Conifers and Spring

I was walking through a mixed woodland this afternoon, and noticed how the conifers were all responding, in their own ways to the coming spring, and much sooner than the decidiuos trees around them. The larch buds look like clusters of small flowers, the sitka looks silver and insect like, the scots pine a lovely fresh green and the japanese red cedar like spring blossom.

They may notliterally blossom or have slowly unfurling vibrant green leaves, but their buds do have a beauty of their own.

I think that conifers get a pretty bad press. They seem to be asssociated either with dark, brooding forestry blocks of sitka spruce, and barren forest floors, or in urban settings, with leylandii hedges and neighbourly disputes. However there I believe that theremis so much more to them.

They vary from the feathery and elegant japanese red cedars to the majestic giant redwoods, with so much in between.

The problem I think that people have with conifer is the misconception that they are boring and don’t encourage wild life, that they lack the romance of an oak or beech, but if you look closely thay are beautiful in their own way. They create new growth in the spring and have amazing buds. In the winter their friut of pine cones come in all shapes and sizes. The larch even changes colour to a glorious gold in the autumn, and lovely bright new green needles in the spring

It’s the old adage “the right tree in the wrong place”.

Here at heydon Hill Wood we inherited a plantation of sitka spruce bordered by ancient beech and oak when we bought our woodland.

With careful management and gradual replanting we are recreating a wonderful mixed woodland. We have kept a lot of the spruce and allowed natural re- generation where we have been thinning out and harvesting. The understory now is a wonderful mixture of pioneer trees like oak, rowan, and birch, with planted wild cherry, beech, oaks, robinia and a mixture of conifers like scots pine, western red cedar and japaneses larch.

Conifers also are amazing at capturing carbon , almost 60% more carbon in the early years of its life. They grow more quickly than an oak or beech, for example, so can therefore be capturing carbon while the decidious trees are slowly reaching the point where they can do so effectively.

There are many reasons why a mixed woodland has advantages over planting a monoculture. Another blog post perhaps? I will just finish by saying give conifers a second look, give them a chance. They deserve a place in our landscape and in our woodlands.