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[coatesyukon]

What do you call the long thin pieces of wood the grow in willow bushes, or mature coppiced hazel? I mean the 3-5 metre long, things that grow out of the ground and are maybe 8cm across at the base, tapering to not much at the top, usually unbranched

Comments

[muttley_mutter]

In coppice woods, they are called poles. Lots of coppice around us here in Kent.

http://www.wealddown-schools.org.uk/Further%20information/information-the%20woodlands.htm

http://www.naturallyactive.org/article.aspx?ArticleID=248

[sartorresartus]

Are these the rods, poles and perches that became measures?

Shades of Havoc, do you recall Havoc? He was our first dog and retrieve-obsessed. Took both Mary and Dave out with a half tree during one walk, if I remember rightly. I've seen him try to carry logs, but he would moo and whine and then try dragging it before finally giving it up as a bad job.

How's Anne, and you?

[muttley_mutter]

Surpisingly, no. The rod, pole or perch is part of the elderly surveying set of measurement standards: I can remember rote-learning the table beginning with "rod, pole or perch" but the rest of it has gone completely, and I have to use the Ubiquitousnet to remind myself

More on measures

[muttley_mutter]

http://www.baronage.co.uk/bphtm-02/moa-10.html

A furlong is a furrow-long, the length an ox-plough team could go before needing a rest
The rod is the ox-goad which had to be 16 1/2 feet to reach the leading pair.

[sartorresartus]

1986 would have been Loki and Boss. Boss was a short haired sable and Loki was black and long curly haired. Can't be 86, must have been 85 or 84, because I was just pregnant at Christmas 86 and we were with my parents (I had tonsilitis all over the holiday, which caused complications, because we didn't 'know')

That's Tom in the photo, he looks about 18months.

I hate to say it, but I've still got that gilet! It was a Barbour, and although it's a bit battered it still goes out with the dogs on occasions!

I knew about the furrow long, but I thought it was horses, because that was the length of the furrow in a strip field.