Thursday, 17th May 2012
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| Lighting may be stunting leaf growth |
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By Susan Sandys November 21 2011
His comments come as the Methven Community Board prepares to increase its decorative lighting programme. It already has lighting in two town centre oak trees, and is planning to install lighting in another two, near the Methven Heritage Centre. "It just an observation that I have noticed. "There could be many factors involved," Mr Askin said. He was aware of lit deciduous trees in cities in other parts of the world not losing their leaves each winter as they "thought" it was daylight all the time. But he did not know whether it was the lighting as such causing the issue here, or something else, such as nails in the trunks used to secure an electrical line. He said the council once had a decorative lighting committee which had a programme to hang lights in some of the large oak trees along the East Street Green about 15 years ago. But he was not sure how many of the lights still worked today. A quick observation by the Guardian of a line of nine trees opposite the Guardian building revealed two have power boxes installed for lighting, and both trees do indeed appear to have fewer leaves than the remaining seven. Additionally the leaves appear to be smaller and lighter in colour. Christchurch Botanic Gardens curator John Clemens was surprised by the observation, and said he was not aware of such a phenomenon occurring anywhere. His only suggestion was that the lights could be affecting the "day length" as perceived by the trees, changing when the leaves fell off each autumn. "(But) I don't know whether ornamental lights would be bright enough to do that," he said. An Electricity Ashburton spokesperson said lights in the trees were turned off some years ago as the trees grew and broke their wires, however, he had noticed some of the lights still worked. It was not possible to turn each one off individually as they had individual isolators connected into the street light system. He said one tree had had to have its lights cut from it at one stage because branches were growing into them. He agreed this also "could well be" an explanation behind fewer leaves on trees.
Two oak tree branches from two separate East Street green trees shows they differ from each other in terms of leaf size and colour. The one on the right is from a tree which has decorative lights installed, the one on the left is from one that doesn’t. |
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