"One in ten tree species in danger of extinction" ran the heading in many newspapers recently. Startling, but on reading the text you find that in certain cases the danger may be averted by prudent action. A few of these endangered species you may not have heard of. Whitebeam is reasonably widely known, but among those endangered, we read, are whitebeams of which many of us have never heard. In some cases there are no more than 16 trees remaining - in two sites in Wales. Another has 20 trees, yet again there is a Welsh whitebeam which has 44 living. In such cases, being warned, it should be possible to save and increase the store by sowing the seed for propagation, or cuttings. Yet again by layering or, if possible, by using suckers.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has done a good job in awakening people to the situation. Of course, as this newspaper made clear, it was not just through scanty or declining specimens that this awful toll might take place, but also by deliberate felling, by fire and by poor forest management. So relax, somewhat, and enjoy the scenery. Hugh Johnson, author of the wonderful International Book of Trees, writes of them as "an everlasting source of pleasure ... For once, possession is not the point. Trees are wonderfully public property. Wherever you go you are enjoying somebody's trees; and not a penny changes hands." This was brought home to a friend when, recently in the centre of a small German town, she had to marvel at a lime-tree in bloom, shading the cafe trees under which the citizens sat enjoying an after-lunch coffee or whatever, while bees buzzed and gorged in the heat.
We are all aware of the control over climate which trees exercise: they halt the erosion of soil; they clear noxious fumes in cities. And you will remember Jean Giono's wonderful fable The Man Who Planted Trees. Giono comes back to the area where the old shepherd Elzear Bouffier had for a lifetime been wandering the hills, planting as he went, acorns and seeds of other plants. In a formerly deserted hamlet the old streams, fed by the rains and snows that the forest (planted by him) conserved, were flowing freely again, channelled to each house and farm. And people had come from the plains, where land was dearer, to settle there in the new conditions created by the trees. A fable, indeed, but also a truth. Y