Hi,

Seen in Roisel Extension Cemetery... that German headstone seems to be slowly "eaten" by the tree !




Sly

Sly,

This thread will have to wait til I get home, for some reason the works computer is not showing me any photo.

Nigel

It's an Ent, I suspect.

shows how well the stone was put in the ground

I would say 'embraced' instead of 'eaten'; as if the tree puts an arm around the shoulder of the gravestone!

Roel

Roel, What a nice thought. Ralph.

I wonder if a small tree was planted behing the grave as the soldiers headstone was erected and the small tree now a full tree has been looking over the soldier since.

Interesting thought Kevin,

I used to visit and photograph the grave of Sgt Ian MacKay VC, the Hero of Mount Longdon of 1982, in Aldershot Military Cemetery when I was with a unit not a million miles away. There is a shrub of some sort (box hedge type thing) that once stood not as tall as the headstone itself, the last time I visited the thing had become a mature bush.

This, of all things, has illustrated how things move on and times change.

Apologies for the off topic comparison, but I'm sure other forum mates have a grave that they have visited over the years and seen the changes as they develop.

Cheers,

Nigel

In a similar vein, last summer, I drew the cemetery authority's attention to this example of an unfortunate choice of low-growing plant. The grave is that of Cpl T Pearce RASC (15.10.19) in Wandsworth (Earlsfield) Cemetery.

Gosh, that almost looks like a shell explosion frozen in green foliage!!

Gunner Bailey

It did make rather a good photograph, and it was a very healthy shrub. The problem, as you can probably see, is that the photo is taken from the back, so the shrub was completely obscuring the inscribed face of the headstone. The person I spoke to at the cemetery authority thought that a small shrub plantlet had probably found its way into a tray of low-growing plants for planting at the foot of headstones. I was assured it would be removed, and will have to check next time I visit the cemetery.

It looks like Euonymus 'Aureopictus'; many of the Euonymus are prostrate but this one isn't! An easy mistake to make.

I had exactly the same thought when I saw it Gunner.

Cheers,
Tim L.

Being someone who trawls cemetaries often, I have seen similar sights. It is not aways the gardeners who plant the trees but is often undigested seeds in bird droppings that create such a thing. Mind you ... I do often wonder why these trees grown in cemeteries and not in parks, garden and our own personal gardens.

Bright Blessings
Sandra

Wow, some interesting pictures. You wonder just how long it took for it to grow around the Headstone.

This is a non WW1 burial in the Brookwood main (civil) cemetery - I'll use the excuse that there are WW1 burials there to allow its inclusion! - the trunks that are visible form what would have originally been a low rectangular boarder around the grave plot which dates back to 1937. There are several examples of this at Brookwood as the site was left pretty much to its own devices for many years. Even more striking (but not so easy to photograph because the headstones are now difficult to see through the trunks) are plots which have boarders of densely packed, rapid growth spruce (eg Leylandii, Cypressus or similar)




NigelS