Promesse de géant

Elle brille au soleil: c’est une petite graine qui, apportée par le vent, s’est posée au bord du sentier.

Une promesse de vie qui grandira, grandira, si elle tombe sur un sol accueillant.

Celle d’une espèce d’arbre que l’on a plutôt l’habitude de voir dans les cours des écoles, sur les places comme celle qui avait inspirée Van Gogh ou le long des routes du sud de la France, comme ici le long de la D14 qui trace son sillage dans la plaine avant de grimper dans la vallée du Sant.

Mais ici, au creux de la forêt, c’est bien aussi une graine de platane. Nous en avons déjà deux de vénérables, dont la graine a aussi probablement été amenée par le vent, il y a bien longtemps.

Le platane commun, ou platane à feuilles d'érable (Platanus × hispanica ou Platanus × acerifolia) est en fait un  hybride d'arbres issu du croisement entre le platane d'Occident (Amérique du Nord) et le platane d'Orient, à fertilité très faible (seule une infime partie des graines peuvent germer).

Existant en Europe, au Crétacé (de 145 à 66 millions d’années), le platane y disparaît à l'ère glaciaire. Le platane d'Occident (peu courant en Europe et d'origine américaine) et le platane d'Orient (planté par les Romains en Italie, vers l'an 390 av. J.-C.) sont introduits et hybridés en Espagne (d'où le nom "Hispanica") et en Angleterre vers 1650, pour donner le platane commun ou platane à feuilles d'érable, le plus courant en France.

Le nom, du grec πλάτανος / plátanos, dérivé de l'adjectif πλατύς / platús, signifie large et plat. Cette dénomination trouverait son origine dans une croyance de la civilisation Crétoise : la feuille à cinq lobes correspondrait aux cinq doigts de la main de la Grande Déesse, la Terre Mère. 

Nous avions déjà vu le miracle de la minuscule graine de séquoia qui se transformera en l’être le plus haut de la planète, si elle tombe, elle aussi, sur un terrain propice.

C’est la magie de la Nature dans les forêts naturelles: simplement dire « Abracadabra », puis patienter un petit… siècle, en espérant que la force de vie surmonte les aléas de toutes sortes.

Ici, nos deux spécimens sont en pleine santé, ce qui n’est pas le cas, hélas, des magnifiques platanes qui bordent le Canal du Midi qui doivent être remplacés, comme expliqué dans cette belle vidéo (en français, sous-titres en anglais).

Découvrez d’autres arbres de la vallée du Sant.

L'automne disparait en confettis d'or

Petit à petit les feuillus de la vallée entrent en dormance. Après les  marronniers et les platanes, en premier, puis les frênes, les noyers, les châtaigniers, les chênes, les noisetiers et bien d’autres, voici que les derniers érables champêtres perdent leurs feuilles dorées et que les hêtres sèment leurs feuilles rousses.

Ce matin, un petit troglodyte mignon sautillait parmi toutes ces feuilles à terre et y trouvait un véritable festin d’insectes.

Heureusement, les sapins, les pins, les houx, les lauriers, les buis, qui résistent vaillamment à la pyrale, et quelques autres au feuillage persistant brisent un peu le dépouillement progressif de la forêt vers l’hiver qui approche.

Hêtre en automne

 Un des géants de la vallée a pris son manteau roux d’automne avant de se dépouiller pour l’hiver.

La hêtraie de de Montagne Noire est toujours majestueuse quelle que soit la saison.

Le hêtre (Fagus sylvatica) n’aime ni les canicules ni les sécheresses. Il sera ici protégé quelques temps des effets du changement climatique par la fraîcheur du ruisseau du Sant. Mais dans de nombreuses régions de France, les forestiers sont déjà très inquiets. En Belgique aussi, notamment pour la merveilleuse Forêt de Soignes, le poumon de Bruxelles, où nous aimions tant passer nos dimanches après-midi.

Quelques autres clins d’œil d’automne dans la vallée.

Nouvelle Planète?

Non, coquille de noisette coupée en deux par un écureuil gourmand !

Sorèze : le plus bel arbre d'Occitanie est un hêtre de 450 ans

Et il a commencé petit, petit, petit...

Pointillisme

Qui prend le passé pour racine, a pour feuillage l'avenir

(Victor Hugo)

Giant's scale

On the soil lays a small scale. This is a good indication that the conifers around are European silver fir (Abies Alba). It’s a part of its cone and contains two seeds that may end in two new forest giants if germination comes to an end successfully.

Contrary to the Norway spruce (Picea abies) which loses the entire cone, the cone of the silver fir remains on the tree and pieces fall apart.

The other main differences between these too trees are the needles orientation (like two cumbs in the young or lower branches of the silver fir), two clear stripes on the bottom of the needles and cones erected (while hanging in a Norway spruce). The cork and the shape of the tree are also different. 

More trees of the Sant valley

Tree tears

Drops of resin on the trunk of a conifer in the Black Mountain.

Sap and resin are often considered similar. Though they come from the trees, sap and resin show many differences between them. Sap is found in the xylem and phloem cells in trees. The xylem sap mainly consists of water-mineral elements, hormones, and other nutrients. The phloem sap consists mainly of water, hormones, sugar, and other minerals. Resin is a liquid which is stored in the resin ducts of trees. When a tree is cut or when a branch is cut, resin oozes out and clogs the broken area just like the blood clotting in wounds.

Resins have been in use for thousands of years for sealing boats, food containers, in the manufacture of many things like inks, lacquer, varnish, jewelry, sweets and perfumes. Nowadays, synthetic resin is widely used in many products.

More trees of the Sant valley

I am Groot!

Your valley is East West oriented. So we have a South slope and a North slope.

In the North slope the most common trees are beeches and chestnut.

Last autumn, plenty of beechnuts felt, so many young trees are growing now. The two first leaves have butterfly wings shape.

If these trees survive several centuries, they will become like the Beech of St Jammes nearby in our Black Mountain too.

Like Groot, which means “big/tall” in Dutch.

 More trees of the Sant valley

Spring, soon

 

This is not the head of a mythic snake full of tongues but the female flower of the hazel tree (x10).

Early blooming trees like chestnut and hazel trees are already announcing spring.

More trees of the Sant valley

Sweet Autumn

Nice walk under the sun with 20°C these days in the Black Mountain

More trees of the Sant valley

Trees are watching you

Not only Ents have eyes. Here a beech in the valley of the creek Sant.

More trees of the Sant valley.

Autumn is coming

Acer is a genius of trees or shrubs commonly known as maple. The genus is classified as member of the family Sapindaceae. Most species are deciduous and many are renowned for their autumn leaf colour, but a few in southern Asia and the Mediterranean region are evergreen.

The leaves in most species are palmate veined and lobed, with 3 to 9 (rarely to 13) veins each leading to a lobe, one of which is central or apical. They are distinguished by opposite leaf arrangement. 

The distinctive fruit are called samaras, "maple keys", "helicopters", "whirlybirds" or "polynoses". These seeds occur in distinctive pairs each containing one seed enclosed in a "nutlet" attached to a flattened wing of fibrous, papery tissue. They are shaped to spin as they fall and to carry the seeds a considerable distance on the wind. People often call them "helicopters" due to the way that they spin as they fall. Some seeds can remain dormant in the soil for several years before germinating.

A maple leaf is on the coat of arms of Canada and is on the Canadian flag. The maple is a common symbol of strength and endurance and has been chosen as the national tree of Canada.

Maples are important as source of syrup and wood. Dried wood is often used for the smoking of food. They are also cultivated as ornamental trees.

Leaf peeping is an informal term in the US for the activity in which people travel to view and photograph the fall foliage in areas where foliage changes colors in autumn, particularly in New England, close to canada. A similar custom in Japan is called momijigari.

More trees of the Sant valley

First out, first in

The horse-chestnut or conker tree (Aesculus hippocastanum) is the first tree in our forest that losts its leaves in autumn (actually even in August), but it is the first one having them back.

Last Monday

Last Wednesday

Last Friday

The common name "horse-chestnut" (often unhyphenated) is reported as having originated from the erroneous belief that the tree was a kind of chestnut (though in fact only distantly related), together with the observation that eating the fruit cured horses of chest complaints despite this plant being poisonous. This tree species is native to the Pindus Mountains mixed forests and Balkan mixed forests.

One horse-chestnut tree is famous in Geneva and called the official horse-chestnut because the first leaf bud burst marks the beginning of spring every year.

Another famous horse-chestnut tree that lived in the city center of Amsterdam used to be called The Anne Frank tree (Dutch: Anne Frankboom) because she mentioned it in The Diary of a Young Girl.

More trees of the Sant valley

Life finds its way

Even if we have had few rains those last months, the fruits of autumn are germinating thanks to the microclimate allowed by the creek in the valley.

 Acorn from Quercus petraea

 Walnut from Castanea sativa

 Fruit from Aesculus hippocastanum

Life finds a way!

Even more wonderful, this tiny seed will develop into the bigger living on earth, the Sequoia sempervirens, 20 000 times taller. They are not present here already but I plan to sow one.

Cone and seed from Sequoia sempervirens

More trees of the Sant valley

Still decorated after Christmas

While Christmas trees decorations are being removed, look at those which are appearing in some trees, Corylus avellana, the common hazel.
It was the first of the temperate deciduous forest trees to immigrate, establish itself and then become abundant in the postglacial period.

The scientific name avellana derives from the town of Avella in Italy but some say that it rather comes from Gaulish Aballo, « apple ». Corylus derives from the Greek name of husk, form of the short leafy involucre which encloses about three quarters of the nut.

Common hazel is cultivated for its nuts and is also appreciated by vertebrates which manage to crack them open, such as squirrels and corvids.

The wood was traditionally grown as coppice, the poles cut being used for wattle-and-daub building and agricultural fencing. 

Common hazel is typically a shrub reaching 3–8 m tall, but can reach 15 m. It lives in symbiosis with mycorrhiza around its roots.

The flowers are produced very early in spring, before the leaves, and are monoecious with single-sex wind-pollinated catkins. Male catkins (or ament) are pale yellow.

The word catkin is a loanword from the old Dutch katteken, meaning "kitten", on account of the resemblance to a kitten's tail. Ament is from the Latin amentum, meaning "thong" or "strap”.

Female flowers are smaller and can hardly be seen now.

In this species occurs protandry, it begins life as a male and then changes into a female. So, several trees around are necessary to bear fruits. It can also be reproduced by striking, layering and of course with the nuts.

Although the red squirrel remembers where it created caches at a better-than-chance level, its spatial memory is substantially less accurate and durable than that of grey squirrel; it therefore will often have to search for them when in need, and many caches are never found again.

This post is the first of many on trees. Like my father, forest ranger, I like them very much. 

More trees of the Sant valley

Dressed for the winter

Even if the sun is still there, the autumn is coming to an end and the deciduous trees have lost their leaves, all of them except marcescent trees.

Marcescence, the term used to describe leaf retention, i.e. when dead leaves stay on the tree after autumn until the following spring at the latest, is most common with many of the oak species (pictured here), American beech, witch hazel, hornbeam (musclewood) and hophornbeam (ironwood). It is often young trees or branches close to the soil when those on the top have lost their leaves already.

Several reasons could explain this modification in the abscission process, where the cell layer allowing the decay of the leaves is not formed: genetic variation related to the hydric regime of the plant, biomass cycle or even protection against predators because those leaves are less appetent.  

http://extension.psu.edu/natural-resources/forests/news/2012/winter-leaves-that-hang-on

More trees of the Sant valley

Dead tree?

No

Mountain bike trails for insects

Balcony for mushrooms

Skyscraper for insects

More mushrooms and more trees of the Sant valley

Fireworks in the forest

Yellow, the maples (in my back),
Red, the chestnut trees (left),
Green, the beeches (right),

But no blue today, it’s raining.

And the forest is shining

Like this ivy (male) on the bark of an ash,

Or this branch of oak.

More trees of the Sant valley

Fakir’s carpet

In our valley, chestnuts trees are happy and numerous. They survived a disease that killed many of them all over Europe during the last century.

When the fruits are covering the trails, our dogs find it difficult to run. We do have shoes but they have not!

The chestnuts make everybody else happy including our neighbours, the boars.

More trees of the Sant valley