I’ve repeated the use of last nights bad picture quite deliberately.
In my post 1911 Making Smoke, I wrote a letter to my friend Steve on the lines of Gilbert Whites Letter No. II from his book, The Natural History of Selborne.
Today’s post continues what I hope will be a trend of letters;
Hi Steve,
I enjoyed sending you last week’s letter, setting out the lay of the land of Gosport. I hope you found it interesting. It would have been lovely for you to have visited us here, although my inclination to imbibe alcohol has diminished significantly over the years, to the point where I am now pretty much teetotal.
Anyhow, the topic for Letter No. II is mainly trees, where Gilbert goes on to look at the older trees in and around Selborne, which are mostly Oak, which I understand live for a 1000 years or more. I must admit, I have thought of putting a post on the Facebook group Gosport Aware, challenging the town to find our oldest tree (it would have to be by a simple measure of the tree’s girth, the rule being the bigger, the older. I haven’t done that yet.
But then my mind was drawn to the small Avenue of Trees – I’m not very good at identifying the species of tree, which resulted in the really poor picture that was at the top of yesterday’s post. Here’s a link to that;
https://localitystories.com/2026/02/19/1911-making-smoke/
Of course, the trees are leafless at this time of year, and I had no idea how to identify a tree if the leaves are not available. It turns out that in order to to do that, you have to be quite knowledgeable about the budding arrangements on the branches. Whilst we may not have the leaves, we did have the buds. Or so I thought.
I took that picture, thinking that the buds were of the tree, being one of those on the avenue, of course they aren’t. ChatGPT identified it as a Dogwood,whilst I don’t know trees, that didn’t feel right. So I trawled through my photos of the area, because I knew that I had a better picture of the area with the trees in full leaf;
Now, this was a much better subject for ChatGPT (my forensic Naturalist), who immediately informed me that the trees on the avenue were in fact, Common Lime Trees.
I’m in two minds whether to go ahead with the oldest tree thing, I’m sure you’d tell me what you thought. I’m wondering in any of Gilberts subsequent letters discuss trees. I’ll start finding out with the next letter, which I plan to read, for the first time, tomorrow, and hopefully write to you about it next week.
Unlike the last few letters, I’ve been able to finish this one quite leisurely.
Bills Posts 