Plants are uniting topic of Arboreal Futures project. As it was mentioned in our previous post, project partners have collected their local stories about trees, plants, nature. It was very interesting to read all these stories and to see the importance and symbolism of this topic in each nation. Stories help us understand each others culture better and learn from each other. UK and Romania tells us stories about power of community, which unites to protect trees and to save it for the future generations. Italy tells us about parents, who are always looking how to help their children. Lithuania tells a story about tragedy of losing the ones you love. Czech story tells about the duty to help others. Have you noticed, that all these stories are about common values?
And here, as it was promised, we have short animations about stories https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdX9f6-J8ok
And if you want to read all stories, here they are:
Fall from a pear tree (Czech Republic)
Very long ago, Kladruby and Kohoutov were surrounded by dense, wild forests, belonging to extensive Kingdom Forests. The hunting parties of the Earl of Spork often galloped along the new rides, however, dark parts of the wood were inhabited by wood nymphs.
One summer day, young Jakub Pechanec, the son of a parish serf from the nearby town of Horicky, walked through the wood. However, he could not enjoy the forest birds’ songs or the many mushrooms growing along the way from Harcov to Kladruby. The boy could hardly walk. Both his arms were broken when he fell from a tall pear tree and he was on his way to a see a doctor in the town of Dvur Kralov nad Labem. Only the cool refreshing spring water from a stone trough near Kladruby gave him the strength to continue on his way. However, he did not find any doctor in Dvur or in Trutnov. On his way back home, he ended up in the same dense forests through which he walked the same morning. Completely exhausted, he crumpled onto the moss near the Nesyta lake and he lost his consciousness. Rumour has it that a wood nymph saw him there; she took pity on the handsome boy and she bestowed upon him healing abilities. His hands acquired the power to heal by a mere touch and as of that time, herbs themselves revealed their magical properties to him.
When the boy opened his eyes, he did not see the nymph anymore; instead, he saw a nicely clad young man who proceeded to treat Jakub´s broken arms. He brought some twigs to make splints, he crushed healing herbs between two stones, he made bandages from the boy´s shirt and he bandaged his hand skilfully. Maybe it was the Spork´s herb doctor himself who was said to collect healing herbs in the woods around Kohoutov often, because the young man really knew what to do. “Pay attention to what I am doing, because now it will be you who will help the sick and infirm”, said the young man and vanished into thin air. Those who are given a miraculous gift are obliged to distribute it to the needy ones, otherwise it would not bring them any happiness. However, Jakub honoured his new destiny. As soon as his hands have healed, he went to a bonesetter who lived in Dolany and he learned how to set broken bones, how to prepare ointments from coalman´s tar and how to prepare healing spirits. Above all, he used healing herbs and the touch of his kind hands. And thus, for many years, the common people from Horicky and its wide surroundings had their own doctor who was the envy of even the local gentry. It is said the gift bestowed upon him by the wood nymph was appreciated even by the Empress Marie Theresia, because she asked Pechanec the bonesetter to come to Vienna and help her ailing daughter.
The Brimmon Oak (UK)
“We need a bypass” said the people of Newtown. The traffic is very slow when people are going to and from work and school. It is worse in summer on Fridays and Saturdays when people from afar go to the seaside.
“We need a bypass”
The route was planned but it went very close to the old Welsh Oak Tree. It is 400 – 500 years old and is a “working tree”. They were ‘Working Trees’ as Ted Green (Mr. Ancient Tree) calls pollarded trees, that is, they were cut by man for wood fuel, for Number for building and the leaves used for fodder or ‘Tree Hay’ to feed farm animals.
Mervyn Jones’ family have farmed these hills above Newtown for hundreds of years. They have worked the land AND worked these culturally important Oak trees!
“We need a bypass” said the people of Newtown
“We need to save the Brimmon Oak” said the people of Newtown.
School children visited the tree “Save the tree” they said.
College students visited the tree “Save the tree” they said.
Very important people visited the tree “Save the tree” they said.
Lots of people signed peNNons, songs were wriWen about the Brimmon Oak, Pictures were drawn of the Brimmon Oak. So the planners listened, and the new route will bypass the Brimmon Oak.
So the people of Newtown will get their bypass, and they have saved the Brimmon Oak.
And the Brimmon Oak became so famous that it was second in the European Tree of the Year award for 2017.
THE ARBUTUS (Italy)
Once upon a time there was a plant in a field that gave red fruits from a white flowers. The plant in time grow and it became a green and a lush tree. The field belong to a noble man from a town that was faced the Mediterranan Sea. This gentleman had a son who was very sick, he was little and he did not grow. When one day a noble man noticed that the bushbone had become a tree, he decided to offer to his son those red and juicy fruits. So he did this every day until the child found full health again and grew up to becoming a man. Since then he decided that the arbutus tree had to be planted in every garden of all the noble people in the country.
Eminescu’s linden tree (Romania)
Perhaps the most famous tree of Romanians is Eminescu’s Tree in Iasi, Copou garden. This silver lime – Tilia tomentosa Moench – has an age calculated by specialists of about 500 years, so the tree was about 300 years old when the famous national poet, Mihai Eminescu, came to live in Iasi. For three years, between 1874 and 1877, Eminescu would often sit in the shade of the linden tree, reading a book or dreamingly watching the landscape. After the poet’s departure to Bucharest, the Iasi residents for whom his presence next to the tree had grown into a familiar sight, called the lime in the Copou Park ‘Eminescu’s lime’.
Nowadays, dozens of loaded tourist coaches from all over the country and abroad halt on the Copou Hill for the sightseers to take a nostalgic look at Eminescu’s lime. Around January 15, when Romania celebrates the birth of the poet and on June 15, the day of his death, groups of visitors organize literary and artistic manifestations in front of the writer’s bust and of the lime revered as a city fixture.
At the time when Copou Park was planned, this very beautiful lime was included into the park, but it remained there, because the appearance of the tree did not leave anyone indifferent.
During the Second World War, Copou Park was used as a detention camp for the Romanians who were later deported to the Soviet Union. In order not to cut the lime, the intellectuals were guarding the secular tree.
Over the course of time several tree treatments were made, and after one of them a miracle happened: in 1950 the lime was severely hit by a hail and his crown was broken. In 1953, the tree was sustained with segmented skeleton branches (long arms of 3-4 meters) and was cleaned and disinfected with a solution of stone and formaldehyde. A plank of lime sand was then poured and very little cement, linking the trunk with metallic circles and supporting all the arms on the consoles. In 1990, the director of the Botanical Garden in Iasi, and at that time responsible for the monument trees on the Romanian Academy, saw that the lime gave “visible signs of death” and the seal was loosened. The miracle was that practically the lime saved itself, although inside it was dead: two addictive roots grew up beside the plum to the ground!
Eminescu’s tree is well healthy today, visited by tourists and lovers every day, and specialists believe that for the next 50-100 years will continue to exist.
Eglė – the queen of Serpants (Lithuania)
First, a young girl named Eglė discovers a serpent in her clothes after bathing with her two sisters. Speaking in a human voice, the serpent agrees to go away only after Eglė pledges herself to him in exchange for his leaving the clothes, not realising the possible consequences. Three days pass, and thousands of serpents come for the bride, but are tricked by her relatives each time. A goose, a sheep and a cow are given instead but the cuckoo warns about the deceit. Enraged serpents return for a final time and take Eglė with them to the bottom of the sea to their master.
Instead of seeing a serpent, Eglė meets her bridegroom Žilvinas, a handsome human – the Serpent Prince. They live together happily and bear four children, until Eglė decides to visit home and her husband denies her permission. In order to be allowed to visit home, Eglė is required to fulfil three impossible tasks: to spin a never-ending tuft of silk, wear down a pair of iron shoes and to bake a pie with no utensils. After she gets advice from the sorceress and succeeds, Žilvinas reluctantly lets Eglė and the children go.
After meeting the long lost family members, Eglė’s relatives do not wish to let them back to the sea and decide to kill Žilvinas. His sons are threatened and beaten by their uncles, in order to try to disclose how to summon their father; however, they remain silent and do not betray him. Finally, a frightened daughter discloses it:
“Žilvinas, dear Žilvinas,
If alive – may the sea foam milk
If dead – may the sea foam blood…”
The twelve brothers call Žilvinas the Serpent from the sea and kill him using scythes.
The worried Eglė calls her husband, but unfortunately only foams of blood return from the sea. When Eglė discovers that her beloved is dead, as a punishment for betrayal she turns her children and herself into trees – the sons into strong trees, an oak, an ash and a birch, whereas the daughter was turned into a quaking aspen. Finally, Eglė transformed herself into a spruce.
Exploring Environmental Action 