The life cycle of an oak tree
by The blog at woodlands.co.uk, 8 October, 2015, 5 comments
In early October, BBC4 screened a 90-minute documentary capturing every aspect of life in an ancient English oak over an entire year "Oak Tree: Nature's Greatest Survivor" focuses on a single tree in Wytham Woods, just outside Oxford, a site acquired by Oxford University in 1942 for woodland research. The film, presented by zoologist, entomologist and broadcaster George McGavin, opens with an high-tech assessment of the tree's condition. By firing laser pulses, forestry scientists create a 3-D virtual image of the oak so they can track its size and shape over the 12 months.
At the outset, in late August, it's 19 metres tall and 30 metres wide and carries an estimated 700,000 leaves. Read more...
