The sleeping orchard: August 2025

Its late July, mid-winter in Glenlyon. Its been raining for days, cloud down to ground level, just seven degrees in the orchard. Even in conditions like this, the show must go on. The blueberries are in need of their annual winter prune. The goal is to remove about twenty percent of each bush, lopping out the old, spent canes to make room for the new growth emerging from the crown of the plant.

Its cold and wet but my rain gear is holding up and the winter woollies are keeping me warm despite the conditions. Looking around the orchard it very clear that everything is in hibernation. Dormancy is the prevailing state of all the trees. Nothing appears to be growing, sleeping through the chill and the frost, awaiting the coming change of the season, still two months away.

And yet, if you look very carefully, its clear that not everything is asleep. In these frigid and moist conditions, life is in abundance, growing and blooming and fruiting. Now is the time for another crop to take centre stage - the lichens! Adorning the stems and branches of the fruit trees, lichens of every shape and colour are in their glory.

A lichen as not a single organism, rather it is the symbiosis between two different organisms - a fungus and a blue-green algae. The algae contain chlorophyll and can make carbohydrates through photosynthesis. The algae make these carbohydrates available to the fungus that, in turn, provides the algae with a home and nutrients it needs for its survival.

These ancient partnerships are found all over the world, from the poles to the tropics - and in my Glenlyon orchard in abundance!