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Today by chance I happened to see the Park Services tree crew around the mature sycamore tree in the main open area of the park.
This tree was one of the relatively few mature tree we have in Surrey Square but it was damaged and there were talk to cut it down for years.
The tree had been fissured by high winds in '79 when it was still young, it survived (even if it lost half of its crown) but never recovered fully.
A long crack, infected by fungi lingered at its heart but in spite of many storms and squalls it never broke.
With various park officers it was discussed its felling because of the danger of it breaking suddenly, but nothing came to it.
The other day however Julian chanced upon the new Park Officer in charge of the park (at least I think she is. Council officers seems to have a high rate of turnover and I for one find difficult to know who is whom) and he emailed that they talked amongst other things of the"Damaged Sycamore in central recreation area - Keith is concerned about the safety of the tree.The crack in the trunk has been getting larger. A high wind could bring it down and endanger people. S.Sq.Primary School children often do sports activities nearby. Tree officer is aware".
In any case the discussion must have resonated with her because they actually came and cut it down. As usual it would have been nice if the Friends of Surrey Square Park (FoSSP) could have been contacted but one cannot have everything in life, as they say...
Here the result:
Fortunately Julian, as usual, and Alison were at hand and we could talk to the tree-surgeon and the crew.
All were very friendly and helpful. A big thanks to them.
These people were über efficient. In less than no times they chopped it to pieces , disposed of the stump, grated the brunches and leaves and cleaned up. Had I been out for half an hour or so I would have missed the lot.
Very interesting was their "stump cutter" machine, I actually never saw one before and I was impressed.
It actually shredded all the material and bits of the ground around it:
Note the brickwork and building rubble exposed by the action of the stump cutter. It is a reminder that the park is actually built on the unmoved rubble of a demolished terrace row. So it is important to remember how tenuous is the history and fragile the future of this little piece of greenery.
Anyway, Julian had the brilliant idea to ask the guys, as they seemed friendly enough, if we could get some of the material, mainly the pieces of the trunk for the Wild Life Area. To our surprise they said yes :-).
They even arranged to have the pieces transported the short distance. Could not have asked for better outcome.
The trunk pieces will be invaluable to foster the local population of stag and lesser stag beetles and a host of other invertebrate that use dead wood or the habitat that it creates. We already used other stumps from previous tree cutting (during the renewal of the park last year, for instance) to build a dead wood mini-environment in the WLA and it worked well so far.
The old wood has proven to be quite a resource for a number of wildlife, birds especially, and against all the doom sayers not a risk for fire. In fact - in spite - of fires that actually happened, the dump and bulky nature of the stumps help to contain it. In addition they tied the loose soil and detritus to their interstices, suck up the water and preserve dumpiness even in dry summers. It was also a good occasion to see the actual damage to the sycamore:
here the part of the trunk that sustained the actual damage. When they cut it transversally it split off from the rest of the tree body and one can see the decaying caused by fungi infection. It looks like an old portion of wood but it was contained by a living tree!
The section below it can give an idea of the extent of the fissuring and the fragility of the whole column:
The darken part is the area affected by the infection. So it was a sick tree indeed.
Being on the spot we also thought of taking advantage of the large amount of shredded material available and, with the worker permission, took a little to mulch over the oak tree in the Wild Life Area. it is still a young sapling and it need all the help we can give it to survive in the next few critical years.
As for the park very little remains to remember an old friend, yet hopefully The Friend of Surrey Square Park should be able to negotiate some replanting in a more suitable place. The felled sycamore was always felt to be in the wrong location, breaking up, as it was, the larger section of flat ground in a park so already small.
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