Climate, change

This house is built on boulder clay, the debris from the last (Würm) peri-glacial period in Montseny, 12,000 years ago. If I had been alive then I could have stepped out of my back door onto powder snow.

I can’t, because we live in a changed, warmer climate. So warm that palm trees (Phoenix canariensis) have grown here.

Phoenix, the late palm

 But now it’s getting warmer and so a parasitic beetle, the red palm weevil (Rhynchophorus ferrugineus) has invaded Catalunya. The beetles arrived here from the South and have gradually killed off all the Canary Palms in this district. Their larvae

Evil Weevil

 bore holes into the palm, eating out the heart and thus stopping any further growth.

Today we had to cut down the last of our two beautiful Canary Palms. It was full of weevil larvae and I did not want it to become the focus of further infections.

Climate. Changes everything.