Chancre Colore (Friday Fictioneers, July 2013)

copyright anelephantcant

I looked at the photo prompt and just saw ‘plane tree’.  I make no apologies for not being inspired by the bike! 🙂 

Apologies to all who may not have been able to find my comments last week.  The problem is, I believe, sorted.  😉

Her dilapidated lock-side cottage had been shock enough, but the cracked bare banks of the Midi stunned me into silence.

Gone were the colonnades of plane trees, dappling the banks with their restless leafy cover.  Now ugly steel pilings stood where once gnarled, knotted roots had supported the canal as it wound towards the sea.

“Chancre coloré” said grandmère, “wiped them out from here to Carcassonne.”

In the distance workmen toiled under the blazing  sun, leaving a trail of puny upright saplings.

“A new strain; they say it’s resistant.”

“Ugly though,” I said.

Grandmère grinned toothlessly.

“Not everything that is young is beautiful, ma chère.  Some things take time.”

It’s estimated that 42,000 plane trees lining the Midi will be destroyed by this fungal disease which originally entered Europe from munitions boxes unloaded at Marseille during the second world war.