Did your mother ever chastise you with the words ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’ in a possibly fruitless attempt to curb your profligate ways? Well, maybe – just maybe – she was wrong. There are places in England where money apparently does just that.
Perhaps it is to simply good luck or perhaps people believe that by leaving a coin in the bark of the tree they may have it returned to them many times over. Whatever the origins of this strange habit, there are a number of trees in the United Kingdom that bear the financial hopes of many. Perhaps they found it difficult to reconcile their gross habits with their net income.
The people of Yorkshire, in the north of England are renowned for being careful with their money. While this localized stereotype may not always be fair there is evidence that on occasion they are willing to throw caution to the wind and hammer their low denomination coinage in to trees. The good folk of Ingleton in North Yorkshire have some of the most stunning woodlands in the country and the local waterfalls trail has something other to offer than the sight of the wet stuff cascading in a picturesque way.
Close up it seems as if the coins have almost merged with the wood, but that is the effect of the weather upon the metal. Some suggest that the reason money is pushed in to the bark is more than just a desire to increase one’s wealth. It is thought that the amount of coins pushed in by an individual may result in them producing the same amount of children when their natural fecundity discovers a partner. The tree itself, though long since alive, has come to bear a marked resemblance to the torso of some sort of lizard, the coins becoming its scales. It is almost Arthurian in its strangeness.
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