Angry trees...

[Quixoticgeek]

On a couple of recent trips out I've done the usual check for widow maker branches, then set up my bivvi, only to find myself the target of an aerial bombardment. In Luxembourg the tree I was under dropped a pine cone on me, which narrowly missed me, bouncing off the sleep mat just inches from my face. Last week in The Netherlands, I put my tarp up as a precaution from falling acorns, during the night I noticed quite a few bouncing off the tarp.

Anyone else found the need to take such measures to prevent angry trees throwing their fruit at you? Ever been woken up by something falling on your from a tree?

J

 

[mick91]

Once or twice I've been woken up by windfall, small branches and pinecones on occasion. I've got an uncanny ability to be underneath birds when nature calls to them though!

 

[Quixoticgeek]

Once or twice I've been woken up by windfall, small branches and pinecones on occasion. I've got an uncanny ability to be underneath birds when nature calls to them though!

Oh Carp, I hadn't even thought of that possibility...

J

 

[decorum]

At least two of my regular haunts plays host to roosting corvids ~ a tarp can be invaluable for protection from 'splatter matter' :yikes:

And swmbo is regularly targetted at her work by squirrels chucking cone centres ~ ace shots, apparently

 

[mick91]

Oh Carp, I hadn't even thought of that possibility...

J

It really does spoil the moment when you're having a cig in your hammock with no tarp and you feel it hit your hand!

 

[GGTBod]

Yeah i'm convinced birds love my DD tarp every time i put it up it gets covered in bird scat

 

[Imagedude]

Yeah i'm convinced birds love my DD tarp every time i put it up it gets covered in bird scat

I wouldn't take a bird out again if she did that to my tarp...

 

[GGTBod]

I wouldn't take a bird out again if she did that to my tarp...

What can in say i have terribly low standards when it comes to the opposite sex, if she'll come camping she is my type of woman

 

[wingstoo]

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/13/san-francisco-man-sues-pine-cone-falls-on-head

 

[tiger stacker]

Even Treebeard takes exception to a basha being wound round with a bungee. Or eating eggs mits beans is causing branches to snap from your gaseous egress

 

[Goatboy]

Remember the roughly translated Polynesian saying, "Beware, a falling coconut makes no noise."
Not just solid objects you have to worry about, as trees resperate at night it's possible on very still nights for CO2 to "pool" below a tree on an early night. Heard years ago of a coroners report of a vagrant suffocating while sleeping below a large tree on a still summers night. Pretty rare though, much more likely to fall foul of something like beech branch drop, where large branches suddenly drop off for no apparent reason.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[Harvestman]

I camped in an orchard recently. Picked my tree rather carefully as one that had already dropped its fruit, because all I heard all night was the 'swish, thud!' of apples and pears dropping through the leaves to the ground from other trees nearby. A high velocity apple is not something that you want dropped on you from any height.

 

[GGTBod]

Long time since i was at school but i am sure i remember correctly that trees absorb co2 and put out oxygen

 

[decorum]

Long time since i was at school but i am sure i remember correctly that trees absorb co2 and put out oxygen

During the day, yes.

 

[Goatboy]

Long time since i was at school but i am sure i remember correctly that trees absorb co2 and put out oxygen

In daylight they do during photosynthesis, it's how they absorb carbon to grow. But at night the respire like we do absorbing oxygen and putting out CO2. It's amazing how many folk don't realise plants do it.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[GGTBod]

Cool i was just reading up on it after i posted, learn a new thing everyday as they say, turns out it is now part of the GCSE curriculum as i have just finished reading a section on the GCSE bitesize website, so aerobic respiration is the exact opposite process to photosynthesis, daylight co2 taken in and oxygen put out and in darkness oxygen taken in and co2 put out, cheers Colin

 

[Goatboy]

I wouldn't pay to much worry to it though Bod, think it would have to be fairly freakish mix or terrain and weather conditions before you suffocated. The coroner report was seemingly quite old even when I was a sprog. On the whole trees produce more O2 than CO2 over the year, or we'd all be up the spout on the breathing front. Lots of plants give off gasses though. Used to be a thing about putting a head of lettuce by the bed to help you sleep. Wild lettuce have compounds in them that are strong soporifics but this haw been mainly bred out in modern varieties. There are stories of pickers being overcome and conking out in old historical texts when working fields on still days. Some reckon that's where the sleeping fields of flowers bit of the Wizard of Oz tale comes from.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[dewi]

I always presumed the sleeping fields in the Wizard of Oz was a none too subtle drug reference... opium comes from poppies, opium makes you drowsy... the white snow from the white witch being cocaine, cocaine wakes you up

Interesting about the trees expelling CO2 at night though, as Bod says, learn something new every day!

 

[Goatboy]

During the 1920's lettuce based opiods were quite common. I think it's the fact that they also give it off as a sopporific gas that inspired the tale. Not that easy to find wild lettuce these days though, a lot of it has been cross polinated with modern varieties.
Lots of plants & fungi have been picked up in old texts like ergot fungi causing whole villages to go loopy with contaminated grain. I do wonder if yew gives off something as folklore says never to sleep below one. Could just be it's other associations as a tree of death though.

Sorry Julia, gone a bit off topic from acorns landing on the head.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[forrestdweller]

Once or twice I've been woken up by windfall, small branches and pinecones on occasion. I've got an uncanny ability to be underneath birds when nature calls to them though!

i once made the mistake of parking my car under a tree with fruitbats sleeping in it- it's interesting what their "byproducts" do to paint....