Yellow broadleaves

Talking about forest, there are some rather atypical ones for our country here in the southwest. As you probably know, most of Finland is situated in the boreal forest zone or taiga where coniferous evergreen trees, mainly pines and spruces, are predominant just like in Canada and Russia.

The most common wild trees of the deciduous, hardwood type found further north are the birch, the alder, the aspen and the rowan, which do not exactly compete with the broadleaf trees of the Central European type found here. The southwest is the mildest region of the country with not only some temperate mixed forest but also some actual broadleaf ones, woodlands with trees such as wild maples, linden trees, ash trees and even oaks.

The other day, we wanted to drink in a generous dose of colourful leaf therapy and visited the Ruissalo island to walk one of the trails in the nature reserve there. The ground was covered in a fabulous blanket of yellow maple leaves. We didn’t have anything like this off Helsinki where we lived before. There were some maples scattered here and there and even an occasional oak tree in our former neighbourhood but nothing to compare with this.

When pacing through such a place you feel as if you were taken abroad, to the Baltics, southern Sweden or even further south to Germany. I can’t help repeating it: we are loving this temperate corner of our country, Finland Proper as the province is called as it is the region where the tribe called Finns originally lived.