Rooting out tree spirits

Walking in the countryside, and even Wolverhampton, you can see how primitive people came to believe in tree spirits, writes

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See more photos by clicking on the links below

As the great Native American hero - Little Plum from The Beano - might say: "Um heap big scary stuff in um trees."

The latest apparition came as the rotting hulk of what was once one of the most magnificent trees in the Midlands, the giant lime on Tettenhall's Upper Green, was badly damaged yet again by storm.

Walking to see the carnage I could hardly believe my eyes: a heron, a stork or some kind of large, long-billed bird was on the fallen half of the trunk, looking exceedingly grumpy at the destruction of his home.

As I came closer I saw that the bird had been ripped from the very tree itself, its leg formed by one of the metal rods which was used in vain to hold it together.

Well, that's the logical explanation, but just look at it! A sculptor could hardly have carved a more striking creature, and from my own observations over the past two years, there are plenty of similar examples around.

In the words of our own religion, as far as tree spirits go: "In the space where the tree falleth, there they shall be."

The first one I saw was the spookiest - the head of a bear, or a big dog, either eating or being impaled by a fallen tree branch, near a Wyre Forest path. Faced with such an image, what person, born and bred without civilisation's trappings, could believe that it was anything other than a protective spirit's warning ?

Soon after I found an entire tree, shaped like a man, who seemed to have fallen head-first into nettles by Smestow Brook, on the Smestow Valley Local Nature Reserve, Tettenhall. Could a god suffer such a demeaning fate? Wasn't it more likely to be an Ent - walking trees from Lord Of The Rings?

Whatever, it makes an hilarious picture.

Before long I saw spirits even in whole trees, none more so than the ancient hollow yew in St Michael's graveyard, Tettenhall, which has any number of them, including a demonic roaring head and an eel-like sea fish . There's also a couple of elephants.

Walking in the leafy lanes of Perton, an astonishing array of serpents crawls around the tree trunks, while various crocodiles regularly haunt the canal around Compton. As for Wales, it's full of the creatures: I found a dragon - no surprise there - and a squid on a short walk by Lake Vyrnwy, and a fearsome bird perched on a shattered tree by the river near Pontrobert.

Sadly, the 21st century seems to be as tough on tree spirits as the rest of us.

The fallen man's leg fell off within a few months, and though workers spared the Tettenhall stork from the shredder, leaving it perched firmly on a slice of trunk within its fenced-off compound, its beak snapped off within a week or two. Some gentle soul has reattached it with tape, but it now has a very ungainly, and ungodlike, droop to it.

l Seen any tree spirits recently? Email pictures to newsdesk@ expressandstar.co.uk