Wellingtonia 83

The first Wellingtonia on the small island, having drawn a blank last year. This one, not terribly healthy looking, in a field adjacent to Nunwell House.

With the field not looking very productive, neither having been sown for grain nor mown for hay. Given the food shortages arising from the war in the Ukraine, odd that we should still be in set-aside land, but maybe there is some good reason for it. I hope so, because there did seem to be a lot of land on the island in the same case.

According to reference 2, set-aside is a EU scheme to pay farmers not to grow crops, the idea being to reduce agricultural surpluses in this part of the world.  One might have thought that the party of Brexit, Beet & Barley would be falling over itself to repeal this bit of the Common Agricultural Policy.

While according to my geological map of the Isle of Wight, Nunwell House is sat on the Bagshot Beds, running into the Bembridge limestones and marls, with the chalk downs - Brading Down and Ashey Down (of the sea mark of reference 3) - rising to the south. The only agricultural mention in Wikipedia is about marls being used as a soil improver. Epsom similar to the extent that it sits just beyond the chalk, which rises into the North Downs to the south. On the boundary between the chalk of the Downs and the London Clay of the Thames basin. In the rain shadow of the prevailing south westerly winds. 

So it must be something else which makes our Wellingtonia look a bit healthier than this one. Maybe I should check rainfall, assuming data to be available below county level.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/06/wellingtonia-82.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set-aside.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/08/sea-mark.html.

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