Category Archives: My own

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Is this tree breathing in the morning sun?

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On a bright sunny morning, after a long period of wet and cold, I saw this old lime tree steaming in the sun. Or was it breathing? I’ve searched the internet to find the answer but I am still not sure what it was doing.

I do know now that tree bark has ‘lenticles’ which, according to the Mirriam -Webster dictionary, are a “loose agregation of cells which penetrates the surface (as of a stem) of a woody plant and through which gases are exchanged between the atmosphere and the underlying tissues”.

According to another piece I read, bark does what it can to protect trees from the equivalent of frostbite in freezing weather by helping to moderate the change between the outside and the core temperatures. I think I have understood that correctly, but it’s all a little confusing late on a Sunday evening, with Google referring me to scientific papers as dense as forest, which I’m floating around like a lost leaf.

Anyway, the end result is that I’m still left with more question than answer – would the bark of a recently pollarded tree have to work especially hard to keep the tree balanced as temperatures and rainfall swirl around it? Would it be ‘breathing’ hard?

If anyone knows the answers I’d love to hear.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The money tree – our new housemate

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Today was my first meeting with a money tree. It arrived as a gift, exotic and strange with its braided trunk and five-fingered leaves.

Fascinated with our new housemate I’ve been doing a little research.

According to the Royal Horticultural Society the official name of the plant is Pachira Aquatica – other names include French Peanut, Guiana chestnut and Malabar Chestnut. It’s a tropical plant and if grown outdoors in the right conditions, it can reach up to 20m high. The RHS also reports that when wild and happy and fully grown it sometimes produces “spectacular flowers with five 30cm-long, cream petals and 200 or more gold and crimson stamens”.

The thought of that height and those flowers makes me look at our friend with new respect, and a touch of guilty sadness. I know that with us it won’t have a hope of reaching its full height or flowery potential. Instead (unless climate change happens far faster than we can imagine) it will be doomed to an indoor, potted future, and at best, is likely to reach a height of no more than 1.5m. I wonder if plants mind that kind of thing. I hope it won’t, because I’m looking forward to its company.

The other information I’ve found out about the plant, although not on the RHS website, is that a money tree is often seen as a gift of encouragement, especially for those involved in business endeavours. If writing qualifies as the right kind of endeavour then I look forward to working closely with this young Pachira Aquatica.

I’ll start by giving it a drink, and hope we can build our relationship from there.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Carols with the Anthony Nolan Trust

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“Anthony Nolan is the the charity that makes lifesaving connections between patients in need and incredible strangers ready to donate their stem cells.”

This was a such a wonderful, uplifting service despite the desperate urgency to so much of the work this charity does to save lives. We cried, we laughed we sang.

The service was in St Pancras Church in Euston Road, and the choir leading us through the evening was the B Positive Choir, whose singers, all connected with sickle cell disease, sing to raise awareness of the disease and the importance of blood donation. Their song, Rise Up, was so energising.

And it was not the only great pleasure of the evening. The service was rich with performers, all brilliantly entertaining, but most moving of all was the account of everything Fin and his family had had to go through. His mother described the race to find the donors and cures they needed to help the suddenly, desperately ill four-year old survive. It sounded such an exhausting, stressful time but there at the end of all those years was Fin, taking his mother’s place at the podium to read a story about snowmen, his voice as strong as a young oak … and all of us speechless with emotion and applause.

We left with our hearts singing.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023