For National Tree Week
It's the final day of this year's National Tree Week today and I want to celebrate the tree which stopped me in my tracks recently. At other times this has been a very big week for me, having organised and helped to plant thousands of trees in south Wales as part of an Earthwatch project in the 1990s. Those days feel like they're part of another life, but it's good to be reminded how important trees still are to me, simply by just being there.
The pictured tree is towards the end of my walk into town and I must have walked past it hundreds of times, but for once I saw it properly for the first time. It was just as the different combinations of colour from green through yellow and orange to red were at their finest which helped to catch my undivided attention. It's not the tallest specimen in the world, but wow, it really helps to soften the brutalist concrete of the shops behind it.
Then I looked at the leaves more closely, and realised it's a liquidambar aka sweetgum, a tree I didn't think thrived in our area and I've been quite envious of other places where it does. The link says it can grow up to 20 metres in height, whereas this specimen is around 20 feet, or a third of that size. Perhaps our local conditions and being by the river mean its going to stay a bit smaller, though I see it can take up to 50 years to get up there.
Nevertheless, it's most welcome. Which tree has captivated you the most recently?