Hornbeam hedges
3rd December 2009, Thursday
All through the countryside of the RX hinterland are strange forms like the one above, where a once carefully tended hedgerow has been abandoned to its true destination of treehood.
The horizontal trunks were formerly split and laid to form a cattle-proof base by labour now too costly. Left to their own devices, these once-slender stems have thickened into Arthur Rackham knobbliness, while untrained shoots wriggle towards the sky.
