell most species of tree by these very textures you will be recording with your rubbings.

YOU WILL NEED

> modelling clay

> strong cardboard box

> plaster of Paris

> water

> poster paints

> paintbrush

1 First find the tree you wish to make an impression of. Then knead and pummel your modelling clay so it is soft and free of air bubbles. This makes it much easier to work with and gives you a better impression at the end.

2 Firmly press the clay into the tree’s surface. Try to keep the clay at least 1.5cm thick and aim to keep the edges from tapering. If you are going to make many such casts for a collection, use standard dimensions at this point as it makes the casts easier to store and/or mount.

3 Peel away the clay and you will notice all the bark textures on it. You now have to get this home without damaging the mould, so this is where a stout box to transport the clay comes in handy.

4 Once back at base, place the mould with the textured surface uppermost. Then use more modelling clay to make a ridge at least 2.5cm higher than the mould. You can choose at this point whether to make a curved cast, like the profile of the tree, or a flat section.

5 Following the packet’s instructions, mix some plaster of Paris with water. Pour the plaster into the mould and leave to set for a few hours. Then carefully lift and peel away the modelling clay to leave your bark cast, ready for display.

6 If you like, you can paint your bark impression with poster paints so that it looks even more lifelike.

How old is your tree? (#ulink_3f4fec91-ebd7-5e33-9637-d8f2bee045c0)

The most accurate way to tell the age of a tree is to look at a slice through its trunk and count the growth rings. The cells under the tree’s skin (the bark) produce new wood as the tree grows and each summer, more new cells are made when conditions are best for growth. Growth rings show each year’s new growth – one for each year of the tree’s life. In years of good growth, the rings will be wider.

Obviously getting to see these growth rings in a healthy tree is impossible without cutting it down and destroying the thing you are studying! But if you come across stumps that have been sawn through and the cut is a smooth one, you should be able to see how old it was when the tree was felled. This will give you an estimated age of any tree of the same species in the same area.

Some trees grow very slowly indeed, but others have many a growth spurt, such as the commercially grown pines, various cedars, spruce and fir, poplars, cricket-bat willow and other non-natives such as eucalyptus. Slower-growing trees include pine, yew, chestnut, lime and most smaller-growing trees.

Fab facts

* Trees grow from the outside in! The growth cells are all in the surface of the wood, under the bark. They lay down new wood as the tree trunk expands. The wood in the middle of an old tree is usually dead and when a branch falls off, it is this that sometimes gets hollowed out by fungus and birds.

YOU WILL NEED

> a tape measure

> pencil

> paper

> calculator

1 Another way to estimate a tree’s age is by measuring the girth of the trunk about 1m up. Because large trees tend to grow at a predictable rate, their trunk gets thicker as they grow and on average, trees put on about 2.5cm a year.

2 So measure your tree’s girth in centimetres and divide it by 2.5. You will then have an approximate age for your tree. This is a very rough guess and growth rate does vary from species to species and from place to place.

Take it further

* Try to find a tree stump that shows the tree is, say, at least 100 years old and take a photograph of it.

* Either have the photograph enlarged or I enlarge a photocopy. If you have a digital camera, print out the image to whatever size you want. You can then mark important years on the trunk by counting back rings.

* Show the year 2000; the year you were born; when the Second World War started, and add anything else that is of interest to you and your family.

Profiling your tree (#ulink_a90d90cf-7816-5cac-8b01-7211bc91e150)

For any tree, you can create a profile of its shape and height. It is not too hard to figure out the circumference of a tree trunk, you just need to put a tape measure around it, as if you were measuring your own waist (see previous page). But height is a different matter, especially if you are dealing with a large, mature woodland tree. Fear not – it’s surprisingly easy (see opposite).