Caeau: Fields
One suggestion from the Dyffryn Peris conversations has been the restoration of ancient meadows (for hay producation), to improve soil, biodiversity and flood management. I’ve made a map (which may or may not be accurate, it’s taken quite a bit of piecing things together from old maps!) of the field names, which can indicate which fields used to be meadows. There is a suggestion that Dyffryn Peris used to be a ‘valley of meadows’, and we could connect up all the old meadows.
The orange names all include “Ddôl” or “Gweirglodd”, indicating they used to be meadows.
The field and meadow names of Nantperis
COED - TREES
“The venerable oaks, spoken of by Leland [1536] are no more. Avarice, or dissipation, and its constant follower, poverty, have despoiled much of our principality of its leafy beauties. Among the numberless errors of this performance, I fear the word is IS cloathed with trees, must be supplied by the traveller with WAS. ”
Thomas Pennant – A Tour in Wales, 1778
The oldest tree in the valley?
I have been looking for traces of older trees. I wonder which tree is the oldest in the valley? Do any of the “the venerable oaks spoken of Leland” (17th Century?) still exist? Perhaps these oaks (pictured) near Coed Gwydr - huddling near Ty’n’Twll’s quarry are that old? The section through an Ash tree that fell in the 2016 storms looks like it was more than 150 years old.
I’m asking others what they think are the oldest trees (oak, birch, rowan, hawthorn, Alder, Ash, Holly…), and making a map of them See here.
If you would like to add what you think is the oldest tree - of any kind - to the map, please send me details or take me there!
Derwen - Oak Ywen - Yew
Bedwen - Birch Onnen - Ash Draenen Wen - Hawthorn
Cerddinen - Rowan Gwern - Alder
Celyn - Holly Collen - Hazel
Masarnen - Sycamore Llarwydden - Larch
Helygen - Willow Pinwydden - Pine
ac ati - etc!
There are currently no ‘notable trees’ listed on the Woodland Trust’s Ancient Tree Inventory in the upper reaches of Dyffryn Peris (diolch o galon Keith Edwards am y cysylltiad). But suggestions for the oldest/notable trees in Dyffryn Peris take us along the whole valley, running down to Caernarfon, with yews in Llanddeiniolen at 2,000 years old!
And here is a really handy guide to how to spot notable trees of various ‘categories’, which rather nicely shows how any of us could make a judgement about what is special here…. I think we may be able to get Dyffryn Peris’ ‘venerable oaks’ and our other lovely trees on the map!
This guide is particularly useful I think! Note that because we don’t really have ‘average’ growing conditions (!) our trees will be smaller…
Corlan y Coed: Tree Folds
While wandering around the foothills behind my house, I often notice tiny trees growing - often just one or two leaves on a teeny step, usually about 1cm high. They quickly disappear when the sheep spot them. Dei Tomos had pointed out to me that there were hardly any young trees at all in the area, and we were in danger of losing all our trees within a lifetime, as they die off.
So in May 2014, when I met John Morgan, the farmer who works the land, I asked him if I could try protecting the tiny trees i find. He said I was welcome to, but didn’t think that trees would grow here. I thought I’d like to find out.
bedwen nain: Thus spoke the plant
“Dod yn ôl at fy nghoed”
I have developed a connection with an isolated old silver birch (I now know - from the info above, that she is a ‘veteran’ tree, girth 1.8m), from which more bits drop every time there is a storm. I call her Bedwen Nain - Grandmother Birch. One day in the summer, 2019, (and I know this sounds mad!), I felt drawn to sit with her. I’d not noticed her before. And since then - yep, this is really going to sound very mad - she started communicating with me. Or perhaps a part of me is activated by thinking of her/being with her. I experience her asking me to visit and doesn’t like me leaving, and offers advice and love, just like my nain (who died in 2018 at the age of 103).
I explained the situation to my very good friend, Alison Parfitt, on my last visit to her (she died in December 2019). She nodded wisely, and suggested I read ‘Thus Spoke the Plant’. This is a remarkable book about a scientist - a proper, funded scientist - who found that she could communicate with plants, and used them to direct her research. Which in turn helped her to understand the plants, and their experience of the world (which is much more sentient than I had ever believed!).
I took inspiration from the book, and asked Bedwen Nain about this project. She was quite clear - this project should start with water…. and she keeps reminding me to go slow….
My learning to listen to the experiences of other-than-human-beings is something I am still developing. Just learning to notice - and value - their existence is quite profound. Over the summer of 2019 I attended a ‘Council of All Beings’ at Moel y Ci. This is a wonderful way - one that I’d first heard of in the early 90s, but thought it was just fiction! - of learning to listen to the ways and insights of other beings. The workshops come from the work of John Seed, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming and Arne Naess in the 70s. There’s a wonderful book - ‘Thinking like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings” that I very much recommend if you are interested!
“We are only fully human when we act as if life beyond us matters” - Casper Henderson
David Gwyn recently placed all this in local context - the wonderful tales of the Mabinogi (the earliest prose stories in the literature of Britain):
“The locus classicus of asking the beasts, and losing the forest and then regrowing it, is of course - but as I've only just remembered - Culhwch ac Olwen.
"Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd, here is an embassy from Arthur; knowest thou aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken after three nights from his mother?"
"If I knew I would tell you. When first I came hither, the wide valley you see was a wooded glen. And a race of men came and rooted it up. And there grew there a second wood; and this wood is the third. My wings, are they not withered stumps? Yet all this time, even until to-day, I have never heard of the man for whom you inquire."“
the joy of bryophytes
I had heard much of bryophytes during my time as a facilitator, as they were at the heart of one of the first pieces of conflict resolution I did in Wales - working for the National Park to resolve conflict over small scale hydro schemes. This was way back in the late 90s. At the time, I thought of them (whatever they were) as a bit niche. A bit troublesome. Getting in the way of global scale ‘clean’ energy production that would give us a fighting chance of reducing the impact of climate change.
I never did find out what they were.
So in December 2019, I was intrigued to see a sign in London offering a free lecture on Bryophytes. I still didn’t know what they were. But after half an hour, I had been transformed into a Bryophyte-phile! They are mosses (and liverworts and hornworts). Things that cover the vast majority of the land here in Dyffryn Peris. And it, worldwide, holds 5% of the carbon, and does a fantastic job at regulating water. And it doesn’t die if it dries out : “Poikilohydry”! Look it even has a little lid to help it do that.
This is why it doesn’t get very big. It also does great things with pollution and land improvement.
I left concluding that it is a vital part of this place. I’m learning to distingush the - possibly 30+ varieties - that we have here….
And finding that mosses seem to ‘speak’ more at night… humorous, resilient, they take it all in their stride.