The Plymouth Pear

Now for something a little different.....

We received an e-mail a few weeks back from one of our readers kindly asking if they could supply an article for the blog & we were glad to oblige, especially as the subject was a little different to what you are normally used to on here & we would like to thank John Lamb for the article below.

Hidden Site of Special Scientific Interest by John Lamb

I feel very privileged to write a guest post for this blog, I find the discoveries on this blog to be exciting and a real boys own adventure. So please bear with me as I have something a little bit different to reveal to you. I work for a Plymouth self storage company and my job is to find new storage sites and carry out research on the site before we complete the deal.

When we were looking at our Plymouth site I carried out a few searches and one thing that was raised by the landlords was the fact that the site had a TPO on the site – a Tree Protection Order.  Not only that but it was also classed as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Not knowing what a TPO was, or indeed what a SSSI is I researched it and it turns out we have one of the rarest trees in the Britain on the storage site. 

The Plymouth pears are only found in two places, Plymouth and near Truro in Cornwall. To develop the storage site we had to work with Natural England to make sure they were happy with the development around the trees and make sure they were protected during construction and once the site was open. Sadly the pears aren’t very tasty to eat, I believe they are edible but they’re certainly not like the pears you buy in your local green grocers. They are very small and quite hard.

So it may not be a cave, air raid shelter or secret passage way but Plymouth has once again revealed it has something rare and worth protecting. The pictures show the trees and their tags, each protected tree being numbered I believe.

Further information can be found here;

http://www.plymouth.gov.uk/homepage/environmentandplanning/natureconservation/wildlife/wildlifespecies/plymouthpear.htm