Tree Day seeks to celebrate trees, raise awareness about Ireland’s native trees and to show what you can do to help the trees in your local area.

As everyone knows, tress take in carbon dioxide and give out the oxygen we breathe. What you may not know is that one fully mature tree provides enough oxygen each day for a family of four. But trees do so much more than that. They provide shelter to countless insects, birds and animals. They give us shelter from rain and shade us from sun. The provide wood for our fires and houses. The give us berries and nuts with which to eat.

So what can I do?

A start is to take five minutes (as hard as that can be nowadays) to look at a tree in your area and appreciate the tree itself. Take the time to be with the tree, view it not as an object, but as a living being.

Something else you can do is to get involved with local planting projects. These projects take seeds given off local trees, start them growing in a “creche” of sorts until they are year-old saplings, and transfer the saplings into the ground so they can grow into trees. This helps to preserve Ireland’s native trees, as well as to replace some of the trees that fall victim to deforestation every day.

You can also look out for the trees that are native to Ireland. Here are a few examples:

• Elder Tree: Elder trees are smaller than most, coming to about 6 meters in height and usually found in hedgegrows. In Spring, they flower with white flowers that later develop into small berries that range from dark-purple to black in color. Birds love these berries as a snack.
• Hazel Tree: Hazel trees are usually found underneath the canopy of oak or ash trees, but can also be found in the Burren. More of a shrub than a tree, hazels typically grow to around 5 meters in height. The nuts that a hazel produces are edible, but trees that are more in shade don’t produce as many nuts.
• Hawthorn Tree: Often spoken of in Irish myth and lore, hawthorns are a very recognisable, being bushy looking and with their distinctive light grey color, turning pinkish brown with age. Hawthorns produce small, juicy red berries that birds love to eat.
• Rowan Tree: The rowan tree, also called the mountain ash, is a small tree. It is able to grow in poor soil, giving it the ability to grow in poor, mountainous soil, hence the name mountain ash. The rowan produces small red berries that birds love to eat. These help to spread the rowan around the country.

These are just a few examples of trees native to Ireland. You can find out about more of them from the Native Woodland Trust.

And lastly, one way to help our native trees is to Reduce, Re-use and Recycle.             The less we use, the fewer trees that need to be cut down.