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Energy and climate crisis: at the abbey of Jumièges, the return to favor of pollard trees

2023-01-11T13:07:46.567Z


The Boucles de la Seine Normande Regional Natural Park has organized two events to highlight a way of pruning trees.


Whether they are, depending on the region, nicknamed trunk trees, trunk trees or pollard trees, they have shaped the agricultural landscape by the millions and have done so for thousands of years.

These trees are pollarded regularly and always in the same place, which gives them their characteristic bumps.

With each cut, the aerial coppice was used in the past by the peasants for firewood, to constitute bundles for the kitchen, for the ovens of the bakers or that of the potters.

Breeders used it as fodder for livestock or for making tool handles, fence posts or even for basketry.

Read alsoEnergy crisis: and now the shortage of wood?

With the arrival of mechanization and the generalization of the consumption of fossil fuels, this ancestral way of pruning trees has disappeared.

But the wheel turns: climate change, inflation on fuels and the price of gas pollard trees now offer an inexhaustible alternative to the agricultural community, but also to communities and even individuals.

On Saturday January 7, the Boucles de la Seine Normande Regional Natural Park offered two practical activities at the foot of the Jumièges Abbey orchestrated by Dominique Mansion, trainer, artist and vice-president of the Boursay Botanical House, straight from of Loir-et-Cher.

Read alsoAn exceptional lunch flavored with history and wild plants at Jumièges Abbey

“These trees, he explained, can be a resource: they allow energy autonomy on a small territory, constitute an important biomass for heating but also an effective protection of biodiversity.

It's a kind of toolbox that can be used in the countryside but also in cities as a climate regulator or even in your garden.

Just relearn the missing gesture.

»

The other Saturday, in the heart of a property with an alignment of trees of different species (field maples, ashes, willows, elms, alders, etc.) planted in 2012 with public funds, around twenty individuals and professionals gathered around Dominique Mansion to learn how to prune trees using the tadpole technique.

Read alsoAt Jumièges Abbey, writers will have their cabin to create

“For this first, warns Dominique Mansion, it is a drastic, shocking size that we are going to achieve but which will work for sure.

The head will then grow with a progressive succession of overlapping bulges following each cut.

The branches will then grow back by the dozen or even hundreds of more than one meter per year.

»

“Why buy plastic or metal tomato stakes, when a stem will last for two years and then feed the oven or the fireplace?

Why use chemicals to light the barbecue when a well-dried bundle standing up, then cut or crushed will do the trick?

the trainer asks the trainees.

It's a virtuous circle, he replies immediately.

The elements that grow capture CO2 in the atmosphere, the pollard trees are depolluters!

In addition, they are part of the living environment and well-being.

For farmers, it is also a possible source of income.

»

A technique of size however denounced by some defenders of the trees.

“By the very people who eat fruit, replies dare dare Dominique Mansion.

Topped, grafted… man has always intervened on the trees which have thus enabled his autonomy and his survival.

» CQFD.

Source: leparis

All news articles on 2023-01-11

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