I don't know what attracts me so much to this song, but somehow I love it. I remember hearing it many years ago online on the now-defunct Saga FM 105.7 in Birmingham, England. There's a certain, distinctly British beauty about it that's hard to put in words. It's a song that really should/could have been a hit here in the States.
"Lightning Tree" (York Records, later reissued on Decca Records UK.) was originally released in 1971 and only charted in the UK and a few other countries. It was the biggest hit for a '60s UK pop band called The Settlers.
The song is most famous there for being the theme song to the Yorkshire TV/ITV series Follyfoot, which was about a rest home for horses, It had challenging things to say about the treatment of horses in British society that was far ahead of it's time. The show had a two year run on British TV and ran there as repeats until well into the late '80s.
Here's the UK TV opener for Follyfoot:
The Settlers never had another hit single. Which was odd. I always thought they kind of sounded like The Seekers and I guess I'm wasn't alone when I looked them up on Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_(band)
"The Settlers have generally been referred to as a folk group. However, like the Seekers, the successful Australian group with which they shared marked similarities, some of their material gravitated towards mainstream pop, which, taking its cue from American singer-songwriters Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and such groups as Peter, Paul and Mary and The Byrds, readily absorbed folk influences in various ways in the mid 1960s......"
