Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Shelley Mitchell, Senior Extension Specialist in Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Oklahoma State University
Pecans have a storied history in the United States. Today, American trees produce hundreds of million of pounds of pecans – 80% of the world’s pecan crop. Most of that crop stays here. Pecans are used to produce pecan milk, butter and oil, but many of the nuts end up in pecan pies.
Throughout history, pecans have been overlooked, poached, cultivated and improved. As they have spread throughout the United States, they have been eaten raw and in recipes. Pecans have grown more popular over the decades, and you will probably encounter them in some form this holiday season.
I’m an extension specialist in Oklahoma, a state consistently ranked fifth in pecan production, behind Georgia, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. I’ll admit that I am not a fan of the taste of pecans, which leaves more for the squirrels, crows and enthusiastic pecan lovers.
The spread of pecans
The pecan is a nut related to the hickory. Actually, though we call them nuts, pecans are actually a type of fruit called a drupe. Drupes have pits, like the peach and cherry.
Three pecan fruits, which ripen and split open to release pecan nuts, clustered on a pecan tree. IAISI/Moment via Getty Images
The pecan nuts that look like little brown footballs are actually the seed that starts inside the pecan fruit – until the fruit ripens and splits open to release the pecan. They are usually the size of your thumb, and you may need a nutcracker to open them. You can eat them raw or as part of a cooked dish.
The pecan derives its name from the Algonquin “pakani,” which means “a nut too hard to crack by hand.” Rich in fat and easy to transport, pecans traveled with Native Americans throughout what is now the southern United States. They were used for food, medicine and trade as early as 8,000 years ago.
Pecans are native to the southern United States, and while they had previously spread along travel and trade routes, the first documented purposeful planting of a pecan tree was in New York in 1722. Three years later, George Washington’s estate, Mount Vernon, had some planted pecans. Washington loved pecans, and Revolutionary War soldiers said he was constantly eating them.
Meanwhile, no one needed to plant pecans in the South, since they naturally grew along riverbanks and in groves. Pecan trees are alternate bearing: They will have a very large crop one year, followed by one or two very small crops. But because they naturally produced a harvest with no input from farmers, people did not need to actively cultivate them. Locals would harvest nuts for themselves but otherwise ignored the self-sufficient trees.
It wasn’t until the late 1800s that people in the pecan’s native range realized the pecan’s potential worth for income and trade. Harvesting pecans became competitive, and young boys would climb onto precarious tree branches. One girl was lifted by a hot air balloon so she could beat on the upper branches of trees and let them fall to collectors below. Pecan poaching was a problem in natural groves on private property.
Pecan cultivation begins
Even with so obvious a demand, cultivated orchards in the South were still rare into the 1900s. Pecan trees don’t produce nuts for several years after planting, so their future quality is unknown.
To guarantee quality nuts, farmers began using a technique called grafting; they’d join branches from quality trees to another pecan tree’s trunk. The first attempt at grafting pecans was in 1822, but the attempts weren’t very successful.
Grafting pecans became popular after an enslaved man named Antoine who lived on a Louisiana plantation successfully produced large pecans with tender shells by grafting, around 1846. His pecans became the first widely available improved pecan variety.
The variety was named Centennial because it was introduced to the public 30 years later at the Philadelphia Centennial Expedition in 1876, alongside the telephone, Heinz ketchup and the right arm of the Statue of Liberty.
This technique also sped up the production process. To keep pecan quality up and produce consistent annual harvests, today’s pecan growers shake the trees while the nuts are still growing, until about half of the pecans fall off. This reduces the number of nuts so that the tree can put more energy into fewer pecans, which leads to better quality. Shaking also evens out the yield, so that the alternate-bearing characteristic doesn’t create a boom-bust cycle.
US pecan consumption
The French brought praline dessert with them when they immigrated to Louisiana in the early 1700s. A praline is a flat, creamy candy made with nuts, sugar, butter and cream. Their original recipe used almonds, but at the time, the only nut available in America was the pecan, so pecan pralines were born.
During the Civil War and world wars, Americans consumed pecans in large quantities because they were a protein-packed alternative when meat was expensive and scarce. One ounce of pecans has the same amount of protein as 2 ounces of meat.
After the wars, pecan demand declined, resulting in millions of excess pounds at harvest. One effort to increase demand was a national pecan recipe contest in 1924. Over 21,000 submissions came from over 5,000 cooks, with 800 of them published in a book.
Pecan consumption went up with the inclusion of pecans in commercially prepared foods and the start of the mail-order industry in the 1870s, as pecans can be shipped and stored at room temperature. That characteristic also put them on some Apollo missions. Small amounts of pecans contain many vitamins and minerals. They became commonplace in cereals, which touted their health benefits.
In 1938, the federal government published the pamphlet Nuts and How to Use Them, which touted pecans’ nutritional value and came with recipes. Food writers suggested using pecans as shortening because they are composed mostly of fat.
The government even put a price ceiling on pecans to encourage consumption, but consumers weren’t buying them. The government ended up buying the surplus pecans and integrating them into the National School Lunch Program.
While you are sitting around the Thanksgiving table this year, you can discuss one of the biggest controversies in the pecan industry: Are they PEE-cans or puh-KAHNS?
Shelley Mitchell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Estrella Luna-Diez, Associate Professor in Plant Pathology, School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham
The mighty Feanedock Oak in Derbyshire has provided an anchor habitat for many lifeforms, including people, for more than 200 years.Lucy Neal, CC BY-NC-SA
The Feanedock Oak stands out so clearly in Derbyshire’s section of the National Forest, you’d think it was calling to you. Surrounded by open fields, hawthorn hedges and young beech forest, a majestic old oak like this anchors the English countryside.
As the highest expression of our woodlands, oaks support more life in the UK than any other native tree. At the foot of the Feanedock oak, you can hear and see – at a glance – wrens, blackbirds, spiders, squirrels, song thrush, hoverflies, butterflies, blackcaps, woodlouse, ants and chiffchaffs. For more than two centuries, it has provided an anchor habitat, including for humans – a tumbled-down dwelling lies under its shade.
How well any English oak (Quercus robur) thrives affects everything living on and around it, from canopy to soil. In recent years of heat and drought, the Feanedock Oak has lost two large boughs.
In the summer of 2023, dendrochronologists – who research and date trees through their growth rings – took samples from the tree’s trunk to study its “healthy” and “poor” years of growth. They counted 195 rings but did not get to the centre of the tree – so it was probably seeded in the early 19th century, if not earlier. As a sapling, it would have greeted Derbyshire miners walking across the fields from nearby villages to work in the newly-dug coal shafts or the many industrial potteries in the area.
More than 200 years later, in July 2023, the Feanedock Oak (now measuring around 120 feet) played a central role in Ring of Truth. This creative collaboration between tree scientists and artists from the Walking Forest collective imagined a legal case set in the year 2030 between a claimant, the oak (in whose shadow the case was heard), and the UK government.
Ring of Truth’s imagined court case is heard at the Timber Festival, July 2023. RB Films, CC BY-NC-SA
The counsel for the claimant – real-life rights of nature lawyer Paul Powlesland – set out his argument to the judge and jury, claiming the government had breached legal obligations set out in the 2008 Climate Change Act. Scientists from the University of Birmingham – including one of us (Bruno) – acted as expert witnesses, bringing evidence of the threats posed to the tree from increased heat, atmospheric CO₂, soil damage and disease.
After hearing all the evidence, the assembled audience – in the role of jury – voted for their verdict. Many were acutely conscious that the claimant had been standing in this spot far longer than anyone else present – a silent witness to the damage done by humans on the environment and landscape. They ordered the secretary of state for climate and ecological breakdown (as the job is known in 2030) to cease breaching legal obligations to protect this and all “anchor oaks”, and the communities that thrive or suffer with them.
That powerful moment under the Feanedock Oak opened a door to a deeper question: how and what do trees remember?
Until recently, little was known about how memory might function in long-lived organisms like trees which experience decades, even centuries, of shifting environmental pressures. So this is what our multidisciplinary research collaboration – featuring artworks, performances and even a musical composition as well as groundbreaking science – set out to discover.
On the Memory of Trees, by Scott Wilson, was composed using data collated by the Membra project.
How trees’ memories work
For trees, memory is not a metaphor but a biological reality, written into their cells. One of the most remarkable forms this takes is epigenetic memory: the ability of a tree to record its life experiences and allow those experiences to shape its future, without changing the sequence of its DNA.
As Membra (full name: Understanding Memory of UK Treescapes for Better Resilience and Adaptation), we’ve studied a number of ecologically vital and culturally significant UK species including oak, ash, hazel, beech and birch. Together, they have helped us understand how trees register and respond to environmental stress, offering a powerful glimpse into how their memories are carried through woodlands.
At the heart of this process is DNA methylation, where chemical tags known as methyl groups are added to the tree’s DNA over time. While not rewriting the genetic code, they do alter how it is read. These chemical signatures can turn genes on or off, dial responses up or down, and fundamentally shift how a tree grows, adapts, or defends itself. In oaks, for example, long-term drought exposure over decades is associated with changes in DNA methylation, suggesting that trees may adjust their gene expression in response to repeated stress.
These epigenetic memories may allow trees to respond more quickly to drought, disease or climate extremes, and could even be passed to the next generation. In some plant species, this kind of inheritance is well documented, but in long-lived trees, it remains an open question – one with critical implications for forest regeneration and resilience.
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So far, our research has shown trees respond to stress in ways that can extend well beyond the immediate event. Exposure to drought or high CO₂, for example, can leave lasting marks on a tree’s growth and internal chemistry, and may shape how it responds to future conditions. But the strength of this memory appears to depend on the nature of the stress: it is more pronounced when the stress is particularly strong, such as disease, or when it occurs repeatedly over time, such as chronic drought.
A surprising result came from oak, where we observed that DNA methylation itself changes depending on the time of year – with methylation levels lowest in early spring, then increasing as the seasons progress. This suggests the imprinting of memory in trees may be far more dynamic than previously thought, and that the timing of stress events within the growing season could influence how strongly that memory is encoded.
All our studied species and associated environmental conditions have now been sequenced. In every case, we have found evidence of these memories of past stresses. In ash trees, for example, we’ve begun to detect methylation changes linked to ash dieback pressure, offering clues as to how trees regulate their defences over time as a disease progresses.
Trees are certainly resilient. They bend, adapt and endure, holding the memory of storms and seasons within their very bodies. But even their deep-rooted strength has limits. The challenges they now face are faster, more frequent and more severe than at any point in their evolutionary history.
This means what we are learning from their memories is not just a story of survival, but a warning. They are telling us there could come a point when they can no longer cope.
Even young trees remember
It is easy to be awed by a centuries-old oak. But what often goes unnoticed is the quiet crisis beneath the canopy. Across many UK woodlands, the next generation is missing.
Surveys show steep declines in most species of young trees (seedlings and saplings) due to a growing list of pressures: prolonged drought, warming temperatures, shifting herbivore populations, and an expanding wave of pests and pathogens. According to a study of nine sites in England and Scotland, co-authored by one of us (Bruno) and currently under review, the sapling mortality rate has increased from 16.2% in the period up to 2000 to 30.9% two decades later.
In some species such as elm and now ash, diseases have brought populations close to the point of lack of regeneration – when a woodland can no longer sustain itself. To counter this threat, young trees must be highly adaptable – not just in form, but at the molecular level. At Membra, scientists are exploring whether young trees imprint environmental stress more readily than older ones, and whether that memory, recorded through changes in DNA methylation, influences their survival.
One way we have tested such transgenerational changes is to expose trees (oak and hazel) to the elevated levels of CO₂ that are expected in the UK by 2050. This was done in the Birmingham Institute for Forest Research (Bifor) facility in a Staffordshire woodland – one of the world’s largest climate change experiments, where tree “arrays” (circular patches of woodland) are exposed to 150 parts per million (ppm) of CO₂ above ambient concentrations.
Membra’s research there has found that the offspring of trees exposed to these CO₂ levels respond very differently to further environmental stressors – in ways that can make them more resilient. For example, acorns from CO₂-exposed oaks were notably larger and their seedlings showed both faster growth and improved resistance to pathogens like powdery mildew – a strong sign that environmental conditions experienced by parent trees can shape offspring resilience.
To date, molecular analysis shows the inherited memory of this exposure is imprinted in the tree genes that are involved in defence mechanisms. The direct link with resilience should be identified in the next few years as our data analysis progresses.
Strikingly, these beneficial effects were most pronounced during “mast” years, when trees produce a bumper crop of seeds, suggesting that the reproductive cycles of mature oaks as well as resource availability are key to the oaks’ successful inheritance of stress-adaptive traits. Similarly, seedlings from oak trees that had undergone repeated drought exposure have shown increased drought tolerance – which suggests some trees may “prime” their offspring to be more resilient in the face of repeated climate stress.
Our work also shows that young trees can be artificially primed for resilience. For instance, early treatment with certain natural compounds enhances oak seedlings’ resistance to powdery mildew disease, triggering biochemical and transcriptional responses that allow them to mount a faster and stronger defence. This priming acts like a kind of immunological memory – in this case not inherited but induced – and could potentially open up new avenues for improving forest health and regeneration.
Importantly, species differ widely in how they pass on environmental experiences to their progeny. Hazel trees subjected to the same elevated CO₂ conditions in the Bifor woodland produced both smaller nuts and seedlings that often failed to thrive after germination. So, rather than assuming a one-size-fits-all strategy for seed sourcing, forestry managers may need to tailor decisions based on species-specific responses to past environmental stresses. Recognising the importance of parental environmental history, especially for stressors like drought, could shape how we select and prepare the next generation of trees.
This may also mean rethinking how and when we collect seeds. In species such as oak, collecting from mast years may improve the odds of transmitting beneficial adaptive traits. In all cases, understanding how trees’ memory works, not just within a tree’s lifetime but across generations, offers a crucial tool for building more adaptive, resilient treescapes in this rapidly changing world.
Tree rings such as those sampled from the Feanedock Oak record much more than just a tree’s age. They hold evidence of how trees respond to changing climates, rising carbon levels and extreme events.
Studies using these natural archives (the rings) have shown that rising atmospheric CO₂ is already changing how trees grow and photosynthesise. In some oaks, it has led to faster growth and more carbon being stored – a hopeful sign.
But this acceleration may come with hidden costs. Trees that grow quickly not only reach maturity sooner but may also die younger, potentially limiting the long-term stability of forest carbon storage.
And these shifts are not just a concern for the trees themselves – they ripple outward. Faster growth can alter forest structure, affecting biodiversity and resilience. In the UK and globally, trees face an escalating cascade of challenges including pollution, drought, storms and disease – and increasingly, these pressures overlap.
Understanding how different trees’ memories will mediate their responses to new, more stressful conditions is key to predicting which species will thrive, adapt or decline. Artificially priming young trees by exposing them early to stress may enhance their memory and survival.
In recent years, a wave of tree planting, often tied to carbon offsetting schemes, is rapidly reshaping landscapes across much of the UK. National and local governments have launched large-scale initiatives such as the England Tree Action Plan. These programmes aim to restore canopy cover, improve biodiversity and contribute to net-zero goals. Local authorities, environmental charities, landowners and corporate offsetting partners are among those overseeing the planting, with guidance and funding provided by the Forestry Commission and Defra.
However, the choice of species is often constrained by budget and availability, which can result in limited diversity and mismatches between trees and local ecological conditions. Fast-growing species like sycamore, alder, and hybrid poplar are frequently used, while slower-growing native species with deeper ecological value may be underrepresented.
Planting trees without understanding their long-term ecological roles – or their capacity to remember and adapt – also risks repeating old mistakes that could compromise long-term resilience. Selecting the right trees to face future climate threats requires more than just numbers. A forest full of fast-growing, short-lived trees may have a very different effect on the local ecosystem than one with long-lived, memory-bearing individuals. In the worst-case scenario, such woodlands will fail to regenerate and die out.
Climate models indicate a future of warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers in the UK, which will challenge many native species. Diseases such as ash dieback have already transformed landscapes, with over 80% of ash trees expected to be lost in many areas. This is not just a loss of a species but a loss of the biodiversity that depends on it.
Our work highlights the value of sourcing seed from trees that have survived historic drought and understanding how memory, resilience and adaptation are embedded in the biology of many older individuals. Future woodlands will need to blend ancient wisdom with modern science, combining genetic diversity, environmental memory and community stewardship to thrive.
This legal shift complements the scientific insight from Membra: that mature woodlands, with deep memory and biodiversity, are not replaceable. And as Ring of Truth’s imagined court case made clear, it is a travesty if trees such as the Feanedock Oak are thought of as little more than machines to extract human-created carbon from the atmosphere.
Their social, cultural and ecological roles are vast. Listening to Indigenous and local communities with long-held tree knowledge, and empowering tree guardians in cities and villages alike, is vital to fostering a meaningful public practice of tree stewardship.
As one Walking Forest participant put it, time spent with trees creates space and renewed agency for surviving the climate and nature crises: “We are like trees. The stronger we root and allow ourselves, like them, to be nurtured by those around us, the better we are at withstanding the strongest of storms”.
Another said: “I see the bigger picture now, of how we are related to the forest – at one with nature because we too are part of the ecosystem.”
By weaving together artistic performance, scientific insight and ancestral knowledge, the Walking Forest collective has sought to expand how we understand our relationship with woodlands – connecting women, trees and ecological justice across time.
One powerful example is the 107-year-old Monterey Pine planted by suffragette Rose Lamartine Yates, the last known survivor of a historic arboretum planted by women activists at Eagle House in Batheaston, Somerset. A place of recovery for women who were politically active as part of the suffrage movement, this was the home of the Blathwayt family – and known as the Suffragettes’ Retreat.
Suffragettes Adela Pankhurst and Annie Kenney at Eagle House in Batheaston, Somerset, in 1910. Linley Blathwayt/Wikimedia
Between April 1909 and July 1911, at least 47 trees were planted in the grounds of Eagle House to commemorate individual suffragists and suffragettes, many of whom had been imprisoned and tortured. The arboretum afforded the suffragettes an opportunity to imagine the future into which their young trees would grow.
The trees were all bulldozed in the late 1960s to make way for a housing estate – other than Lamartine Yates’s Monterey Pine, planted in 1909, which survives to this day, protected in a private garden. The seeds of this tree are a touchstone of Walking Forest: we have gathered and propagated them, shared them with communities, and created performances and ceremonies that honour the tree’s legacy – connecting past and future generations (of trees and people) in a project to create a woodland that mirrors the original Eagle House arboretum.
Since 2018, Walking Forest artists have travelled overland to UN climate talks to gift seeds from the Monterey Pine to women and youth activists, climate negotiators, Indigenous community leaders and environmental campaigners – connecting with them in this story of resilience and renewal.
In another act of collective mourning and protest, a 100-year-old silver birch cut down for the HS2 rail link was carried through Coventry by more than 40 women during Coventry’s year as City of Culture in 2021. The act made visible the loss of ancient woodland and connected it with human grief, resistance and care.
These stories are not isolated. Across the UK, trees have become flashpoints for protest and protection – from the Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian’s Wall to Sheffield Council’s felling of more than 5,000 healthy street trees between 2014 and 2018 as part of road maintenance.
Walking Forest has collaborated with Membra not only to share scientific knowledge but to offer new ways of knowing through storytelling, ritual and creative action. As climate pressures grow, so too does public awareness of how irreplaceable mature trees are.
We are still only beginning to uncover the complexity of tree memory. Future research may reveal exactly how memory is transferred between generations, how trees prepare for challenges they’ve never seen, and how entire forests might adapt together.
But our collaboration between scientists, artists and communities is already helping to shift how people think about trees, from passive backdrop to learning beings. Through this work, we understand that trees are not just survivors – they are storytellers, record keepers and even teachers.
As our understanding of their memory deepens, so too does our responsibility to listen, learn and act. The future of forests depends not just on what trees can remember, but on what we choose not to forget.
A recent return to the Feanedock Oak, two years after its case was argued in Ring of Truth, found the tree still standing but visibly altered. Its two large, fallen limbs lay cloaked in bramble and nettle. But under its canopy, foxes burrowed, birds sang and fruit trees flowered.
Though imbalanced, this grand old oak holds its ground – a tree of memory and now a symbol of care. We will return again and again to honour its survival, and admire its provision for so many other species in the natural world. The tree reminds us that people need ways to anchor ourselves too, as we navigate uncertain times ahead.
Estrella Luna-Diez receives funding from UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
Anne-Marie Culhane receives funding from UKRI and the NERC.
Bruno Barcante Ladvocat Cintra receives funding from the NERC.
Additional thanks to Lucy Neal, member of the Walking Forest collective, for her written and photographic contributions to this article. Lucy was the creator of Ring of Truth, performed at the Timber Festival in July 2023.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. Canada and the EU have legal remedies at hand that could help the ICC thrive in the years ahead.(Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA
Four key staff of the court — including Canadian judge Kimberly Prost — have been sanctioned by President Donald Trump’s administration because of their involvement in investigations related to alleged war crimes committed by American and Israeli officials.
Other allies, including France, Belgium and the European Union have publicly opposed the sanctions, issuing statements in support of the ICC.
Canada has publicly backed Prost, and has recently joined a number of states at the United Nations in supporting the overall work of the court. But Canadian officials have been silent about the American sanctions.
Sanctions fallout
The current wave of sanctions has forced the court to take extraordinary measures, such as paying staff ahead of time and changing email software to openDesk which was developed by the Germany-based Centre for Digital Sovereignty.
This would mean that any American company — including financial institutions — or even Canadian companies with subsidiaries in the U.S. that deal with the court may be subject to penalties and legal action.
Shielding businesses
Not all is lost, however. There are two legal remedies that could be be used to shield the ICC. Canada and the EU could amend key laws designed to protect companies from such actions, which could significantly aid in the operation of the court.
A FEMA amendment was passed in 1996 in response to the Helms-Burton Act in the U.S. that prohibited companies from trading or conducting business in Cuba.
FEMA shields Canadian businesses affected by the Helms-Burton Act and contains specific provisions to protect companies from retaliatory action by the U.S. Similarly, the EBS was passed in the European Parliament to shield European companies from American sanctions.
It was introduced initially as a result of the Helms-Burton Act, and then later revised when the U.S. withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
Canada and the EU could amend both FEMA and the EBS to ensure that Canadian and European companies are shielded from the effects of American sanctions and can continue to provide key services to the court.
In the case of the EU, most of the ICC’s contractual arrangements with entities like banks, insurers, service providers, technology providers and landlords are with European firms because the court is located in Europe — in The Hague, Netherlands.
Amending the EBS, therefore, would protect these companies from further American sanctions and would ensure they can still provide services to the ICC.
These legal remedies are a proportional response to the U.S. sanctions. They would allow all parties — the U.S. and the ICC’s supporters — to continue to negotiate instead of bringing international criminal justice to a grinding halt.
Ensuring the survival of the ICC
It’s important to note that including the need to shield businesses from U.S. sanctions in any amended legislation in both Canada and the EU legislation isn’t aimed at helping governments in either Cuba or Iran.
The goal is to protect Canadian and European companies from possible legal action or economic fallout if more sanctions are applied. Most importantly, the aim is to ensure that the ICC continues to operate with as little interruption as possible.
Sanctions may have significant effects on businesses, and what’s been identified as Trump’s penchant for “retributive diplomacy” may compel states — and businesses — to think twice before they act.
But FEMA and EBS provide appropriate countermeasures if and when broader U.S. sanctions on the entire ICC are introduced, or if Canadian and European companies unjustifiably suffer due to the imposition of new sanctions.
The ICC is the international organization with the ability to deliver justice and support victims. It’s the “court of last resort” that only gets involved when offending states are unwilling or unable to do so.
National security concerns in the U.S., Canada and the EU stem as much from the committing of mass atrocities as they do from other types of global crimes. That’s why it’s so important for states to support international criminal justice efforts by fulsomely supporting the ICC.
Laszlo Sarkany does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
During the first COVID-19 lockdown, we were both mothers trying to stay sane. Our chats often revolved around nappies, feeding, sleep deprivation and motherhood chaos. Between laughter and exhaustion, cloth nappies kept coming up in conversation.
Just the thought of all that laundry was enough to make us tired. Sure they would help reduce the 4,000–6,000 disposable nappies sent to landfill per child each year, but would they be detrimental to our wellbeing?
Perhaps our initial hesitation stemmed from the prevalent narrative that sustainability means sacrifice. You do something because it’s good for the planet, but that often comes at a cost to you: eat less meat, fly less, buy less stuff. When a sustainable choice feels like a daily sacrifice, it’s no surprise people end up quitting.
Yet something about cloth nappies felt different. As we became familiar with the online community of #ClothBumMums, the tone was refreshingly upbeat. These mums were driven to use cloth nappies because they enjoyed doing so, not because they felt guilty about throwing away reusables. They certainly didn’t appear to be missing the convenience of throwaway nappies. If anything, they radiated happiness and beamed with pride.
Curious about this, we set out to explore what was going on behind the scenes. Our study captured the daily experiences of 27 mothers using cloth nappies. Over seven days, participants recorded their routines through visual and verbal diaries, followed by group discussions where they reflected on their journey.
Our findings flipped the sacrifice narrative completely. Yes, the early days might be daunting. As one mum told us: “Sometimes it can be quite a lot of work, and I’ve always said that to people, especially in the early days of having a baby … If it’s too much for you and it’s proving detrimental to your mental health, buy a disposable.”
But once parents developed their own systems over time — figuring out routines, storage and washing hacks — a transformation occurred. This was evident during our focus group conversations following the seven-day diary period, when many mums said they had started to find joy and reassurance in the process. “The rest of the house can be absolute chaos, but my nappy box is tidy,” one told us, “and that makes me really, really happy.”
The joy of reusables
Through these stories, we identified the “wellbeing cycle of sustainable engagement”. This pattern starts with initial motivation, followed by a trial-and-error phase when the challenges can temporarily lower wellbeing.
However, once people establish effective routines — the mastery stage — wellbeing spikes significantly. This cycle often ends with advocacy, where parents become champions of the practice, helping others to get started.
Underpinning this process is what we call the “burden–reward paradox”: chores that once felt like a burden, once under control, can become a source of pride and satisfaction. What once looked like inconvenience transforms into a symbol of capability, care and purpose. Another parent told us:
I love it … I like it when there’s a big pile of nappies and they’re all dry enough, and I’m watching TV stuffing them … [I] definitely enjoy the washing of nappies more than I thought I would – definitely a niche hobby, I think.
Using cloth nappies can be a joyful experience for parents and baby. Soft Light/Shutterstock
In the case of cloth nappies at least, our research challenges the sacrifice-based narrative of eco-environmental messaging. Guilt or pressure might encourage people to start making sustainable choices – but only when these choices bring joy, happiness, pride or a sense of purpose are these actions likely to last.
And the environmental benefits are hard to ignore. UK children go through the equivalent of roughly 700 million car miles a year in disposable nappies. Switching to reusables, even for part of the time, can make a real dent in household emissions.
By flipping the sacrifice-based narrative, brands, campaigners and policymakers can be more serious about sustaining long-term green behaviour. Rather than telling people what to give up, show them what they can gain: wellbeing, confidence and community.
The lesson here goes far beyond nappies. As author Isabel Losada writes in The Joyful Environmentalist, sustainability doesn’t have to be grim or guilt-ridden. It can be creative, empowering – even joyful. The #ClothBumMum community illustrates that positive emotions — pride, mastery, connection — can be more powerful motivators than guilt or sacrifice.
So, perhaps it’s time we stop asking people to sacrifice things for the planet — and start showing them how living sustainably can feel good. Cloth nappies may seem like a niche item, but they hold a powerful insight: when sustainability is joyful not duty, everyone wins.
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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Watching a film about dementia is, ordinarily, a sobering activity. We watch someone become imprisoned in the temporal chaos of their mind. We empathise with the family members nobly trying their best to do what’s right. We leave the film in a fog of melancholia, having been reminded of how sad the condition is.
And dementia is sad. But the stories we tell about it need not only be a premature elegy for someone still living. There is more for filmmakers to think about here: when does “the rest of our lives” stop mattering? How do we love those profoundly changed by illness? What is it like when the concept of “now” itself becomes unfamiliar?
A Kind of Madness, from director Christiaan Olwagen, examines how love is redefined when dementia shatters a shared sense of reality. The film follows elderly couple Elna (Sandra Prinsloo) and Dan (Ian Roberts) as they flee from the great obstacle to their joint happiness: residential care.
After breaking Elna out of the care home where she was placed by her adult children, the couple escapes across the South African countryside, Elna reliving the exploits of the rebel bride she once was (and sometimes believes she still is), as Dan tries to save them both from a life flattened by loss.
The trailer for A Kind of Madness.
In one moving scene, Elna insists: “We can start over; it’s never too late.” Dan decides she might just be right. His own reality, overburdened by loss, pales beside Elna’s, a world which, though certainly clouded by confusion and fear, is also filled with beauty, affection, playfulness and the hope in a better future that once defined their love.
While the film does not minimise the horrors dementia brings into family life, it also does not linger there. Instead, it turns toward a deeper question: what do we do with the love we have for someone who faces this illness? A Kind of Madness suggests that a person’s wellbeing may depend as much on how that question is answered as on any form of medical care.
Dementia in Rose of Nevada
A Kind of Madness steers clear of the melancholy dread characteristic of many films about dementia. Rose of Nevada, directed by Mark Jenkin, is steeped in it, but in an entirely new and unsettling way.
A casual viewing of the film might consider dementia thematically peripheral to the central storyline, which follows three Cornish fishermen stranded in 1993, a time-slip three decades past. Yet I would argue that Rose of Nevada is less a tale of supernatural time travel and more about what it really means when someone’s relationship to time is dramatically altered through disease or otherwise.
This theme is embodied by Mrs Richards (Mary Woodvine), an elderly woman seemingly affected by dementia. Mrs Richards’s presence primes the viewer to consider the time-slip not simply as a supernatural phenomenon, but as something profoundly human.
When Nick (George MacKay), a young fisherman, finds himself in what should be his home, but isn’t, he understandably protests: “My name is Nick Dyer! I was born in 1996!” Mrs Richards, appearing as her younger self in 1993, regards him with the same pity that will one day be turned on her.
Through this eerie inversion, which sees a young, healthy fisherman entrenched in the same kind of disorientation that often characterises dementia, Jenkin opens a new avenue for relating to dementia – the uncanny sensation of not knowing where, when or who you are, of being a stranger in once-familiar surroundings.
The cast of Rose of Nevada discuss the film.
What makes Jenkin’s new film so unusual is how it takes those experiences and relocates them away from the one character actually suffering from dementia. The young are not treated as outsiders in the same way that the elderly are. Nick and Mrs Richards could not be more different on the surface, but there is a poignant parallel between the two characters.
In showing a young man met with pity as he struggles to assert the basic facts of his identity, the film invites us to set aside our habitual assumptions about dementia and reconsider how we relate to those who live with it. The result is that dementia symptoms are defamiliarised – made strange and unsettling – and a pervasive sense of dread emerges as both characters and audience confront the unsettling possibility that no single, stable reality exists.
Any successful film provides new spaces in which to think about and relate to human experiences. Both A Kind of Madness and Rose of Nevada shift the viewing platform away from the stale master narrative of dementia we know so well, to consider new perspectives.
This is important. How we think about dementia is coloured not only by the stories we see in popular culture, but by the perspectives these stories privilege. These two films are a corrective to a body of cinematic and literary work that has yet to fully recognise the persistent humanity of people living with a disease that renders life non-linear, confounding and painful, but nevertheless resiliently human.
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Andrea Holck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Amid growing public concern over migration and a political threat from Reform UK, the Labour government has proposed sweeping reforms to the asylum and refugee system. The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, says the plans will address an “out of control” asylum system.
By restricting the rights of refugees, the proposals aim to make Britain a “less attractive” destination for people who arrive without documentation. But they also risk making an already-bureaucratic system even harder for refugees to navigate – and for an overstretched Home Office to administer.
Central to the proposals are changes to refugees’ rights to settle in the UK. Currently, people who are granted asylum (recognised by the government as refugees) can apply for settled status after five years, giving them a pathway to potential citizenship and a stable future. Under the new plans, the wait to apply for settled status will be extended to 20 years. Refugees would need to reapply to remain in Britain every two and a half years.
The precise conditions for such “earned settlement” are still to come, but these plans indicate that being in work or education will be central.
The potential for family reunification, the route through which refugees can sponsor close family members to join them in Britain, will be restricted to those in work or study and even then reunification is not guaranteed.
These proposals mean that people who have been recognised as needing humanitarian protection will be under constant review. For a Home Office already struggling to manage an application backlog, the addition of a sizeable number of reviews each year will add even further pressure and expense. The Refugee Council estimates that were this policy in place today, it would mean potentially reviewing the status of “1.4 million people between now and 2035” at a cost of £730 million.
For refugees, this change will increase their insecurity and hinder integration. Finding housing, employment and education opportunities are all made harder with insecure status. The emotional burden of that insecurity – two decades of trying to integrate, with the threat of removal hanging over them throughout – is considerable.
A hardline stance on deportation
Mahmood is proposing changes to legal frameworks and the asylum appeals system, to make it easier to remove “failed” asylum seekers. This “hard-headed approach” introduces the possibility of deporting families “who have a safe home country they can return to”.
With Reform UK proposing a widespread deportation programme if elected, the current government risks legitimising the detention and removal of children who may have spent their childhood in the UK.
The question remains of how far a Labour government is willing to go in to order to apply such a policy. Will they (and their voters) be happy to see images of families and young children detained and deported? Will this be seen by ministers as an acceptable cost in order to claim the government has “restored order” to the UK’s borders?
Removing support for asylum seekers
The government is currently legally obligated to support asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute. This obligation is partly what’s led to the controversial reliance on hotels to house people awaiting a decision on their claims.
The government wants to revoke this duty and make it a discretionary “power” of government.
Support and accommodation will be removed from asylum seekers found to have committed a crime, including illegal working. It will also be revoked if asylum seekers refuse to be moved or are found to be “disruptive in accommodation”. It is unclear if the government will want to pursue this path and remove all support from people who cannot legally be removed from the country. Adding to street homelessness is not the sign of an effective policy.
The government will also “require individuals to contribute towards the cost of their asylum support where they have some assets or income”. With ministers adamant that this will not mean confiscating family heirlooms, as was the case in Denmark, the effect of this is likely to be minimal. Very few people fleeing conflict and persecution travel with considerable assets.
A more significant contribution is expected from those with the right to work. The main problem here is that most asylum seekers in Britain are currently denied the right to work, with the exception of those who have been in the asylum system for over 12 months and who fit a limited range of skilled roles. Extending the right to work further would mean a reduced reliance on the state for housing and greater pathways to integration. But this is not part of the proposals.
The message of these proposals is clear – asylum seekers should be docile guests with no right to complain about the conditions of their accommodation (which have been notably horrific) or about the denial of their rights.
Safe and legal routes
The government has restated its commitment to “safe and legal routes” to Britain, and will introduce an annual cap on the number of arrivals. Communities would also have the opportunity to sponsor specific refugees, and there would be a limited route for highly-skilled refugees. Refugees arriving through these routes would have a ten-year path to settled status.
These proposals expand the possibility of safe and legal routes beyond current schemes for groups from Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Ukraine.
They also show a renewed emphasis on refugee sponsorship, making the case that communities should have a say in supporting refugees. In a divisive political climate, this is a positive move that will encourage integration.
But there’s a risk it could operate in place of, rather than alongside, government support to protect the rights of refugees. And that developing more safe and legal routes could be used to justify hardline measures directed towards asylum seekers already in Britain.
Home Office research has indicated that social networks, language and cultural connections are the most significant factors influencing decisions and that deterrent measures have little effect on number arriving in the UK.
Rising asylum applications are an indication of the unstable world we live in. Seeking to evade responsibilities for supporting refugees will not change that.
Then there are the political challenges to navigate. Will the British public be supportive of the removal of people who have been neighbours and community members for a decade?
As the last Conservative government found, talking tough does not in itself fix the asylum system. It very often exacerbates the failures of the system, distracts attention and drives resentment towards asylum seekers and refugees.
Jonathan Darling receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. He is a trustee of the No Accommodation Network.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Estrella Luna-Diez, Associate Professor in Plant Pathology, School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham
The mighty Feanedock Oak in Derbyshire has provided an anchor habitat for many lifeforms, including people, for more than 200 years.Lucy Neal, CC BY-NC-SA
The Feanedock Oak stands out so clearly in Derbyshire’s section of the National Forest, you’d think it was calling to you. Surrounded by open fields, hawthorn hedges and young beech forest, a majestic old oak like this anchors the English countryside.
As the highest expression of our woodlands, oaks support more life in the UK than any other native tree. At the foot of the Feanedock oak, you can hear and see – at a glance – wrens, blackbirds, spiders, squirrels, song thrush, hoverflies, butterflies, blackcaps, woodlouse, ants and chiffchaffs. For more than two centuries, it has provided an anchor habitat, including for humans – a tumbled-down dwelling lies under its shade.
How well any English oak (Quercus robur) thrives affects everything living on and around it, from canopy to soil. In recent years of heat and drought, the Feanedock Oak has lost two large boughs.
In the summer of 2023, dendrochronologists – who research and date trees through their growth rings – took samples from the tree’s trunk to study its “healthy” and “poor” years of growth. They counted 195 rings but did not get to the centre of the tree – so it was probably seeded in the early 19th century, if not earlier. As a sapling, it would have greeted Derbyshire miners walking across the fields from nearby villages to work in the newly-dug coal shafts or the many industrial potteries in the area.
More than 200 years later, in July 2023, the Feanedock Oak (now measuring around 120 feet) played a central role in Ring of Truth. This creative collaboration between tree scientists and artists from the Walking Forest collective imagined a legal case set in the year 2030 between a claimant, the oak (in whose shadow the case was heard), and the UK government.
Ring of Truth’s imagined court case is heard at the Timber Festival, July 2023. RB Films, CC BY-NC-SA
The counsel for the claimant – real-life rights of nature lawyer Paul Powlesland – set out his argument to the judge and jury, claiming the government had breached legal obligations set out in the 2008 Climate Change Act. Scientists from the University of Birmingham – including one of us (Bruno) – acted as expert witnesses, bringing evidence of the threats posed to the tree from increased heat, atmospheric CO₂, soil damage and disease.
After hearing all the evidence, the assembled audience – in the role of jury – voted for their verdict. Many were acutely conscious that the claimant had been standing in this spot far longer than anyone else present – a silent witness to the damage done by humans on the environment and landscape. They ordered the secretary of state for climate and ecological breakdown (as the job is known in 2030) to cease breaching legal obligations to protect this and all “anchor oaks”, and the communities that thrive or suffer with them.
That powerful moment under the Feanedock Oak opened a door to a deeper question: how and what do trees remember?
Until recently, little was known about how memory might function in long-lived organisms like trees which experience decades, even centuries, of shifting environmental pressures. So this is what our multidisciplinary research collaboration – featuring artworks, performances and even a musical composition as well as groundbreaking science – set out to discover.
On the Memory of Trees, by Scott Wilson, was composed using data collated by the Membra project.
How trees’ memories work
For trees, memory is not a metaphor but a biological reality, written into their cells. One of the most remarkable forms this takes is epigenetic memory: the ability of a tree to record its life experiences and allow those experiences to shape its future, without changing the sequence of its DNA.
As Membra (full name: Understanding Memory of UK Treescapes for Better Resilience and Adaptation), we’ve studied a number of ecologically vital and culturally significant UK species including oak, ash, hazel, beech and birch. Together, they have helped us understand how trees register and respond to environmental stress, offering a powerful glimpse into how their memories are carried through woodlands.
At the heart of this process is DNA methylation, where chemical tags known as methyl groups are added to the tree’s DNA over time. While not rewriting the genetic code, they do alter how it is read. These chemical signatures can turn genes on or off, dial responses up or down, and fundamentally shift how a tree grows, adapts, or defends itself. In oaks, for example, long-term drought exposure over decades is associated with changes in DNA methylation, suggesting that trees may adjust their gene expression in response to repeated stress.
These epigenetic memories may allow trees to respond more quickly to drought, disease or climate extremes, and could even be passed to the next generation. In some plant species, this kind of inheritance is well documented, but in long-lived trees, it remains an open question – one with critical implications for forest regeneration and resilience.
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So far, our research has shown trees respond to stress in ways that can extend well beyond the immediate event. Exposure to drought or high CO₂, for example, can leave lasting marks on a tree’s growth and internal chemistry, and may shape how it responds to future conditions. But the strength of this memory appears to depend on the nature of the stress: it is more pronounced when the stress is particularly strong, such as disease, or when it occurs repeatedly over time, such as chronic drought.
A surprising result came from oak, where we observed that DNA methylation itself changes depending on the time of year – with methylation levels lowest in early spring, then increasing as the seasons progress. This suggests the imprinting of memory in trees may be far more dynamic than previously thought, and that the timing of stress events within the growing season could influence how strongly that memory is encoded.
All our studied species and associated environmental conditions have now been sequenced. In every case, we have found evidence of these memories of past stresses. In ash trees, for example, we’ve begun to detect methylation changes linked to ash dieback pressure, offering clues as to how trees regulate their defences over time as a disease progresses.
Trees are certainly resilient. They bend, adapt and endure, holding the memory of storms and seasons within their very bodies. But even their deep-rooted strength has limits. The challenges they now face are faster, more frequent and more severe than at any point in their evolutionary history.
This means what we are learning from their memories is not just a story of survival, but a warning. They are telling us there could come a point when they can no longer cope.
Even young trees remember
It is easy to be awed by a centuries-old oak. But what often goes unnoticed is the quiet crisis beneath the canopy. Across many UK woodlands, the next generation is missing.
Surveys show steep declines in most species of young trees (seedlings and saplings) due to a growing list of pressures: prolonged drought, warming temperatures, shifting herbivore populations, and an expanding wave of pests and pathogens. According to a study of nine sites in England and Scotland, co-authored by one of us (Bruno) and currently under review, the sapling mortality rate has increased from 16.2% in the period up to 2000 to 30.9% two decades later.
In some species such as elm and now ash, diseases have brought populations close to the point of lack of regeneration – when a woodland can no longer sustain itself. To counter this threat, young trees must be highly adaptable – not just in form, but at the molecular level. At Membra, scientists are exploring whether young trees imprint environmental stress more readily than older ones, and whether that memory, recorded through changes in DNA methylation, influences their survival.
One way we have tested such transgenerational changes is to expose trees (oak and hazel) to the elevated levels of CO₂ that are expected in the UK by 2050. This was done in the Birmingham Institute for Forest Research (Bifor) facility in a Staffordshire woodland – one of the world’s largest climate change experiments, where tree “arrays” (circular patches of woodland) are exposed to 150 parts per million (ppm) of CO₂ above ambient concentrations.
Membra’s research there has found that the offspring of trees exposed to these CO₂ levels respond very differently to further environmental stressors – in ways that can make them more resilient. For example, acorns from CO₂-exposed oaks were notably larger and their seedlings showed both faster growth and improved resistance to pathogens like powdery mildew – a strong sign that environmental conditions experienced by parent trees can shape offspring resilience.
To date, molecular analysis shows the inherited memory of this exposure is imprinted in the tree genes that are involved in defence mechanisms. The direct link with resilience should be identified in the next few years as our data analysis progresses.
Strikingly, these beneficial effects were most pronounced during “mast” years, when trees produce a bumper crop of seeds, suggesting that the reproductive cycles of mature oaks as well as resource availability are key to the oaks’ successful inheritance of stress-adaptive traits. Similarly, seedlings from oak trees that had undergone repeated drought exposure have shown increased drought tolerance – which suggests some trees may “prime” their offspring to be more resilient in the face of repeated climate stress.
Our work also shows that young trees can be artificially primed for resilience. For instance, early treatment with certain natural compounds enhances oak seedlings’ resistance to powdery mildew disease, triggering biochemical and transcriptional responses that allow them to mount a faster and stronger defence. This priming acts like a kind of immunological memory – in this case not inherited but induced – and could potentially open up new avenues for improving forest health and regeneration.
Importantly, species differ widely in how they pass on environmental experiences to their progeny. Hazel trees subjected to the same elevated CO₂ conditions in the Bifor woodland produced both smaller nuts and seedlings that often failed to thrive after germination. So, rather than assuming a one-size-fits-all strategy for seed sourcing, forestry managers may need to tailor decisions based on species-specific responses to past environmental stresses. Recognising the importance of parental environmental history, especially for stressors like drought, could shape how we select and prepare the next generation of trees.
This may also mean rethinking how and when we collect seeds. In species such as oak, collecting from mast years may improve the odds of transmitting beneficial adaptive traits. In all cases, understanding how trees’ memory works, not just within a tree’s lifetime but across generations, offers a crucial tool for building more adaptive, resilient treescapes in this rapidly changing world.
Tree rings such as those sampled from the Feanedock Oak record much more than just a tree’s age. They hold evidence of how trees respond to changing climates, rising carbon levels and extreme events.
Studies using these natural archives (the rings) have shown that rising atmospheric CO₂ is already changing how trees grow and photosynthesise. In some oaks, it has led to faster growth and more carbon being stored – a hopeful sign.
But this acceleration may come with hidden costs. Trees that grow quickly not only reach maturity sooner but may also die younger, potentially limiting the long-term stability of forest carbon storage.
And these shifts are not just a concern for the trees themselves – they ripple outward. Faster growth can alter forest structure, affecting biodiversity and resilience. In the UK and globally, trees face an escalating cascade of challenges including pollution, drought, storms and disease – and increasingly, these pressures overlap.
Understanding how different trees’ memories will mediate their responses to new, more stressful conditions is key to predicting which species will thrive, adapt or decline. Artificially priming young trees by exposing them early to stress may enhance their memory and survival.
In recent years, a wave of tree planting, often tied to carbon offsetting schemes, is rapidly reshaping landscapes across much of the UK. National and local governments have launched large-scale initiatives such as the England Tree Action Plan. These programmes aim to restore canopy cover, improve biodiversity and contribute to net-zero goals. Local authorities, environmental charities, landowners and corporate offsetting partners are among those overseeing the planting, with guidance and funding provided by the Forestry Commission and Defra.
However, the choice of species is often constrained by budget and availability, which can result in limited diversity and mismatches between trees and local ecological conditions. Fast-growing species like sycamore, alder, and hybrid poplar are frequently used, while slower-growing native species with deeper ecological value may be underrepresented.
Planting trees without understanding their long-term ecological roles – or their capacity to remember and adapt – also risks repeating old mistakes that could compromise long-term resilience. Selecting the right trees to face future climate threats requires more than just numbers. A forest full of fast-growing, short-lived trees may have a very different effect on the local ecosystem than one with long-lived, memory-bearing individuals. In the worst-case scenario, such woodlands will fail to regenerate and die out.
Climate models indicate a future of warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers in the UK, which will challenge many native species. Diseases such as ash dieback have already transformed landscapes, with over 80% of ash trees expected to be lost in many areas. This is not just a loss of a species but a loss of the biodiversity that depends on it.
Our work highlights the value of sourcing seed from trees that have survived historic drought and understanding how memory, resilience and adaptation are embedded in the biology of many older individuals. Future woodlands will need to blend ancient wisdom with modern science, combining genetic diversity, environmental memory and community stewardship to thrive.
This legal shift complements the scientific insight from Membra: that mature woodlands, with deep memory and biodiversity, are not replaceable. And as Ring of Truth’s imagined court case made clear, it is a travesty if trees such as the Feanedock Oak are thought of as little more than machines to extract human-created carbon from the atmosphere.
Their social, cultural and ecological roles are vast. Listening to Indigenous and local communities with long-held tree knowledge, and empowering tree guardians in cities and villages alike, is vital to fostering a meaningful public practice of tree stewardship.
As one Walking Forest participant put it, time spent with trees creates space and renewed agency for surviving the climate and nature crises: “We are like trees. The stronger we root and allow ourselves, like them, to be nurtured by those around us, the better we are at withstanding the strongest of storms”.
Another said: “I see the bigger picture now, of how we are related to the forest – at one with nature because we too are part of the ecosystem.”
By weaving together artistic performance, scientific insight and ancestral knowledge, the Walking Forest collective has sought to expand how we understand our relationship with woodlands – connecting women, trees and ecological justice across time.
One powerful example is the 107-year-old Monterey Pine planted by suffragette Rose Lamartine Yates, the last known survivor of a historic arboretum planted by women activists at Eagle House in Batheaston, Somerset. A place of recovery for women who were politically active as part of the suffrage movement, this was the home of the Blathwayt family – and known as the Suffragettes’ Retreat.
Suffragettes Adela Pankhurst and Annie Kenney at Eagle House in Batheaston, Somerset, in 1910. Linley Blathwayt/Wikimedia
Between April 1909 and July 1911, at least 47 trees were planted in the grounds of Eagle House to commemorate individual suffragists and suffragettes, many of whom had been imprisoned and tortured. The arboretum afforded the suffragettes an opportunity to imagine the future into which their young trees would grow.
The trees were all bulldozed in the late 1960s to make way for a housing estate – other than Lamartine Yates’s Monterey Pine, planted in 1909, which survives to this day, protected in a private garden. The seeds of this tree are a touchstone of Walking Forest: we have gathered and propagated them, shared them with communities, and created performances and ceremonies that honour the tree’s legacy – connecting past and future generations (of trees and people) in a project to create a woodland that mirrors the original Eagle House arboretum.
Since 2018, Walking Forest artists have travelled overland to UN climate talks to gift seeds from the Monterey Pine to women and youth activists, climate negotiators, Indigenous community leaders and environmental campaigners – connecting with them in this story of resilience and renewal.
In another act of collective mourning and protest, a 100-year-old silver birch cut down for the HS2 rail link was carried through Coventry by more than 40 women during Coventry’s year as City of Culture in 2021. The act made visible the loss of ancient woodland and connected it with human grief, resistance and care.
These stories are not isolated. Across the UK, trees have become flashpoints for protest and protection – from the Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian’s Wall to Sheffield Council’s felling of more than 5,000 healthy street trees between 2014 and 2018 as part of road maintenance.
Walking Forest has collaborated with Membra not only to share scientific knowledge but to offer new ways of knowing through storytelling, ritual and creative action. As climate pressures grow, so too does public awareness of how irreplaceable mature trees are.
We are still only beginning to uncover the complexity of tree memory. Future research may reveal exactly how memory is transferred between generations, how trees prepare for challenges they’ve never seen, and how entire forests might adapt together.
But our collaboration between scientists, artists and communities is already helping to shift how people think about trees, from passive backdrop to learning beings. Through this work, we understand that trees are not just survivors – they are storytellers, record keepers and even teachers.
As our understanding of their memory deepens, so too does our responsibility to listen, learn and act. The future of forests depends not just on what trees can remember, but on what we choose not to forget.
A recent return to the Feanedock Oak, two years after its case was argued in Ring of Truth, found the tree still standing but visibly altered. Its two large, fallen limbs lay cloaked in bramble and nettle. But under its canopy, foxes burrowed, birds sang and fruit trees flowered.
Though imbalanced, this grand old oak holds its ground – a tree of memory and now a symbol of care. We will return again and again to honour its survival, and admire its provision for so many other species in the natural world. The tree reminds us that people need ways to anchor ourselves too, as we navigate uncertain times ahead.
Estrella Luna-Diez receives funding from UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
Anne-Marie Culhane receives funding from UKRI and the NERC.
Bruno Barcante Ladvocat Cintra receives funding from the NERC.
Additional thanks to Lucy Neal, member of the Walking Forest collective, for her written and photographic contributions to this article. Lucy was the creator of Ring of Truth, performed at the Timber Festival in July 2023.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Parveen Akhtar, Senior Lecturer: Politics, History and International Relations, Aston University
Just 74 days into her new role as home secretary, Shabana Mahmood has unveiled what she calls “the most substantial reform to the UK’s asylum system in a generation”.
Immigration is currently viewed as the most important issue facing the country, followed by the economy. While many, especially within the Labour party, have long found border control an awkward terrain, Mahmood’s stance is unambiguous: “I just don’t know why we’ve got ourselves in a tangle talking about migration controls on the left of politics … it’s really pretty fundamental to the way a lot of our voters think.”
Her proposals are, broadly, intended to deter illegal immigration by making the UK a less attractive destination for asylum seekers. Mahmood has proposed, among other things: making refugee status more temporary, reforming human rights legislation to make it harder for illegal migrants to remain in the UK and suspending UK visas for countries that refuse to accept returned migrants.
Some on the left of Labour have already condemned the proposals. But figures on the political right have applauded Mahmood’s assertion that uncontrolled asylum and immigration are contributing to social division.
Beyond the policy substance, Mahmood’s Commons delivery attracted praise from the right: confident, assured and like a future leader. Former Conservative minister Michael Gove has called Mahmood the “standout figure” of the current government, describing her as having “a totally coherent worldview”.
How did Mahmood, who once stated that she personally supported a general amnesty for all undocumented workers, become the face of a hardline Labour migration policy, lauded by the political right?
Journey of a politician
Born in Birmingham, to Kashmiri Pakistani Muslim parents, Mahmood spent part of her early childhood in Saudi Arabia, where her father worked as a civil engineer, before returning to Birmingham.
Her family life was steeped in politics. Her father chaired the Birmingham Labour Party and was known locally as an honest broker who mediated neighbourhood disputes. Her mother ran the family’s corner shop – giving Mahmood a “shopkeeper’s daughter” background reminiscent of another formidable woman in British politics. She cites Margaret Thatcher as one of her heroes, alongside Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s first female prime minister.
Her political consciousness sharpened after 9/11. She found herself being held “accountable” by strangers for events thousands of miles away. She had experienced racism before, her first encounter was at age eight. But the post-9/11 shift was of a different magnitude, which she described as a “shock to the system”.
Elected in 2010 as one of the first female Muslim MPs, she quickly entered the shadow cabinet. She avoided frontbench roles under Jeremy Corbyn, citing incompatible economic views. Under Keir Starmer, she served as national campaign coordinator and worked closely with strategist Morgan McSweeney. She is also seen as having played a significant role in the crucial 2021 Batley and Spen byelection.
Mahmood speaks openly about her British Muslim identity and the sense of responsibility that comes with public visibility. “You have to accept the broader role that you have to play,” she has said, noting that many British Muslims instinctively look to her as a representative figure.
And yet, Mahmood’s own electoral base has shifted dramatically. Her majority in Birmingham Ladywood fell from nearly 30,000 in 2019 – one of the largest in the country – to just 3,400 in 2024, after a strong challenge from an independent pro-Gaza candidate.
She has also faced strong criticism for her abstention from a November 2023 vote on an amendment to the King’s Speech calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Mahmood has in recent years assumed a markedly tougher line on immigration. This shift is reflected as much in her language and style, as in the policies she is advocating. Her presentation leans heavily into a no-nonsense, get-the-job-done approach.
She has stressed that she is the “the child of immigrants” whose parents “came here legally” and played by the rules. She establishes a firm boundary between lawful migration and the illegal immigration she argues now defines the broken asylum system.
Reputational shield?
Before becoming home secretary, she had already earned admiration for her handling of what was arguably the most daunting early assignment of the 2024 Labour government. As justice secretary, she faced a prison system running at 99% capacity. She introduced an early release programme that risked perceptions of being “soft on crime,” yet navigated the controversy with minimal turbulence.
A trained barrister who once dreamed of becoming “Kavanagh QC”, Mahmood brings legal expertise and a rule-of-law approach to immigration debates. Themes of “fairness” and “public consent” appear throughout her asylum policy proposals.
Her style is precise, technocratic and intellectually disciplined. These are qualities which help Labour toughen its immigration platform without appearing purely performative.
But Mahmood also plays a symbolic role. When political parties move rightwards on immigration, they often place minority politicians in prominent roles to provide a “reputational shield”. This allows them to advance stricter policies while deflecting accusations of intolerance.
Conservative governments spent more than a decade deploying this strategy in the Home Office. Sajid Javid, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman all embodied the dynamic. Labour, historically, has placed far fewer minorities in top portfolios, which makes Mahmood’s appointment all the more notable. In some respects, Labour now appears to be adopting an approach previously associated with its opponents.
Despite her experience in electoral strategy, Mahmood insists the asylum reforms are not an attempt to win back Reform UK voters or to position Labour tactically. Instead, she frames them as a response to “the genuine concerns of the British people” and an effort to rebuild trust in a system that has lost public confidence. It is a gamble that places the weight of Labour’s promise of competence squarely on the Home Office, and on Mahmood’s ability to deliver it.
Parveen Akhtar has previously received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the British Academy
Pop-up clinics and glossy adverts are selling men a new message: it is time to “check your T” (shorthand for testosterone levels).
The idea is not about treating medical problems but about “optimising” energy, focus and masculinity. With online services offering home blood tests and fast-track access to treatment, testosterone therapy has shifted from specialist medical care to a supposed lifestyle upgrade.
Used appropriately, testosterone therapy can be life-changing. It is prescribed for men who have a medically confirmed deficiency known as hypogonadism, a condition where the body does not produce enough testosterone because the testes or the brain’s hormonal control system are not functioning properly.
This can be caused by injury, infection, genetic problems or chronic illnesses such as obesity and diabetes. When testosterone levels are genuinely low, restoring them can improve mood, sex drive, muscle strength and bone health.
There is also growing research into testosterone’s wider metabolic effects. In men with low testosterone who also have type 2 diabetes, obesity or heart disease, therapy may help improve insulin sensitivity (how effectively the body responds to insulin to regulate blood sugar) as well as fat distribution and blood vessel health.
The testing and diagnosis challenge
Many private “men’s health” and “wellness” clinics promote vague symptoms like tiredness, stress or lack of motivation as possible signs of low testosterone. They encourage men to get tested, at their own expense.
These tests are often done on finger-prick samples rather than on blood drawn from a vein. While finger-prick tests can be quicker and more comfortable, they can also be more prone to error if the sample has not been carefully collected. Venous samples taken by trained staff can be more reliable and provide higher-quality results.
Testosterone levels naturally fluctuate throughout the day, peaking in the early morning and falling later on. That is why doctors recommend testing on two separate mornings, ideally after fasting.
A single, non-fasting test can produce misleadingly high or low results, yet some online providers use just one test before offering expensive treatment packages.
There is no single definition of what counts as “low testosterone”. Reference ranges differ between laboratories, and “normal” varies by age, health and genetics. Some men with lower readings feel perfectly well, while others experience symptoms at the same level.
The body’s response also depends on how sensitive its androgen receptors are (the molecular switches that initiate testosterone’s action inside cells). This means that blood concentration alone does not tell the full story.
Clinical guidelines stress that diagnosis should combine both symptoms and blood results. Many issues blamed on “low T” (fatigue, poor sleep, loss of motivation, weight gain) can often be linked to stress, depression, or lifestyle factors such as alcohol use and inactivity.
An increasing number of men are starting testosterone therapy even though their hormone levels are normal, drawn in by promises of greater vitality, sharper focus and improved physical performance.
Raising testosterone levels above about 12 nanomoles per litre – the standard unit used in blood tests – is unlikely to produce further gains in the areas most linked to testosterone deficiency, such as sexual function, energy or mood. Men already in this range who add therapy may expose themselves to side effects with little or no advantage.
And once treatment begins, the body’s natural hormone production slows down, meaning therapy often becomes long-term. Stopping can lead to a temporary withdrawal-like phase, as the body takes time to restart testosterone production.
When prescribed correctly and monitored carefully, testosterone therapy is generally safe. Earlier fears that it increased prostate cancer risk have largely been disproven, and some studies even suggest it may offer protection.
But other research links testosterone therapy to a slightly higher risk of atrial fibrillation – an irregular heartbeat – and blood clots.
The more immediate concerns are about fertility. Testosterone treatment reduces the brain’s signal that tells the testes to produce both testosterone and sperm. Over time this can lead to infertility, sometimes permanently if therapy continues for more than 3-5 years.
In men who still wish to have children, doctors can add drugs called gonadotrophins, which mimic the brain’s natural fertility hormones to keep the testes producing sperm, but these require specialist management.
Testosterone has become cultural shorthand for strength and virility. When testosterone therapy is viewed as a shortcut to confidence or masculinity rather than a treatment for genuine deficiency, it can trap men in a cycle of self-doubt and dependence.
Exposing a gap
Testosterone is a prescription-only drug for a reason. It needs careful diagnosis, regular blood tests and close supervision by specialists trained in hormone medicine. When men rely on online adverts or convenience clinics instead of proper medical assessment, they risk unnecessary treatment.
Many later turn to health services for reassurance, follow-up or to manage side effects of a therapy they may never have needed – a growing trend that is already stretching endocrinology clinics.
Still, the rise of online clinics has exposed a long-standing gap in men’s health. Many men avoid seeing doctors, and true testosterone deficiency often goes undiagnosed. With proper oversight and stronger links to healthcare systems, these services could help raise awareness without promoting unnecessary treatment.
When used correctly, testosterone restores health. Used carelessly, it risks undermining it – for men and for the healthcare system that supports them.
Daniel Kelly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ellen Ruth Kujawa, Coastal Change Research Fellow, University of Hull; University of Cambridge
Hurricane Melissa devastated Jamaica in late October, killed dozens in Haiti and forced nearly three-quarters of a million Cubans to evacuate. The death toll across the region is still unknown – but Melissa will go down as one of the strongest storms ever recorded.
It also represents a bellwether for a new era of dangerous hurricanes, driven by climate change. These storms are becoming increasingly violent and harder to predict.
Melissa’s devastation may look like a story of wind and water, but it speaks to a broader question of climate justice: who gets access to life-saving information when a storm strikes? Accurate forecasts gave the governments and residents of Jamaica, Haiti and Cuba time to prepare. This was particularly crucial, as Melissa intensified rapidly from a moderate storm to a major hurricane in less than 24 hours.
The potential decrease in forecast quality this foreshadows will not be borne equally. Hurricanes don’t treat all places uniformly – and neither do NWS forecasts. In my research on hurricane forecasting across the Caribbean, I’ve found that these inequalities already shape how different places receive and use lifesaving information.
Puerto Rico
Melissa underlined just how essential high-quality hurricane forecasts are – allowing officials in the Caribbean precious time to prepare for the storm’s arrival. But my research in Puerto Rico shows that the production and distribution of hurricane forecasts in the Caribbean is more complicated – and more entangled with issues of justice – than it might appear.
Over two years of interviews with meteorologists and emergency managers, I found that Puerto Rican decision-makers perceive – with some supporting evidence, including delays in information availability and deferred equipment maintenance – that their island is marginalised in terms of the forecasts it receives.
Meteorology is often framed as an objective science, but it is deeply political, embedded within systems of state power – and my research suggests that Puerto Rico’s second-tier colonial status extends to its access to forecast knowledge.
Puerto Rico’s vulnerability was widely discussed after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017, killing nearly 3,000 people. The island’s vulnerability to hurricanes well known – between 1851 and 2019, nine major hurricanes made landfall in Puerto Rico, the third-highest number of major hurricanes in the Caribbean. Decades of infrastructural neglect, economic austerity and political powerlessness have compounded that vulnerability.
Forecasts are crucial to decision-making in Puerto Rico. They inform evacuations and requests for federal aid, and they help to plan how to protect critical infrastructure. But their usefulness differs from that of mainland forecasts. As one Puerto Rican meteorologist told me: “A perfect forecast for [the continental United States] is between five to ten miles; five to ten miles for us can be disaster or not disaster.”
Puerto Rico’s small size means that even a ten-mile error in a hurricane’s predicted track can be the difference between a near miss and a catastrophic landfall. For Puerto Rico, a track error that barely matters for a continental state can spell the difference between a glancing blow and a direct hit. In other words, what counts as a “perfect forecast” for a mainland state looks very different for a small island.
Inequality in forecasting
But the issues go deeper than this. Puerto Rican meteorologists told me the forecasts they receive are designed primarily to be applicable to the continental US and later adapted for Caribbean islands. One meteorologist told me: “Mostly it’s us here by ourselves.” Many believe the forecasts they receive are inferior to those that their counterparts use in the continental US, and that they receive less institutional support from the NWS.
When people making life-and-death decisions doubt the quality of the data they rely on, the resulting uncertainty has the potential to undermine both their confidence and public trust.
And there is evidence to justify decision-makers’ doubts. Puerto Rico received storm surge maps – maps of likely storm-generated increases in coastal water levels in 2017, several years after the continental US. Hawaii received them at the same time, suggesting the delay stems from island geography rather than territorial status.
Puerto Rico’s on-island radar unit, which failed as Hurricane Maria made landfall, had been flagged for maintenance in 2011, six years before Maria hit. Interviewees suggested to me that the unit would have been repaired or replaced more quickly in the continental US.
These examples suggest that inequality in forecasting isn’t just perceived – it’s demonstrable: from delayed storm-surge maps to neglected radar maintenance. Forecasts may appear objective and technical, but they are inseparable from their political and institutional contexts. Puerto Rico depends on hurricane forecasts but in practice, does not receive the same level of meteorological knowledge as the continental US.
The Trump administration has already proposed cuts and restructuring that would reduce funding for public forecasting and expand the role of private weather firms. This risks prioritising profit over public safety. It’s particularly dangerous in an above-average hurricane season, and seems likely to worsen as the Trump administration continues to push for decreased funding to the NWS.
When political pressure narrows the NWS remit, vulnerable places such as Puerto Rico risk losing the early warnings they depend on. Storms such as Hurricane Melissa and Hurricane Maria test the capacity of governments and institutions to act on forecast knowledge.
But that knowledge is not neutral. Forecasts do more than predict weather – their prioritisation effectively determines whose safety counts most. As hurricanes intensify in the region, the fairness of forecast systems – who they protect, and who they neglect – will become one of the defining questions of climate justice.
Ellen Ruth Kujawa received funding from a Cambridge Trust Scholarship, and grants from the Cambridge Department of Geography, the Worts Traveling Scholars Fund, the Smuts Memorial Fund, and the Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Association.
