We pollard about once a decade the dozen sentinels that line
the Wallop Brook in the meadow below The Mill. The trunks, estimated by
some at over 400 years old, stand about 15 feet tall with a circumference
of the outstretched arms of two or three men. From the crown of the trunk
sprout clean, straight limbs that triple the overall height of the tree; it
is these we cut off. Not so much today, but in generations past this was a
harvest of valuable materials. The straight grained, pliable wood was
much used in construction and famously, cricket bats. The source material
for the bats of WG Grace is often cited as the Wallop valley though, in
truth, it is not a claim I’ve ever been able to definitively stand up.
However, more definitively willow is used in the sides, backs and linings
in the construction of the double bass. By the way, if you are an artist,
your charcoal pencil is willow.
But these are relatively more modern uses; willow is pliable
and strong used by man almost since the beginning of civilisation for
basket weaving and similar purposes including fishing, with nets being
dated as far back as 8,300BC. More recently willow was co-opted into WWII
by the Parachute Division, who used light, strong willow baskets that could
be weaved into any shape and bounced on impact, for air drops. At the
height of the war production ran into thousands of tonnes with 670
manufacturers employing over 7,000 people.
It is a shame we don’t have much practical use for the cut
willow wood but cut the willow trees we must. For, if the trees were not
pollarded the branches would simply keep growing and growing until the
weight to the top above would split the trunk below asunder. It does,
however, given sufficient time to dry, make good firewood with a high
mass-to-heat coefficient hence the attempts at growing willow as a biomass
product to fire commercial power stations.
However, we do use some of the branches to cultivate new
trees – this is horticultural cutting on an epic scale. Select a straight
branch as thick as a thick thigh and about ten foot long. Trim off any side
branches. Dig a hole a yard deep in wet ground into which you stand upright
your branch. Heel in and leave returning a couple of times each year to rub
off any side shoots. Within a year you’ll have a nice green, fuzzy head of
willow shoots. In three years, you’ll have a tree in everything but name.
In five you’ll wonder why you ever planted the bloody thing as you add
another tree to the list for pollarding. I suspect my Nether Wallop
neighbour, who loving tends his red-headed willow boundary on an annual
basis, might sometimes feel the same way.
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