When watching a film with your scientist friends, do you dread the quiet tut-tutting coming from the seat next to you? As an ornithologist, when I watch Harry Potter films, I spend part of my time either IDing the birds or being annoyed by factual, behavioural, visual or animation errors made with the birds or other animals. (For starters, Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes, is an abomination on just so many levels.) But does anyone think about the trees? What about all the tree mistakes?
Tree expert Markus Eichhorn, an ecologist at the University of Nottingham, has a few quibbles with the trees featured in the Harry Potter films, particularly with the whomping willow, which was modeled on an elderly sweet chestnut tree at Kew Gardens (although not a tree expert, I thought everyone knew the whomping willow isn't a willow tree at all). Dr Eichhorn describes more Harry Potter tree errors as well as mentioning a few tree errors in some other popular films:
This video makes me wonder what Dr Eichhorn thinks about the Ents in the Lord of the Rings series?
Here's a bit more information about this particular video with Dr Eichhorn. Learn more about trees at A YouTube Guide to Trees.
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