Regeneration

We took a bus out of town today to the local Botanical Gardens which are located beside the University of British Columbia.  The campus is impressive with loads of green space.

The forest is interesting as you keep coming across nursing trees.  They are the stumps of trees which were felled decades ago and into whose decaying timber seeds took root.  As the new young tree starts its growth three or four feet from the forest floor and puts roots into the stump, the stump slowly rots end exposes the root growth leaving amazing contortions of tree root which has still found its way to the ground.  This has been going on for a long time and so there are all sorts of stages of this process on view. 

Under these roots are the remains of a stump which was left about a century ago - and the stump 'nursed' more than one tree.