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Oliver Rackham (1939–2015)

Teoksen The History of the Countryside tekijä

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Oliver Rackham OBE FBA is the outstanding botanical and landscape writer of his generation, whose books include The History of the Countryside, Trees and Woodlands in the British Landscape, and Ancient Woodland and Woodlands. He was Honorary Professor of Historical Ecology at Cambridge University näytä lisää and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. He died in 2015, shortly after the publication of The Ash Tree. näytä vähemmän

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This book occupies the dry valley between popular science books and works of scholarship. It depends rather heavily on a knowledge of the geography, terrain, and topography of the British Isles, which I lack. And it can sometimes be hard to tell the point towards which Rackham is driving. So at 18% in, I give up. I'm just not enjoying it.
 
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Treebeard_404 | 3 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jan 23, 2024 |
When you think of the Cornish coast, images of sandy beaches being pounded with surf that has crossed the Atlantic spring to mind. Or secluded bays that have echoes of smugglers on the or dramatic cliffs still standing tall against the waves. Helford River on the east-facing coast of the Lizard peninsular is very different, strictly it is a tidal inlet, rather than a beach, but what lines it is ancient oak woodland, giving it an otherworldly feel.

The whole area was a much-loved spot for Oliver Rackham, and this book published after his death from his draft manuscript is his eulogy to the place. There are twenty-five woods in the area that have wonderful and evocative names, such as Merthen, Grambla, Tremayne and Bonallack. A lot of these are classified as ancient, but they all have a long history of human activity and use.

Each chapter concentrates on a particular element, for example, ecology, archaeology and a detailed look at each individual woodland with notes on the exact makeup with respect to the trees and vegetation growing there. He walked through all the woods seeking the coppice stools that reveal so much about the use and age of the wood, follows holloways from the fields down to the quays, finds the charcoal heaths that provided fuel for the tin industry and discovers the internal boundaries of the woods when they were under different ownership.

The book is full of images of the woodlands, from inside and along the shoreline where oaks that reach out from the shore and dip their boughs in the water. For the map addicts out there, it is packed with both recent and Victorian maps and details of places that have changed little since the Norman arrived. It is a fascinating book, full of two of my favourite things, sea and woodlands. The editorial team have done a great job of making the book from the draft manuscript by Rackham and is full of the detail that I’ve come to expect from him.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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PDCRead | Apr 6, 2020 |
Even though Ash got into the top ten of trees in a survey a couple of years ago, it is not the one that springs to mind for a lot of people. This is why you often find books and prose on the magnificent oak, beech, elm and yew. We don’t as much take them for granted, rather the ash is not visible in our day to days lives, so we tend to never think of it. It has been one of the most common trees, but with the arrival of Ash dieback, this could all change in the coming years.

The tree has a number of qualities that have made this an appealing tree to use since way back in the Neolithic time. It can be coppiced and pollarded and because of its versatility, ash has been used for tool handles, bowls, fodder for livestock, to warm our homes and you can even find it on the back of a Morris Minor Traveller. It is very rarely used in construction. An ash will support a number of species, hosting bats, lichens, and the bark even is a food for all sorts of animals and there are a lot of plants growing in the ground under the trees. In 2012 the first case of dieback appeared in the UK; it was inevitable as it had been tracked across Europe for a number of years, but it has the potential of killing all the ash trees in the country.

Rackham’s book covers all sorts of information about the uses of ash over the past millennia, as well as lots of detail on the disease that they are starting to succumb to. The greater threat though is from the Emerald Ash Borer, another insect that has been brought in to the UK as a side effect of the globalisation and international trade. He writes in a matter of fact style that belies that amount of research that has gone into the detail in the book, but his plea to those that read this book is that we take proper precautions to restrict items that are moved around the globe without any care for the possible damage and also that we start taking the protection of woodlands seriously.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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PDCRead | Apr 6, 2020 |


Oh dammit. I just finished this. I had no idea that after 77% it would be the footnotes etc. This fascinating, beautifully written, witty book about British woods has been part of my morning, specifically that little read before coffee while I'm enjoying my still warm covers, for about a year now.
British woods are small worlds with fascinating all kinds of fascinating interlocking ecologies. The Quebec woods have all that too, but half an hour north, it gets vast and boreal pretty fast. My eldest daughter has seen it all the way up to the transitional forest before the tundra. She took a school trip to La Baie James. I still remember poring over her photos from a Kodak disposable camera of bottle-brush conifers getting smaller and smaller, until it seemed they could barely scrub out a wine decanter. We waste our woods too because we think they're infinite like the buffalo of the Great Plains.
I used to wonder what it would be like to look at a room and see a history of who was ever there, and what went on it. Such thoughts come when living an old house (young by British standards). Oliver Rackham is one of those people who can do that with woods. There is a lot of history in this book but not the usual kind to do with battles to do with ownership, usage, the introduction of non-native trees, fashions in conservation. And there are maps, some of them older than cathedrals that show individual trees. His example photos are from everywhere. I liked that. It reminded me how these individual woods belonged to the whole. I am also less worried about my silver maple after reading about the long cycles of woods and how trees handle different kinds of stress. Old silver maple has had a few dry years. My ash trees however, are likely doomed. The ash borer is here (globalization of pest species; when they travel, the things that eat them and keep them under control don't travel with them).
My only regret was that I got this in ebook form. The paper copy was pricey and hard to find and there it was, instant read in the dark gratification, but this is really a book I'd like be able to pull from the shelf and leaf through. I'm going to look for a paper copy.
There's an old parking lot in Lachine by some abandoned property where the grass is growing through the asphalt and lately, the beginnings of trees.
"The easiest way to create a new wood is do nothing."
… (lisätietoja)
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dmarsh451 | 3 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Mar 31, 2013 |

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