One morning a couple of months ago I accompanied Tanya O’Neill for a walk through Oak Park with forester Michael Sommers .
It was a fun walk through various sections of the woods. Michael would get enthusiastic about a pathway he hadn’t been trodden in a while .
This video is where Michael counts the age of an Oak tree stump which was cut down 50 odd years ago .
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Michaels words:
Each year we can see how much that tree grew by
There is at least 20 years growth in that amount alone
Now look at the rest of the tree
We will go to the pith wood
40 (years)
a 100 years growth there
that’s 150 years growth
that’s 200 years
That tree was 264 years of age when it was cut down in 1972.
So that was 50 years ago so that would puts that stump here
at 314 years of age
That tree started growing in 1710 .
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#1 Empty Tendrils
#2 Pomegranate Tree
#3 Trees are like Humans
#4 Old Ash – A Real Survivor
#5 Tree Rings of Life
#6 A Very Weird Elf
#7 Old Crabapple of Wenhua Dian
#8 Standing Fast
#9 Feeling Good – Tree Song
#10 Forest Breath – Tree Story
#11 Protective Peach – Tree Story
#12 Bee Tree (Part 1) Sycamore
#13 Winter Apples
#14 Ancient Yew Trees
#15 Once I Counted Birds
#16 Family Oak
#17 When the Trees Say Everything
#18 Strawberry Tree
#19 Mother Oak and Baby Oak
#20 My Leylandii
#21 Chestnut Repotted#22 Native Birch#22 Native Birch
#23 Ethan’s Tree
#24 Holding Trunk of Time
#25 Our Mother’s Legacy
#26 It Blossomed
#27 Always Trying To Hold Each Other Up
#28 Wollemi Pine
#29 Barrow Willow
#30 For What We Might Become
#31 Sheltering Beech
#32 Millennium Monkey Puzzle
#33 Monterey Cyprus
#34 Struggle On, Struggle On
#35 Like A Chestnut
#36 Head and Shoulders Above
#37 An Dair Sean
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Open Call for your tree story on video
Memory Palace of Tree Stories is a socio-ecological art practice which invites you to tell a story or share information about trees . It is a creative-led social enquiry of how we can live well for both personal and collective wellbeing. Your story can be any kind of tree story , a personal tree story, an ecological tree story , an environmental tree story, an historical tree story or even a botanical tree story. I do hope you can contribute a comment on how we can live better with the greater community of life.
The year 2023 we continue to gather your stories in the form of one minute videos and we are really looking forward to hearing your tree story . I can be contacted directly on this platform or on the contact page on this website.
Niamh Cunningham