Ancient Trees
There is, I'm told, an ancient Greek proverb, that is most likely much more ancient than the Greeks, that adores the man who plants a tree in which shadow he will never sit.
I have been to Yakushima three times, and there are some very old cedar trees there, but also many stubs, as temples had to be built in Kyoto and such places. There is even the memory of a certain Buddhist monk who educated the islanders that felling ancient trees was not a sin. I wonder what he personally gained from such advice. How tragic for the ancient trees, but, perhaps the monk was more concerned about the welfare of the human souls trying to survive on that remote Satsuma island.
I got a small bonzai peach tree on a visit to Mito, in Ibaraki prefecture. It is a famous site, and I was happy to have the tiny tree in its Mito pot in my garden. Then I planted it and it took root, and by now several years later, the tree has grown to about three meters tall. What a joy for that tiny bonzai plant. I cut some branches earlier this winter, I'm looking forward to its pretty flowers that signal the early event of spring. But really, I wish I had more fruit trees, and what we Westerners tend to think of as useful, rather than poetic, or make that something connected to the ancient lust for lyrics...
I loved this story over at the Mainichi, about some 800 year old orange trees that still "produce" ie the live their lives to the fullest. Great reporting and I may even go and try to get a mikan or two in Ginza (nope, can't afford it!)
The Keyboard and The Spade is the story of a man who tries to plant trees, or slit-planting. From The New Statesman, I give you:
In the overdeveloped West, technology is making us forget what it truly means to be human.
I have been to Yakushima three times, and there are some very old cedar trees there, but also many stubs, as temples had to be built in Kyoto and such places. There is even the memory of a certain Buddhist monk who educated the islanders that felling ancient trees was not a sin. I wonder what he personally gained from such advice. How tragic for the ancient trees, but, perhaps the monk was more concerned about the welfare of the human souls trying to survive on that remote Satsuma island.
I got a small bonzai peach tree on a visit to Mito, in Ibaraki prefecture. It is a famous site, and I was happy to have the tiny tree in its Mito pot in my garden. Then I planted it and it took root, and by now several years later, the tree has grown to about three meters tall. What a joy for that tiny bonzai plant. I cut some branches earlier this winter, I'm looking forward to its pretty flowers that signal the early event of spring. But really, I wish I had more fruit trees, and what we Westerners tend to think of as useful, rather than poetic, or make that something connected to the ancient lust for lyrics...
I loved this story over at the Mainichi, about some 800 year old orange trees that still "produce" ie the live their lives to the fullest. Great reporting and I may even go and try to get a mikan or two in Ginza (nope, can't afford it!)
'Miraculous' 859-year-old mandarin trees still producing bumper crops in Oita Pref.
TSUKUMI, Oita -- The mandarin orange trees standing on a gentle
slope in this city's Kamiaoe neighborhood have survived a lot in their
lives, now in their 859th year. In that time, the oldest "ko-mikan"
(small mandarin) trees have been assaulted and nearly killed repeatedly
by winds and storms, but some deep vitality always pulls the venerable
old trees back from the brink to live and thrive again.
Today, their owner treats them with the loving care of a doting
parent, and the oranges are sold at a high-end fruit shop in Tokyo's
Ginza shopping district as charms for longevity and a healthy line of
descendants.
There are 11 of the old trees in the orchard, each a few meters
tall, and they are known familiarly as "Ozaki's ancestor trees," based
on the name of a local district. Owner Naoyuki Kawano, 65, told the
Mainichi Shimbun that the trees had been passed down in the family with
the instruction never to cut them down or sell them, even if the family
sold their home. He added that he treats "protecting the ancestor trees
as a life mission."
According to the book "Tsukumi kankitsu-shi" (a history of Tsukumi
citrus fruit) written by a group of local ancient historians and
published in 1943, among other sources, the orange trees were first
planted by Fujiwara Nizaemon in 740 A.D., while he was under house
arrest in Tsukumi following a serious military defeat. The trees were
then allegedly transplanted to their current location in 1157. They
withered after being badly damaged in a major storm in 1612, but some of
the branches touching the ground actually took root. The trees grew new
buds, and survived.
Around 1935, there were 48 trees in the orchard, producing 3 metric
tons of fruit in good years. They were designated a national natural
monument in 1937, but their numbers were thinned badly by bad storms
between 1945 and 1949.
Ko-mikan trees usually grow weak after 40 to 50 years, and it's
considered very nearly miraculous that this bunch have been producing
oranges for more than eight centuries. The closest comparable tree was a
specimen in the town of Tsunagi, Kumamoto Prefecture, which had stood
for 350-plus years. However, it apparently died more than 10 years ago
due to insect damage and other problems.
The Tsukumi trees, too, had a relatively recent close brush with the
arboreal Grim Reaper when, about 40 years ago, they were essentially
abandoned. Tadashi Mimata, from the prefectural citrus fruit research
center, took stewardship of the trees and restored them to health. There
was no precedent for tending to such ancient trees, so the work was a
hit-and-miss affair. The bark was coated with locally produced milk of
lime to protect it from direct sunlight, and holes were dug near the
trees and filled with a compost mix to allow them to grow deep, healthy
roots. Mimata, now 83, still visits the orchard and tends to the trees.
"These things are far older than me, but they're like my kids," he
says. "I won't let them die as long as I am alive to tend to them."
Mimata says that he can tell right away if the trees are malnourished
just by looking at the bark and leaves. If they're well cared for, the
trees can produce 1-1.5 tons of fruit per year, all with a hallmark
concentrated sweetness.
Tokyo's Ginza Sembikiya, a high-end fruit shop founded in 1894, has
been selling the "mikan from an 800-year-old tree" close to the end of
the year for about 80 years. They sell out most years, and "there are a
lot of people who really look forward to them and buy them every year.
They're a popular item," a shop representative said.
More ancient trees, anyone?
I published a food book back in 2009 and back around then had a very serious change of thought. If I could not do what I told others to do... Well, I had better give it a try. I started looking around for land to grow vegetables on, and surprise, surprise, one thing led to another. I also started to notice that there were others here who had similar ideas. Not only in rural Japan.
I published a food book back in 2009 and back around then had a very serious change of thought. If I could not do what I told others to do... Well, I had better give it a try. I started looking around for land to grow vegetables on, and surprise, surprise, one thing led to another. I also started to notice that there were others here who had similar ideas. Not only in rural Japan.
The Keyboard and The Spade is the story of a man who tries to plant trees, or slit-planting. From The New Statesman, I give you:
In the overdeveloped West, technology is making us forget what it truly means to be human.
Slit-planting is the easiest way to plant a bare root tree. It needs to
be done in winter, when both the tree and the soil are dormant. We
planted ours in February, and it was hard work: harder than I realised
at the time. I am writing this in June, and my body still hasn’t
recovered. My left arm is partly crippled by tendonitis, and my lower
back is bad on some days and not so bad on others. My fingers and wrists
begin to ache and tingle if I demand too much from them. This means
that the acres of grass I have to scythe on my land are going uncut, and
the place is running wild. I think I’m going to need to ask our
neighbour to graze his horses in our field again, because I can’t do
much else with it this year. My hands and my arms are currently not
suited to serious physical work, as a direct result of my winter toils
with the trees. That, and over twenty years of typing words like this
into computers, which has frazzled the tendons and the nerves in my
forearms possibly beyond repair. The spade and the keyboard are very
different tools, but one thing they have in common is their ability to
break the human body.
We planted around five hundred small trees here on our couple of acres
in the west of Ireland. Most of them will end up in our woodstove: the
idea is to be self-sufficient in heating as soon as possible. For this
purpose, we’ve planted several blocks of birch, poplar and willow, which
should have a coppice cycle of six or seven years. On top of that,
we’ve put in about a hundred sticks of basket willow, in differing
colours. We’ve also planted three hedges of native trees – rowan, more
birch, spindle, holly, wild cherry, hazel, oak – to create windbreaks,
shield us from the lane in front of the house and make some kind of
offering for the birds around here. Perhaps it will distract their
attention from our vegetable garden, which they are currently digging up
daily.
The real work was in clearing the ground, most of which was covered
thickly with a deep tangle of brambles and suckering blackthorns. When
we moved to this little patch of land, we came with ideals, and one of
them was to do our work by hand, with as little impact as possible. So
we laid into the thorns and brambles, which must have been growing for
decades, with scythes and mattocks and spades and machetes. It took
weeks and weeks. The scratches were deep. The industrial-strength gloves
we bought were torn to shreds. More than one mattock handle was broken.
I have never seen suckers so thick or long, nor root balls so deep and
woody. Even after weeks of clearing the ground by hand, we still had to
hire a digger for a day to tear out the deepest of the roots and make
the ground fit for planting.
After that, the planting itself was a doddle. To slit-plant a tree, you
just push your spade into the ground up to the end of the blade, wiggle
it back and forth until you have a wide enough slit and then drop the
tree root into it. You cover the ground around the tree with newspaper,
and then pile wet straw on top of that to mulch it. Finally, if your
land attracts both rabbits and hares, which ours does, you wind a
plastic spiral tree guard around the tiny trunk, and fortify it with a
garden cane against the Atlantic winds.
Do that five hundred times, and you have a little forest. Better, you
have a forest planted in a low-impact and ecological way. You have an
endless supply of sustainable fuel for your sustainable household, and
you have used minimal dirty fossil fuels in order to create it. You have
taken some wasteland and made it into a diverse ecosystem. You have
created a closed-loop system, and a mini carbon sink. You have also
crippled yourself. But it was worth it.
At least, that’s what I thought I would be telling myself at this stage. But I’m not so sure any more.
Comments
And as you say, as the saying goes, money doesn't grow on trees!