Country diary: Trees growing out of trees – the more I look, the more I find them | Merryn Glover

Badenoch, Cairngorms: It started with a tiny Scots pine growing out of a huge old birch, but soon I find more examples of this strange magic. The sight pulls me up short. It looks like something out of myth or a book of spells. Here is a miniature Scots pine growing 6ft up, right in the fork of a shaggy old birch. It delights and baffles me in equal measure. In further wanderings, I discover more examples of this strange magic. A rowan and a birch appear to sprout from the same stem, while a holly and a hawthorn are so hopelessly intertwined that I spend ages tracing back down through leaves, twigs, branches and trunks just to figure out how deep this union goes. At the bottom, this odd pairing have drawn a rusted fence into their inter-species embrace.Investigating, I learn that there are a few wonders at work here. First, trees can grow so closely together that they become entangled and appear joined. Occasionally, though, limbs do repeatedly rub against each other in the wind, wear away the bark and fuse. Some even share vascular systems, passing water and nutrients between them. It is a natural grafting process called inosculation and can happen anywhere from the base of the trunk up to higher branches that form a linking arm. In folklore, it is called “a husband and wife tree”. Mostly occurring within species, it does sometimes cross divides. Continue reading...