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| Country diary: sycamores create painterly clumps of colour and shade | Country diary: sycamores create painterly clumps of colour and shade |
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| Cressbrook Dale, Derbyshire These often despised trees took centuries to go native but today they are a welcome addition to the autumn atmosphere – especially in the rain | |
| Mark Cocker | |
| Tue 17 Oct 2017 05.30 BST | |
| Last modified on Mon 27 Nov 2017 15.20 GMT | |
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| I find it strange to read in Oliver Rackham’s wonderful Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape that sycamores were probably introduced to the UK in the 16th century, but only went native in the 18th. It seems odd, because it is hard to imagine this restless beast of a tree settling for domestic imprisonment for 200 years. | I find it strange to read in Oliver Rackham’s wonderful Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape that sycamores were probably introduced to the UK in the 16th century, but only went native in the 18th. It seems odd, because it is hard to imagine this restless beast of a tree settling for domestic imprisonment for 200 years. |
| My experience is that its whirling helicopter-like “keys”, aided only by the slightest breeze, can unpick any attempt to block their escape into the wild. In our Norfolk village I am also astonished how quickly those seeds put down roots and I’ve even taken to using mole grips to wrestle with the saplings’ iron-like purchase on our garden soil. | My experience is that its whirling helicopter-like “keys”, aided only by the slightest breeze, can unpick any attempt to block their escape into the wild. In our Norfolk village I am also astonished how quickly those seeds put down roots and I’ve even taken to using mole grips to wrestle with the saplings’ iron-like purchase on our garden soil. |
| Yet as you travel around the Peak District national park, especially in a triangle defined by the towns of Buxton, Ashford and Hartington, Acer pseudoplatanus has a more benign presence. Look across those folded plains of limestone-walled pasture and it’s often the only tree species visible. In this landscape sycamores create clumps of deep colour and shade that have something of the monumental quality present in Paul Nash’s paintings of his beloved elms. | Yet as you travel around the Peak District national park, especially in a triangle defined by the towns of Buxton, Ashford and Hartington, Acer pseudoplatanus has a more benign presence. Look across those folded plains of limestone-walled pasture and it’s often the only tree species visible. In this landscape sycamores create clumps of deep colour and shade that have something of the monumental quality present in Paul Nash’s paintings of his beloved elms. |
| On a recent walk during an October downpour I also discovered another act of kindness by this often despised “foreigner”. The broad palms of the sycamore’s hand-like leaves make the canopy a natural umbrella. At this season they may not produce the same intense colour of late beech or horse chestnut, but sycamores certainly add to the sense of slow-smoking afterglow that is such a glorious part of Derbyshire woods in autumn rain. | On a recent walk during an October downpour I also discovered another act of kindness by this often despised “foreigner”. The broad palms of the sycamore’s hand-like leaves make the canopy a natural umbrella. At this season they may not produce the same intense colour of late beech or horse chestnut, but sycamores certainly add to the sense of slow-smoking afterglow that is such a glorious part of Derbyshire woods in autumn rain. |
| They also make other major contributions to the atmosphere in and around the Wye Valley. In Chee Dale, for instance, sycamores are often entirely smothered to their twig ends in an overcoat of almost fluorescent moss, so that they generate an aura of ongoing life even in midwinter. Here in Cressbrook Dale they were thickly clothed in moss and ivy and then wreathed with epiphytic polypody ferns. For now no “rook-delighting heaven” could find any route into this sub-canopy scene and that enclosed world of infinite greens had the monochrome mood and character of temperate rainforest. | They also make other major contributions to the atmosphere in and around the Wye Valley. In Chee Dale, for instance, sycamores are often entirely smothered to their twig ends in an overcoat of almost fluorescent moss, so that they generate an aura of ongoing life even in midwinter. Here in Cressbrook Dale they were thickly clothed in moss and ivy and then wreathed with epiphytic polypody ferns. For now no “rook-delighting heaven” could find any route into this sub-canopy scene and that enclosed world of infinite greens had the monochrome mood and character of temperate rainforest. |
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