Oxfordshire Woodland Group

Storm Eunice (Feb 2022) has brought down a tall twin stemmed bird cherry tree (pd 1959) growing in a larch plantation. Fungal decay is seen at the junction of the twin stems. The main trunk will be cut below the affected area and hopefully will regrow.

This timber is useable for turnery and planking purposes.

More rare timber is becoming available including some reasonable sized (6 - 8" dia) blackthorne logs that could be sawn to produce colourful fruit wood planks.

We will put some selected blackwood logs on the saw and cut this thru and thru to help reveal the bounty and beauty of the wood contained within. This outwardly rough tree is valued mainly for the autumnal production of sloes but in past times it was used to produce briar pipes.

The Bird cherry chordwood has been extracted by wheel barrow for processing into firewood.

The planking logs are very heavy and will be extracted to the sawmill using the Land Rover to tow out the logs.

This is fairly urgent to help avoid damage to emerging blue bells.

Nearly 2 years later (Jan 2025) and a similar failure of a triple stemmed bird cherry has ocurred.

The trunk split demonstrates multiple fibre separation failure.

The reasons for this failure might be due to a combination of increased wind sail area and inherent weakness and decay in the joint betwen the multiple stems and the lower trunk ?