YEARS ago when I was a director with The John Lewis Partnership I received a telephone call from an expert, Percy Thrower. He asked me if he could come round with a film crew to do a TV programme on Longstock Park Water Gardens.

I said yes and welcomed the team.

The first thing was my taking him round to identify possible topics to be filmed. There are few trees that thrive in very wet places and one is the swamp cypress (Taxodium distichum).

It has roots that will grow in water and it also does something else. Roots normally emerge in plants and they are what is called positively geotropic. Gravity causes them to grow downwards.

The other common growth activity is what shoots do and that is responding negatively to gravity so they grow up.

The swamp cypress and also many plants that grow in water have root systems that occasionally grow up. Many reed like plants are not called aquatics, which grow totally in water. They are called emergents.

They reside in places where water levels may change so they can fit in by having root systems that grow up, down and sideways. This network provides stability but also another opportunity. A fine furry root system is attached and this arrests the flow of water and it’s content and that helps feed the plants.

It has been applied in reed beds as a way of absorbing chemicals that might be poisonous for us but food for the plants.

I took Percy to the swamp cypress and pointed to the roots emerging from the water. I said “They are the pneumatophores”.

He said: ”What?!” He was struggling with the name.

I said: “They are sometimes called the knees."

So the filming took place and when the programme went out nationwide the film - shot went to the top of the tree and then panned down.

Percy said: “This is the Swamp Cypress and at the bottom you can see.“

He then made a mistake. He remembered the name given was a part of the human body but he forgot which part so he said: “These are the joints, the elbows”.

More recently expert advice was applied to another tree with hidden energies associated with root growth.

Like the swamp cypress it is from the Americas and it is called Gleditzia, named after a German botanist.

The tree grows outside the Town Hall in Whitchurch and right next door to where Lord Denning grew up. He was a human being and he started the evolution of a root system that ended up being part of the structure of the legal world we have now. His early interest in life was maths (numbers ) and geometry.

The Gleditsia produces roots and amazingly they can grow down deeper than most trees on earth. Sometimes around 20 feet. They also spread and swell underground. Like the root systems in emergent plants they link with other organisms to bring benefits.

So the existing tree has shoots above ground in form of trunks, branches, twigs and leaves and they are all healthy.

Below ground and hidden the network of roots has infections but they are probably only present in a minute proportion of the active root system.

Recent expert team analysis says 'In addition, the rooting area of the tree is beneath hard surfacing. This restricted access to survey all of the tree effectively.'

The oldest trees in Whitchurch are the yews at All Hallows Church and St Mary's at Tufton.

Both periodically have fungi fruiting in them.

An expert suggested that the Tufton Yew needed felling due to a massive amount of dead wood. This was not taken up and the dead wood was removed.

Local residents financed the tree work and another local made coasters the sales of which covered the work costs. Now the tree has regenerated into a fine specimen.

The oldest wood in Whitchurch is still in the centre of the tree at All Hallows. That wood is dead but no negative effect on general tree growth.

The Gleditsia may benefit from some positive balancing of the canopy followed by careful inspection of ongoing growth. Not immediate felling as proposed by an expert. In an ideal world it may have many years of creative life ahead. Like Lord Denning a pillar of the community.

Graham Burgess

Dip Hort Kew.

Onetime member of Education and Publicity Committee of The Arboricultural Association