What began as a bad week for tree-lovers has continued with further sad news in Broughton today.
Yesterday, work on the new Picardy Place gyratory was preceded by felling of the trees outside St Mary’s RC Cathedral. They were chopped in advance of the bird-nesting season.
Today came news that a mature ash on Mansfield Place shows evidence of fruiting bodies of Armillaria (Honey Fungus).
A consented application on the Council’s planning portal (Ref. 18/00405/TCO) states that, once cut down, the tree’s stump is to be ground in order to ‘prevent further spread of the fungus’.
The accompanying tree-surgeon’s report reads: ‘Honey Fungus is associated with severe root rot and decay, [and] given the size of the tree and the proximity to the road and bus stop the safest course of action will be to remove [it]’.
This is the tree which grows in the sunken area between the Mansfield Traquair Centre and ‘the Longy’ adjacent to Drummond’s playground. Generations have enjoyed looking into its branches through the railings beside the bus stop, many imagining what would happen if they managed to climb across but then couldn’t get back.
How old is the ash? We’re not sure, but here is the first cartographic appearance of a tree on this site, from the Ordnance Survey map of 1892.
