A Tree Calendar
We have been thinking about our calendar and ways in which we organise time. We have also been thinking about all the trees around Birmingham. There are roughly over a million trees in Birmingham, some old, some new; some native, some not. At the start of each lunar month we will be sharing some that have stood out to us – A Tree Calendar!
21st September is a New Moon, the New Moon of this lunar month. Typically, there aren’t names for the whole month but rather the full moon of the lunar cycle. This upcoming one is the Harvest Moon (Anglo-Saxon) which is on the 7th October. This moon is also known as Binaakwe-giizis (Falling Leaves Moon) by Ojibwe and Whiringa-ā-nuku by Maori to name just a few
It is also called Chuseok in Korea and is a major mid-autumn harvest festival and a three-day holiday in South Korea celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunisolar calendar on the full moon.
Why Lunar months you ask?
When thinking about how and when we wanted to share our pictures of trees around Brum we of course though a monthly post would be great.
A month is “is a unit of time, used within calendars, that is approximately as long as a natural phase cycle of the Moon”
Did you know the words “month” and “Moon” share a similar etymological origin, making them cognates?
For millennia, various cultures and civilisations around the world have used the Moon as a calendar. Its phases and cycles were observed and recorded, allowing people to track time. While modern analogue watches mark hours and minutes, ancient civilisations likely prioritised tracking days, weeks, and seasons, they probably weren’t working a 9-5. The Sun would have helped mark the days, and the Moon would have been used to mark weeks, months, and seasons.
In western we typically use a Gregorian calendar month which averages 30.4 days, based on Earth’s orbit around the Sun. We can consider the Gregorian calendar as out of sync for a few reasons.
- The Gregorian calendar’s focus on solar cycles ignores the moon, which impacts life on Earth massively. Lunar rhythms affect ocean tides, farming and agricultural cycles, and even human biology, from sleep patterns to menstrual cycles. By neglecting these rhythms, the Gregorian calendar is detached from the natural world.
- The names of the months within a Gregorian calendar are based on mythology and politics. March honours Mars, the Roman god of war, while July and August were added to glorify Roman emperors Julius Caesar and Augustus. September, October, November, and December come from Latin numbers meaning seven, eight, nine, and ten. Yet, these are now the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th months. These have now led to a mishmash of names and meanings.
- It has colonial roots that keep us disconnected from nature. This calendar was imposed globally during the colonial era and replaced Indigenous timekeeping systems that were deeply tied to local ecosystems. Replacing such systems imposes a Eurocentric view of time and has distanced many of us from cultural knowledge.
There are eight moon phases:
New Moon, Waxing Crescent, First Quarter, Waxing Gibbous, Full Moon, Waning Gibbous, Third Quarter, and Waning Crescent.
Lunations, or synodic/lunar months, measure the time between two consecutive identical phases of the moon (e.g, new moon to new moon) as viewed from Earth. A full lunar month lasts about 29.53 days, meaning there are roughly 12.37 such months in an Earth year.
A challenge arises because there are typically 13 full or new moons in a year. Since the Earth’s movement around the Sun governs the seasons, and a normal year has 365 days (366 in a leap year), roughly every two and a half years, a 13th full moon appears within the year. This additional full moon, which doesn’t fit the usual naming scheme, is called a “Blue Moon.” This makes it difficult to create an accurate, rule-based calendar that takes into consideration both the Moon’s phases, and the yearly season.
Archaeologists have excavated tally sticks, suggesting people counted days, based on Moon phases as early as the Paleolithic age. We also know that our ancient ancestors marked the movements of the Sun from the alignments of stone circles, which mark the solstices.
Ancient civilisations, from the Maya to the Druids to countless Indigenous cultures, followed lunar or ecological calendars that aligned with the rhythms of their environments. These ways of tracking time were also essential frameworks for living in ways that were harmonious with the Earth and the land.
In Celtic culture, trees play an important part in astrology and the zodiac. Within the Celtic Tree Calendar each lunar month is assigned and ruled by different UK native tree. This is also tied in with the old Ogham alphabet and therefore each tree has a corresponding letter.
The Coligny Calendar serves as another example of an attempt to reconcile the cycles of both the Moon and the Sun. It is believed that this system might have been in use for 1,000 years, predating the Celts. It seems plausible that these ancestors used the Moon’s phases to mark days and the Sun’s movement to track the changing seasons.
So, our Tree Calendar is just a small way in which we are trying to be more in sync with the natural world around us.
Tree Calendar 001
Scientific name: Fraxinus excelsior
Common name: Ash
Ward: Stirchley
W3W location: ///safe.escape.dozed
This enormous Ash tree is hidden within a small patch of woodland at the very top of Hazelwell park. It’s trunk is around 2.8m in circumference making it likely to be over 100 years old. The tree was pollarded at some point in its history, possibly following storm damage and now a dense new canopy is visible. In Norse mythology the World Tree or Yggdrasil was Ash. It is an immense and central sacred tree in Norse cosmology. It’s great trunk reached up to the heavens where the gods held their council beneath it’s branches.
Look to the north of the old Ash tree and see a line of great Oaks, some of which have lived through more than three human lifetimes based on their measurements.