Epitaph for the Ash by Lisa Samson – review

Lisa Samson’s reflections on Britain’s dying ash trees at a time of her own illness is a remarkable labour of love

Last week, I found myself walking through a once dense forest in south Cumbria. The hilltop was bare but for the occasional solitary tree. A sign said the forest had been cut down to reduce the risk of infection from Phytophthora ramorum, which causes larch tree disease, and that the woods would be allowed to grow back naturally. The sense of loss, and of my own mortality, was immediate – the forest will not grow back in my lifetime.

In 1978, the tree expert Gerald Wilkinson wrote Epitaph for the Elm as Dutch elm disease ravaged the UK’s elms in the second half of the last century. Now his niece, the novelist Lisa Samson, has written Epitaph for the Ash as the ash trees of Britain are ravaged, in their turn, by Chalara fraxinea (now known as Hymenoscyphus fraxineus) – ash dieback.

Related: British ash trees may resist dieback disease, research reveals

Continue reading... March 18, 2018 at 03:30PM