As we live and breathe

Recently I've become fascinated by lenticels. They are pores on the bark of trees that enable the exchange of gases between the atmosphere and the internal tissues of the tree, as essential to life as photosynthesis.
 If you look carefully at young trees you can see little corky apertures in the bark that serve as breathing holes, the equivalent, essentially, of nostrils although they often look like tiny puckered mouths, or the raised edges of scars. As the tree matures the lenticels become hidden in the rough, gnarly surface of the bark but nevertheless they are still there, still breathing. Very often they become colonised by moss or lichen and they may also allow fungal spores to penetrate.
Whenever the sun emerges I've been hovering around the young trees on my patch, comparing the shapes and distribution of lenticels on different species. The one I've blipped is plum, and in the extras are alder and birch, and cherry and elder.

We all need breathing space even if we are trees.