Ancient Tree Forum

August Helen Read's diary so far Back to diary - latest Weeks 4,5 and 6 - click here		"At the beginning of August I started a three month study tour to find out more about the techniques that are used in different countries for pollarding trees. The aim is to find out information to help improve the management of newly created pollards in Britain, especially in Burnham Beeches, a Natura 2000 nature reserve where I work."

August Week 1 Nato island mixture of pollards in restored wooded meadow Old ash tree at Brannbolstad with 4.7m girth Ramsholmen. High pollarded elm, possibly to allow hazel growth below it Ash pollards at Ramsholmen Newly created alder and Betula pubescens pollards on a private farm		Sweden Another busy week has just gone by. I had a well needed relaxing weekend at a quiet cottage in Töreboda with Vikki and Ola where we swam in the lake, walked in the woods and had a BBQ. It was good to see Leif Andersson again when he visited and I managed to almost catch up on my washing! Monday Vikki and I spent with Håkan Slotte who has done a huge amount of work on pollarding in Sweden as well as other countries and who has been very helpful in telling me about places to visit. He took us to several places close to Stockholm with old oak trees – some very spectacular and some in cereal fields which have withstood very close cultivation. He also ended up having to assist while I called the breakdown services as Arthur the camper van failed to start. A new battery later and we were back in business. On Tuesday I said goodbye to Vikki and dropped her at a station in Stockholm. I headed north to meet Håkan at his work place in Uppsala, spending some time looking at his photographs of pollards and then looking at an area his institute is restoring where the students have created new pollards from a variety of different species. In the evening in the only real rain so far I drove to Kapellskar from where the ferry to the Åland Islands departs. On arrival at Mariehamn, the capital of the Åland islands, which are technically part of Finland, I met up with Carl-Adam Hæggstrom. Carl-Adam spent the next few days showing me the amazing floristic diversity of the islands and some of the huge number of pollards there are there. I stayed at the biological station on Nåtö island (meaning nut island and nothing to do with NATO!) which had pollards all round it. The pollards were created in wooded meadows and many of these areas are now nature reserves. In fact most of the pollards had lapsed at some stage, mostly for a short time and often since the 1930’s. LIFE projects have been the major source of funding in restoring the areas and have enabled large numbers of trees to be restoration pollarded and new pollards to be made. Unfortunately, due to the short term nature of the funding (three years) most of the trees in any one place were cut in the same year and much of this work took place around 1998-2001. It is not at all clear if many of these trees will be pollarded again and if so, how the work will be funded. There were a few places where pollarding does now seem to be carried out regularly and the cutting work is supported by the Government. Thus some of the most interesting places in terms of continuity of work were a couple of farms right in the north of Eckerö and one island of 3 hectares we went to by boat from Nåtö. There are apparently pollards on many of the smaller islands. Despite the difficulties, Selskar the island we visited has hay cut from the meadow each year and is then sheep grazed. There were sheep on it while I was there so I could see it was true! The pollards are of the usual Scandinavian species, ash dominating with elm and also quite a lot of alder. Lots of old birch pollards too but these seem to be difficult to restore (although I did see some good examples of restoration) and in many areas young pollards are being created with mixed success. Carl-Adam also took me to Brännbolstad near Sund where there were old lapsed elm pollards under the edge of a spectacular rock face. Across the field was a large ash pollard with a 4.7m girth – really a spectacular tree. Yesterday I left the Åland islands and came back to Sweden. Today I am catching up and getting ready to go on the ferry tonight to Gdansk in Poland to start the Eastern European leg of the journey. Undoubtedly this will be a change of scenery and culture
August Weeks 2 and 3 Click on the pictures below to enlarge Stekka, Norway. Largest oak, with 10.4m girth Lars Grinde, Norwegian farmer showing how to make a bunch of ash leaves from cut branches. Tussvik, Norway. Pollarded birch tree. Kussalid, Norway, pollarded elm trees.		I did intend to write a report after the first week as so much had happened but somehow the time just sped by. I’m now at the end of the second week away and have already seen so much that I feel I need a week to sort it all out in my mind – but that will have to wait for the moment! Norway Norway was very interesting and the pollards were in such stunning scenery I can’t imagine I will find any better. Mark was my driver for the week and I was very grateful as the roads were sometimes narrow and very twisty (resulting in the loss of a wing mirror). We had a few minor teething problems with Arthur (the camper van) so it was also good to have company to sort those out. We started in Bergen and initially headed south to Hardanger Fjord. There were pollards in the landscape and some especially good ash pollards between the river and the road as we approached the Fjord that had been cut fairly recently leaving one or two large branches on. The star site of that area was Stekka;with lots of large oak trees, the largest with a 10.4m circumference. The trees near the car park (and water powered sawmill) were in amongst younger woodland. Attempts had been made to clear round them and most had had some restoration work done, some or most branches had been cut back but leaving one or more branches in tact. Some of these trees did not look as healthy as they should have done and we were a bit concerned for their long term survival. At the top of the hill we came into pasture and the oaks were standing in much more open conditions and this was where the biggest one was. Restoration work had been carried out on these trees too, probably before that on the trees in the woodland but they looked to have responded much better. Sadly we did not meet anyone here who was involved in managing the site but I am trying to find out who is in charge so I can make contact and send a veteran trees management handbook. From Hardanger Fjord we headed north to Sognefjord visiting various places on the way. At Sognefjord we met up with Ingvild Austad who is doing some fascinating research work on pollarding and the wooded meadow* systems. She is proving that wooded meadows (i.e. hay meadows with pollards cut as leaf fodder for domestic animals) are self sustaining in terms of nutrients whereas hay meadows without trees lose nutrients over time and need to be fertilised. She has worked with various different farmers in her ‘county’ and took us to meet Lars Grinde. Lars has a farm with a tremendous view across the fjord. He is now finding it difficult to look after his land as he used to but Ingvild and her students have recently managed some of the wooded meadows as part of their research work. He took us to an ash pollard and directed Mark as he climbed the tree and pollarded it. Then he showed us how to tie the branches together with birch twigs to make bundles of leaves and hang them on the fence posts to dry. They would then be taken indoors for storage until needed in the winter. Ingvild marked on a map for us several other interesting areas and we did our best to visit them all. We saw elm pollards cut as goat fodder, birch pollards cut at several different heights producing very open and candelabra shaped trees (birch is considered a difficult species to pollard) but had to miss lime pollards cut early in the spring for the buds – next time perhaps! One other person we spoke to was Kåre Solhaug at Kussilid. Kåre is a young farmer who is justifiably proud of his Elm pollards. He wanted to keep cutting them but was having problems storing the volume of cut branches and leaves during the winter. He has experimented with various different options and now cuts the trees in the traditional way but then puts all the cut branches through a shredding machine and spreads the resulting material out to dry which he says takes about a day. This is then stored for use in the winter. He feeds it to the sheep as their morning feed and it keeps them occupied during the long winter days (they get silage at night). They don’t eat the woody bits, which he collects up and uses as bedding during lambing. Blood samples have been taken of the sheep fed on these leaves in comparison with those just fed on silage and they have higher blood levels of certain beneficial components.

Ash pollard at Steneryd – Sweden showing cutting to the form of the tree Krukshult – Sweden. Cattle grazing/browsing and newly cut ash pollard Ivar Andersson, the farmer at Krukshult, /Sweden with his pollarding tools, a Lövhacka and a kvisthacka Misterfalls, Sweden. Ash pollards cut less than a week prior to the photograph being taken. The cut branches are on the groundi		Sweden Mark and I then drove into Sweden and to Gothenburg airport where we met up with Vikki and Ola and Mark flew back to England. Monday we spent trying to sort out various things like my washing and the wing mirror (both of which we failed with!) before heading off to our first county of Småland. We had a very interesting day on Tuesday with Jan Karlsson. He took us to four very different places and we met up with the people responsible for doing the pollarding at each. In fact none of the pollards had yet been cut this year but we had a demonstration on an ash tree at Målaskogberg. Jan and some of his colleagues run day courses on pollarding for local farmers and several were planned for later this year. From Småland we headed south to Blekinge to visit some areas recommended by Håkan Slotte who recently completed his thesis on pollarding in Sweden. Ire seemed to be linked to a college and it did look as if there was a range of different techniques used to pollard the trees, some of which did not look hugely happy. Interestingly there was lots of different species pollarded, including hornbeam and even one beech. (In Sweden oaks were not traditionally pollarded so these are rarely seen). Steneryd felt rather different, more of a cultural farm situation with mostly older trees of ash and elm, some of which had been more or less shredded as well as pollarded. The next day we travelled north to another cluster of sites recommended by Håkan. First Krukshult, a lovely small farm where we were initially a little disappointed that there were only a few pollards. Whilst looking at them we met the farmer who seemed very keen to talk about his pollards and Vikki practised her Swedish asking him and his sister how they do it and what tools they use. We moved on to Bråbo where there certainly were lots of pollards in the landscape of varying size and species. Most did look like they had been cut recently but after a lapse of varying numbers of years. There should be several thousand trees here but I am not sure we found them all. It will be interesting to talk to Håkan tomorrow about these trees. On Friday we went back to Misterfalls Askäng, a place we had visited with the Ancient Tree Forum last year but only had a very short time there. The trees had been cut here last weekend, sadly we missed it but wanted to look at the freshly cut trees. While walking to them we met five people having coffee in a shelter there, they were the ones who had done the pollarding so Vikki was able to use her Swedish again to ask some questions. We then spent far too long in amongst the trees ‘like children in a sweetie shop’ until we had to leave to get to our night stop. The Scandinavian pollarding system is different to that in southern England in that the trees are cut during the summer months for the foliage and the trees were cut on a much shorter rotation. However it has been very interesting to see the system in action and it has made us think about the consequences for the trees of the different systems. We have also been looking at the amount of decay in the trees as a result of pollarding and restoration pollarding and wondering about the long-term implications for their health. We have also noticed a difference between the trees cut by the farmers because they need the produce and the trees cut for nature conservation reasons and we think this deserves further thought. * Wooded meadows are different to wood-pasture and are a typical Scandinavian landuse. The land under the trees was cut for hay and sometimes grazed before and/or after the hay cut. In a wood-pasture system the land is grazed but not cut for hay.

August - October 2003 At the beginning of August started a three month study tour to find out more about the techniques that are used in different countries for pollarding trees. Back to diary - latest Weeks 4,5 and 6 - click here		"My aim is to visit places across Europe where there is a long tradition of pollarding and where it is still being done or where any lapse in cutting has been short. The species of trees I am interested in are beech (Fagus sylvatica), oak (Quercus spp.), ash (Fraxinus excelsior), hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) and perhaps elm (Ulnus spp.), birch (Betula spp.) and lime (Tilia spp.). I am not going to be looking at willow (Salix spp.) or poplar (Populus spp.). I am hoping to see trees in wooded meadows or wood pastures and I also hope to see some beech pollards (even if they are not still being pollarded). I have made contact with people in a variety of different countries. Ideally I am hoping to watch some pollarding taking place and talk to the people doing the work. I also intend to take photographs and to make some measurements of various aspects of the trees. The planned route starts in Norway, Sweden (to visit Vikki Forbes) and Finland. I then cross Poland on the way to Romania and Bulgaria. The route back will be through Hungary but is then flexible depending on how much time I have left. I will return home for three weeks before starting out in mid October for France and Spain. My employers, the Corporation of London, have given me two months of time to do this and I am adding one month of my annual leave. In addition I have been awarded a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship for the first 8 weeks. While I am away I hope to have regular email contact with colleagues and will be sending a regular email diary to the ATF website. I also hope to be able to send pictures so that you too can see some of the trees I find."

A study of practical tree pollarding techniques in Europe - weeks 1, 2 and 3