Hungry tree, 10 years on

Back in December 2015, when I'd only been living in Wales a few months, I wrote a post for the daily Nature blog I had recently started (earthstar.blog) called Hungry trees. In that I wrote

I’ve only been in Cardiff a short while, but already I’ve discovered two hungry trees. One is slowly but surely wrapping itself around a post box in my street. And not just any post box – this tree has style. It’s consuming a Grade II-listed Victorian post box that was probably erected around 1900. Not surprisingly, the post box has now been decommissioned.

The post box is Grade II listed due to its age – not that many post boxes have survived from the Victorian era. According to the British Listed Buildings website, residential development occurred in this area of the Cardiff suburb of Roath between 1890 and 1914, with the houses on the south side of Roath Park Pleasure Gardens, where this box is located, being constructed between 1897 and 1907. It is likely that the post box was erected on the street during this time, probably prior to 1901. 

During the last week of 2025, I was in the Roath area and decided to walk past this wonderful old post box to see how it was faring. As you can see from my side-by-side photographs (the images on the left were taken in October 2015, on the right in December 2025), the tree – probably just a sapling when the post box was installed; now over 100 feet tall – has consumed quite a lot more of the post box in the past ten years.