Photographs taken with pinhole cameras of some of the extraordinary trees in the Birr Castle Desmene.
Trees have always absorbed me, and have drawn my imagination to wander amongst the branches, or to watch the leaves dance and play in the breeze. They often convey enchanting characteristics, leading to a reverie, which enthuses and delights, yet paradoxically calms the mind.
Trees effortlessly occupy places of majesty and elegance, and can become our link from earth to the skies above.
The trunks soar towards the stars and galaxies above, the branches sometimes echoing the nebula patterns recorded through the Rosse Telescope, sometimes referred to as Leviathan of Palmerstown
Hugh Johnson, in his book TREES.
“How a Tree Grows. What distinguishes a tree from all other plants is the wooden structure it raises above the ground.
By annual additions it builds a tall scaffold on which to hang it’s leaves, it’s flowers, and it’s fruit. Each new year’s growth is no more than a crop of twigs.
Yet those twigs contain in essence the identity of the tree; in time they become branches; eventually perhaps huge limbs.
The leaf has the task of collecting food. Ninety percent of the solid matter, that of the trunk, the branches and the roots themselves is carbohydrates plucked, as it were, out of the sky by the feeding leaves.
A leaf becomes self-supporting remarkably quickly. Before it is even half grown it has started exporting nourishment to the rest of the tree.”
