The Writers' Circle

A tree shares one thing in common with a human being it's a living organism. And like all living organisms their life expectancy will depend on their environment in which they live. Trees living in open areas are more prone to damage caused by gale force winds. Young trees hit by the impact of gale force winds may become destabilised and fall to the ground. But old trees with well established roots can usually endure the brunt of gale force winds. This must be the case because there are plenty of old oaks that are still standing today. The average age of an English oak tree is seven hundred and fifty years. But ancient oak trees are rare in England because so many of these oaks were used to build war ships. For example it took a hundred to two hundred oaks to build one warship and the craft itself may have only lasted ten years if it was lucky. When a tree loses one of its branches it's the equivalent of a human being having a limb amputated, but of course for the tree there is on medical care available. The tree is wounded its heart wood is left open to the air and the curse of microscopic killer fungi spores. Once these spores enter the heart wood of the tree they then develop into hypha which resemble cotton-like strands, at a more advance stage in their development these hypha join together to form mycelium. When this mycelium is mature it will need to reproduce and so it creates a fungus from which the pores or gills of the fruit body will produce the next generation of spores.