Natural History

Posted in West Virginia | Tagged aspen, quaking aspen | 4 Comments

4 Responses

1. on November 4, 2013 at 12:20 pm chervilmeadow

   The tree over here which most evokes the image of aspens is the silver birch, that lovely delicately branched tree which is always the first to recolonise bare ground. Relatively shortlived it then makes way, in these marine lattitudes, for species like the oak. The celts and saxons were able to walk from the North Sea in the east to the Atlantic in the west without, they say, ever leaving the shelter of their canopy. Eventually as the population grew following recovery from the fourteenth century ‘Black Death’ which killed a high percentage of all Europeans, the needs for timber and farming saw the retreat of our forests. Our ancestors also used up oaks to build the ships which conveyed people to America and the Antipodies and which defended us from invasion before enabling especially our navy to faciltate brits becoming rulers of half the world. Marvellous while it lasted and marvellous too what one can extrapolate from a mere picture on your blog, retrieverman!

   
   
   • on November 5, 2013 at 6:11 am retrieverman

     We have a native birch whose twigs taste like mints. It’s called a black birch.

     
     
2. on November 4, 2013 at 11:24 pm cher

   Hi chervilmeadow,

   I don’t know about silver birch, but we have Quaking Aspen whose leaves quake and shake in the tiniest of breezes.

   Think of them as “Ass Ends” because their leaves shake like a rattlesnake’s tail.

   
   
3. on November 4, 2013 at 11:25 pm cher

   Hi chervilmeadow,

   I don’t know about silver birch, but we have Quaking Aspen whose leaves quake and shake in the tiniest of breezes.

   Think of them as “Asp Ends” because their leaves shake like a rattlesnake’s tail.

   
   

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