The Watchful Tree

I've always admired the trees by the loos at Fishers Green. They look a bit like silver birches but not quite right. Their silver bark, instead of peeling like that of silver birch, is studded with diamond-shaped pores called lenticels. I think they must be aspen. 

I saw them with fresh eyes today having read Robert Macfarlane's "The Watchful Tree" word(s) of the day last week. It's a folk-name given variously to the silver birch & the aspen, because of the 'eyes' that seem to gaze from these trees' trunks - formed either by natural bark-markings, or the healed lesions left by dropped branches.

I was interested to read that aspen are perfect for phytoremediation. Aspen represent optimal plants for absorption, accumulation, storage, and degradation of environmental pollutants such as heavy metals, mercury, PCBs, nitrates, pesticide and herbicide residues, aromatics, wood preservatives, explosives and other waste products.