There’s nothing much remarkable about these two young sycamore trees (pictured above) at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Galashiels, other than these two trees were the final trees Callophrys Tree Consultancy inspected as part of a two-month long project for UK Landscapes Ltd, managed by Rainfords Arboriculture.

Over the course of 21 days in January and February, I clocked up 1,725 miles, visited 31 sites and inspected 414 trees. I surveyed all the managed sites in Scotland; from Inverness and Elgin in the north to Ayr and Galashiels in the south.

While the average site may have contained 20 trees, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Kilmarnock only had one tree, an early mature cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera), whereas The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Inverness, had 52 trees, including a mightily impressive giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum).

It is somewhat fitting that the last two trees I inspected were sycamores as I encountered sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) 86 times. The top five recorded trees were as follows,

1. Sycamore, Acer pseudoplatanus [86]
2. Lime, Tilia x europaea [48]
3. Cherry species, Prunus spp. [44]
4. Ash, Fraxinus excelsior [22]
5. Rowan, Sorbus aucuparia [19]

I thoroughly enjoyed working on the project and I am grateful to Rob at Rainfords Arboriculture for affording me the opportunity.

As a tree consultancy service based in Cumbernauld – Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling, Perth, Dunfermline and the Scottish Borders are all within easy reach of Cumbernauld – Callophrys Tree Consultancy is ideally positioned to act as a Scottish representative in nationwide projects and contracts.

If you need a Scottish-based tree consultant to support a national project or contract, please get in touch with me.