Background Information about Carving Morgan Jones Park

This Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) or Conker tree, had become infected by HONEY FUNGUS, and large parts of the crown of the tree had died back as a result of this. For this reason, the tree was to be felled, but it was decided by the Parks Department of Caerphilly County Borough Council, that a sculpture should be made from the stump of the dying tree. So the tree was essentially pollarded - reducing all the branches back to the trunk. This allowed room for manoeuvre when deciding on the subject of the piece.

The pollarding was carried out last year, and this spring, the tree has attempt to regenerate itself, breaking dormant buds that lie just beneath the surface of the bark, but the tree is dying as a result of the infection of Honey Fungus.

So it was decided that a big bracket of the Honey fungus mushrooms should be carved into the trunk, and as the fungus is still active in the stem, may fruit (produce mushrooms) again this coming autumn, as it did last year.

Chestnut wood is not the most durable of woods and with the fungal infection, will rot away as the structure of the cells is broken down by the fungus and eaten by insects (standing deadwood is of greater habitat value that deadwood lying on the ground).

A living sculpture from a dead tree, composed from a decomposing tree, a transitory statement, the nature of things, as we too, slowly return to the earth.

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