In a little understood quirk of nature foresters have been putting the aspen tree under duress to promote flowering. On a nature reserve deep in the Scottish Highlands there is a polytunnel which houses a small forest of slender grey aspen trees. It is known as the “torture chamber”.
The aspen is one of the UK’s scarcest but most valuable trees. And to produce the tiny, delicate aspen seeds being harvested by the charity Trees for Life, these 104 specimens are deliberately made to suffer. They may be water-starved, have their limbs trimmed, or have their trunks sliced and ringed, the slivers of bark rotated or put back upside down. And despite the ice-cold chill and the snow falling outside the tunnel, leaf buds are beginning to form.
It seems paradoxical but it works: being stressed helps these aspen flower and produce the short-lived seeds which rewilding charities and foresters need in their efforts to restore the aspen forests which once thrived across Britain’s uplands. In a little understood quirk of nature, the UK’s aspen rarely flower in the wild and very rarely cross-germinate each other. Most live isolated lives. They often cling to crags or rocky slopes to escape sheep and deer, the male trees too far apart to naturally fertilise with females.
