#penny tree

[cchanelpinkk]

[theblondephotographer]

A pretty penny tree...

[palaeoplushies]

Waterfalls walk in Ingleton. Lucky penny tree, waterfalls and beautiful scenery!

[sascerides]

The penny tree by Ambleside.

Everyone who passes by beats a coin into the soft wood of the stump using the rock on top. In this way the stump bears memory of all the people who have passed by. This one is situated near Ambleside on the road towards the Stock Ghyll waterfall.

Other penny trees like this can be seen around the area but this was the one I came by with the most coins in it.

There's a wiki-page about the phenomenon here

152/200 Lake District Photos

[bobweb2-blog]

Penny, Money or Wishing Tree

I've recently been on holiday in Yorkshire (UK) and came across a 'Penny Tree' or 'Money Tree' for the first time. I heard about Penny Trees from my parents-in-law. Information is a bit sketchy, but my father-in-law thinks he first saw them in around 1980 (they've lived in Yorkshire far longer than that). A Penny Tree seems to fill a similar role to that of a wishing well. Coins are embedded in a fallen tree or tree stump, both along the flanks and in the end. Once hammered in with a stone or whatever comes to hand, the coins are held very firmly by the tree and are pretty well immovable. Apparently the foresters/rangers say that such a tree becomes pretty well unusable for lumber as the coins interfere with processing tools so much. The tree in the photograph is at Bolton Abbey, around here (certainly on this path running along parallel to the river, though I may have not recalled the exact location correctly). There is a second Penny Tree on the same path. My in-laws said that there is another Penny Tree in Malham and a quick search came up with this link to Janet's Foss. The description of the Malham tree suggests "add a coin and make a wish with Jennet the queen of the fairies..." A bit more of a poke around on the Internet came up with an article on Wikipedia which links 'Wishing Trees' with other traditions such as 'Wassailing' and 'Clootie Wells'. I'm also reminded of the traditions I saw in Japan earlier in the year, where 'poor fortune' predictions were tied to branches adjacent to temples to negate the forseen ill-fortune, and Shamanic practices of sacrifice and offering to trees and rivers. This entry is also my first tinkering with a couple of applications for the iPhone; I used Darkslide to upload the photo to Flickr having first tweaked the colours and focus a little using Photo fx. I'm no expert photographer, maybe one day I'll take some training in photography - in the meantime I'm indebted to Quoc-Huy for his app recommendations and inspiring photographs in Twitter.