mysteries of west swindon: the dryad

 

Hagbourne Copse. Swindon, 24th November 2020.

I had a dental appointment in Swindon, but I no longer live there, so I had to make the journey from Frome. Just before the appointment, as the afternoon darkened, I stopped off at Hagbourne Copse, on the edge of Swindon, to have a smoke and a wee, and to clean my teeth. 

Alan Mitchell tells us that trees cannot fuse, and that branches always branch outwards, they cannot knit together again. And indeed how could that possibly happen, when only the outside of a trunk or branch is alive, the inner wood is inert? 

So I have no explanation for this dryad or huorn, some 20 feet tall, who "stands" beside the main woodland path. I imagine the woodland volunteers have tidied up and preserved this arresting sight.  

The only guess I could come up with is that it's a relic branch, presumably oak, from a long-gone tree. Perhaps it partially broke off from its parent tree, its branch tips touched the ground and rooted, then thickened as they supplied the branch with water and nourishment from the wrong end. (But that isn't really possible, is it? Could water conduction in the xylem switch direction?) 

Only the heartwood remains now, and it looks quite fragile, so it's probably worth a few more photos before someone pushes it over. 

"Dryad". Swindon, 29 January 2021.

"Dryad". Swindon, 13 November 2023.

Last time I saw the dryad I took a closer look and decide that both "feet" rose from the same rootstock. This prompted a new theory: the tree originally had a single bole until at least 15 meters high. Then something happened, by accident or design, that created a large cavity in the lower part of the bole. The tree survived, and when much later it died the outer layers of the bole abraded leaving only the heartwood: the dryad you see today. 

I'm not in the least convinced, but it gets round the difficult issue of how separately growing processes could ever become seamlessly joined.