"All Hail, Mighty Queen of Heaven! No equal ever before I have seen"
"Nay nay, Rhyming Thomas. That name is not for me.
"I am but the Queen of Fairyland, and I've come to visit thee."
...And riding off the both of them together, over hill and dale and desert wide as far as the eye can see,
Until at last the Lady spake: "Dismount thee, Thomas, now, and mark you well,
"For wonders I shall show you, three."
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| Schiehallion, Scotland. 'Schie' means 'fairy.' |
The Poplar tree is a common deciduous plant of the cottonwood family whose general name is also applied to the common Aspen.
Poplars are often grown as ornamental trees - but they must be planted a long way from foundations, as their roots are powerful, vigorous and invasive.
The wood of the poplar is light, durable, close-grained and highly flexible -, all of these characteristics also being shared by the willow.
Poplar wood was highly favored for the construction of shields since the wood was very strong and durable, difficult to penetrate, but much lighter than oak.
If you are considering making wooden shields for warfare, consider the poplar as your go-to choice for the wood.
Or, if you are considering entering the viola-making trade, poplar has long been a much prized timber for this craft.
In fact, you could easily surprise your foe, by advancing upon him in the dead of night, screeching away at your beautifully-grained viola, whilst at the same time presenting it forward as a shield, and then bashing him over the head with it when you are close -, the strong flexible and durable poplar wood bouncing happily over his thick skull, and no doubt scrambling his normally very keen senses, perhaps rendering him with a severe case of anosmia at minimum.
The Poplar.
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| 'Back to the lumber-yard, Danny.' (Chevy Chase) |
The Larch.
The... ...LARCH.
Wood from larch trees is distinguished from wood from other conifers by being on the one hand a soft wood but waterproof and durable. Siberian Larch is also a very dense wood as well as strong.
Although a soft wood, larch wood is also quite heavy. Thus, considering its rare combination of soft to work, but dense, heavy, waterproof, strong, and durable - wood from the larch is unique.
It is also very high in calorific density and therefore makes one of the best fire-woods available and one of the few soft woods genuinely useful for this purpose.
The Larch.
A mighty fine tree providing a mighty fine timber.
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| Siberian Larch forest in Spring |
Siberian Larch forests would seem quite pleasant to walk through in the Spring, it would appear, from photographs.
I have not, myself, been through any Siberian Larch forests, either in Spring or at any other time of the year - although I have, unfortunately, been through a Russian Birch forest on the apron of Winter and that was rivaled only by many stiff and rapid walks through St James's Square in London in the middle of Winter and many a night's walk down an Austrian Alpine road from a nightclub where I was playing in a duo - along with another young fellow from Khancoban, New South Wales (which is in the Snowy Valley, as you would know).
I must say, interestingly, I always found St. James's Square by far the most bitterly cold place, as the winds pierce somehow right through even multiple layers of clothing and there are little to no windbreaks presented by any of the trees there, which are spread far apart. Indeed, why it should even be called 'St. James's' anything I'll never know, since the statue there is of William III.
It is of course, in, the district of St. James, but the park originally belonged to Henry Jermyn, the Earl of Albans, and not really King James at all.
In fact, St James's Park was never ever originally known as that at all, but rather, it was Pall Mall field.
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| Siberian Larch forest in Winter |
St. James's Square is sparsely lined with Plane trees, which like the Maple, are completely leafless in Winter, making the bitter winds all the more unimpeded through the park.
The English Plane tree is of course though, not a Maple, but a Sycamore.
...So. No Larch trees though, at all - in St. James's Square.
The Larch is a tall, coniferous, type of pine tree - growing to almost fifty metres in height. Most conifers are evergreens however the larch is deciduous, dropping its needles in the autumn.
Cedar trees - the cedrus (which is often termed the 'true cedar') - are evergreens.
Larch branch
Larch trees are grown mainly for timber and they have few other uses at all, even though they are usefully waterproof without treatment. All the same, they are not recommended as building materials in free standing walls close to wet ground because they are susceptible to rising damp and all of the attendant problems associated with that.
There are numerous trees called 'cedars' but these range across several different species - although all of them have aromatic wood. Cedars contain a lot of inflammable oils in their needles and bark and are consequently regarded as a fire hazard in summer.
The Eastern Red Cedar, is really a species of juniper native to eastern North America.
Certain kinds of Chinese cedar are highly favored in China for coffin manufacture, and consequently they have almost been over-exploited out of existence.
Eastern Red Cedar
Real Chinese cedar coffins these days are highly-prized, luxury items much sought after by wealthy Chinese.
Korean chests, are also made from cedar wood.
Camphor wood is also from an evergreen tree, but this is actually a type of Laurel tree, not pine.
