Meetings with Remarkable Trees

It is no mere coincidence that a tree is the arch-symbol of this web-log, and of the slow flow of Glasgow. One might say that trees, operate on a different temporal scale... a different dimension even. Glasgow has many wonderful trees, though when I lived in Warsaw in Poland I had my eyes opened to trees in a way that I never thought possible. Glasgow, in spite of her profusion of parks and trees, could well take a leaf out of Warsaw's book - in fact, every city could. It is perhaps testament to layers of modernism that trees get uprooted especially on pavements and at roadsides, and are not replaced with others. Warsaw has not yet suffered the ignominy of this breach of the peace, not because it doesn't have modernism or the city itself has not been 'breached', but because it seems particularly aware of its streets trees as real live entities in their own right. Glasgow's street trees are few and far between but they do exist here and there, though not sufficiently. Trees in parks and arboretums are all well and good but surely we should be welcoming more of them into our neighbourhoods, aside our streets, into our communities? In Cessnock, at each end of Elizabeth Street where I live, there is a magnificent tree, one great and old, the other slight but no less majestic. Indeed, one of the great things about the streets here is that there are trees upon them. The main drag of Paisley Road West has some beautiful rowan trees which turn the street iridescent orange and red come October, and in front of the old baronial Bellahouston Academy there's a phalanx of wonderful sycamore. In the final analysis, street trees don't just enliven what can sometimes be a dreary built-up area, they bring biodiversity into our lives via the birds and insects they provide food and accomodation for. They enrich our lives as well as our cities, and above all bring a sense of glorious slowness to the city's table.