The biggest olive tree in the world is reputedly the Oliva de Fuentebuena in Jaén. According to the Guinness Book of Records it is over 10m high with a girth of more than 4m.
Archive for the ‘Spanish forests’ Category
The biggest olive tree in the world
Thursday, April 26th, 2018Roger Deakin in the Albera
Saturday, November 26th, 2016Roger Deakin wrote about the Albera mountains in his wonderful Wildwood, a journey around the woodlands of Britain and the world, published in 2006 just before his death.
Autumn comes late to the wooded southerly slopes of the Spanish Pyrenees. The mountains are a natural climatic boundary between the rest of Europe to the north and the African Sahara to the south. My friend Andrew Sanders and I have climbed through the leafy fireworks of mixed beech, oak, maple, chestnut and hazel woods in a bright-blue morning up a steep track from Cantallops, an agricultural village in the foothills, to Requesens, a hamlet that is really a long farmhouse, extended down the generations, with a small bar-cum-restaurant, the Cantina, in one end.
Coming in sight of the place, we enter the circle of a hillside wood pasture of cork oaks. A dozen white geese graze outside a two-storey wooden shed with a worn staircase visible inside. Some of the oaks are deep ox-blood red where the sock of cork has recently been peeled, the year’s last two digits painted white on the tree as a reminder of its next date, in just under a decade, with the cork-harvesters. The grass is well trodden and manured with crusty cowpats. This is the home pasture for the cattle now out browsing in the woods. Entering the level farmyard, we are greeted by four dogs. An old mongrel bitch ambles over gently. The others, barking half heartedly, are chained beneath a big horse chestnut. A pointer slinks away back into the shadow of a firewood store under the house. One half of the old stone building is a magnificent ruin like a monastery, in the shade of a giant plane tree and a small lawn above the rocky ramparts looking south for miles across the hazy Catalan hills all the way to the sea.
I took the photo in early November on the same route he took.
The threat of eucalyptus
Monday, April 25th, 2011The expansion of eucalyptus farming in the Iberian Peninsula began some 40 years ago, sold as a profitable panacea, a fast- growing tree species producing abundant pulp in comparison with slow-growing oaks. Today there are more than 760,000 hectares of the tree planted in Spain and 646,000 in Portugal. Don’t be fooled by the fires that rage each year in the their plantations. They are not forests, but rather green deserts with a huge environmental and landscape cost. Every years hundreds of thousands of new trees are planted: some 30 million will be planted in Galicia alone. Crónica Verde More stats from El País
I wrote this on iberianature a couple of years back in relation to a bout of eucalyptus fires:
Yes, this is bad news for the owners and the people who live in the area. One might call it an industrial disaster, but hardly bad news ecologically. If there was anything more than token policy for reintroducing autochthonous species, one might even say it was a good thing, but as it is, reforestation in this damp corner of Spain will be swift. Eucalyptus is highly combustible but also regenerates incredibly quickly afterwards. There are hundreds of fires along Galicia ‘s coast of year, yet all along the Rias Bajas and Altas there is an almost continuous mono-crop swathe of these Australian trees. This birdless green desert is the true disaster of Galicia ‘s coast.
Snails as a bioindicator after forest fire
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010A team of Catalan researchers has studied the changes in the make-up of animal populations following forest fires, and have concluded that snails are a good indicator of forest recovery. The conclusions of this study, carried out in Sant Llorenç del Munt i l’Obac Natural Park, will help to ensure that post-fire forestry operations that do not harm these species of molluscs, which are sensitive to microclimatic conditions of the soil and vegetation structure. More here in English
Black poplars of Aragon
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010I came across this attractive powerpoint in English celebrating the importance of black poplar in forming the landscape in the southern Aragon. The valleys are scattered with traditional pollards which look glorious especially in spring. From Ancient Tree Forum. From the book El chopo cabecero en el sur de Aragon, la identitad de un paisaje. Patrimonio olvidado‘ by Chabier de Jaime Loren and Fernando Herrero Loma.
Call for yews to form World Heritage Site
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010The Observatorio Convergente de Árboles Singulares y Monumentales, of the Fundación Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente has made an interesting call for all yews in Northern Spain to form a collective World Heritage Site as a method of protecting them, from the serious attacks suffered in the last twenty years. In the photo above, the stunning yew outside the church of San Cristóbal de Valdueza, in Ponferrada (El Bierzo, León). Crónica Verde
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Small rodents discourage forest growth in Spain
Friday, August 28th, 2009Research in five degraded landscapes in the National Park of Sierra Nevada (Granada) appears to show that field mice base their diet on holm oak and pine seeds, causing a deterioration of the habitats and an extension of scrubland in the forests. Science Daily
Dutch elm disease in Spain
Sunday, June 7th, 2009
Dutch elm disease (grafiosis in Spanish) arrived relatively late to Spain. It was first detected in the 1980s, though it may well have reached the country a decade before, and has decimated 80-90% of common elms (Ulmus minor) in Iberia. One of the very few elm stands to have survived in Spain is in Rivas Vaciamadrid, near Madrid, as it is isolated from other trees. Efforts are being made here to conserve the trees here and ensure a genetic bank from which one day to replant elms across the country.
Wikipedia (Spanish)
Documentary about Spain’s forests
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008I enjoyed this documentary about the biodiversity of the forests of Spain, whose geographical positions means they are the most varied in the whole of Europe. Uploaded by forestman.
Spain to plant 45 million trees
Sunday, September 14th, 2008The Spanish government has announced a plan to plant 45 million trees of local Iberian, Balearic and Canarian species with the aim of promoting “Spain’s natural heritage”. The plan involves reforesting more than 61,000 hectares, revitalising ecosystems and creating some 3,000 jobs, particularly in rural areas. The planting will be done in public lands between 2009 and 2012 and will require an investment of 90 million euros. The programme is backed by the a new forest fire prevention plan
The director of Greenpeace España, Juan López Uralde, states that the announcement “is a first step but is insuficient to put a stop to desertification”. El Mundo
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