Nature Switched On - 2007 February 24 &25, Saturday & Sunday

Practical Ecology

Nature Switched On

in the Pyrenees the first 10 years

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a S T A M M E R project

2007 February 24 &25, Saturday & Sunday

This weekend the weather was quite unstable with the occasional shower and some sunshine. With little wind the atmosphere was pleasant with temperatures reaching 15ºC.
The almond trees were still not in full flower with remarkable differences from one tree to another as the second photograph shows.

We saw quite a lot of wild bees, probably one of the first insects to take advantage of the almond flowers.

Other insects that had waken up from the winter lethargy were the ants. They were extremely busy carrying all kinds of materials to their hill, here on a plant still to be identified.

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Looking north-west from the high centre. In the foreground some pruned Kermes Oaks (see next paragraph).
Sunday 9:51

Looking north. Two almond trees.
Sunday 16:36

Looking west in the central higher part.
Saturday 17:19

This weekend I undertook the pruning of a dozen of Kermes Oaks (Quercus coccifera).
The name Kermes (and coccifera) comes from the Kermes insect Kermes ilicis, a parasite living on this evergreen Mediterranean oak producing a red dye which has been used since ancient times and gave name to the colour crimson (carmesí).
The plant is usually a shrub and it typically starts growing like the photograph here on the right. After some years its branches get intertwined giving the shrub a more chaotic aspect, like the one in the next photograph.

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Looking south-east in the centre. A young Kermes Oak.
Sunday 16:32

The species reacts very well to pruning. On the balcony of our flat in Zaragoza I have been growing and pruning two plants as a kind of Bonsai for many years. I decided to do the same to some specimen on the terrain but with the almost opposite purpose of growing a relatively tall tree out of them. In fact under specific circumstances this oak can grow into a tree of up to 5 metres

in Spain.

What I pretend to do is favouring the growth of only one or two trunks and pruning the plants into a relatively open tree structure exposing its beautiful smooth bark.
On the next photograph on the left you can see the result. The remaining 'skeleton' of the herb on the left is a Skeletonweed (Chondrilla juncea).

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Before and ...

...after the pruning.

Below some images of an older specimen after the treatment.

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Looking west respectively east, in the centre. The same Oak on
Saturday 18:02 resp. Sunday 16:18.

Sometimes the Kermes Oak develops into a very dense and solid shrub and then I prefer not to touch it at all.

Looking south-east in the centre.
Kermes Oak with a Walnut tree on the left.
Sunday 16:23

introduction
floristic catalogue
faunistic catalogue
contact
index
gallery 1: 2006-2012
gallery 2: 2012-
map
>> 2007 Mar 10
<< 2007 Feb 17