Hanging On: Ancient trees

Ancient trees evoke a reaction in most people. They are venerated and respected and the thought of their existence many hundreds of years old, perhaps when Henry 8^th was a lad, or Queen Elizabeth was praising the deeds of Sir Francis Drake, excites the imagination. England has many fine ancient trees in the parklands of the big estates, but they can also be seen in other countries and are also equally valued. Veteran trees such as these support a living world of their own. A multitude of mosses ferns and lichens, invertebrates and fungi exist on the tree, not only in the living part but also consuming and recycling the decaying wood in the heart of the tree.

Hernes Oak

 The second oldest tree in Cornwall, Herne’s Oak, stands near the bank of the River Inny on private land a little upstream of where it joins the Tamar. It is looking very frail and a mere shadow of itself even as it was 50 years ago. Estimated at around 650 to 700 years old, it was an acorn in the mid 1300s when King Edward 3rd reigned, and the Black Death swept through the land. This venerable tree has immense significance in our local historical landscape. It grows within an area of  privately owned Ancient Woodland, which is now mostly conifers,  but still to be seen  among the trees are old boundary banks which no doubt pre-date the woodland and when Hernes Oak stood at the foot of a more open, possibly heathy, ridge of land,  running down to Inny Foot.

Herne's Oak 2004

Since  our 2004 photo  was taken, it can be seen  below that yet more of a section of trunk and its branches have fallen, taking one of the supporting props with it.

Herne's Oak in 2017

In mid-November 2017 a team of volunteers from the Cornwall Ancient Tree Forum conducted a sensitive clearance of the sapling growth of beeches and sycamores which were overshadowing Herne’s Oak. This is known as ‘halo-ing’ and aims to strike a balance between letting more light and air to the tree  and reducing competition to the roots, whilst not allowing the wind to further damage it. Ivy growth going up the tree was also cut. A second team of arboriculturalists came the next day to cut out high branches of several beech trees which have grown up and overtopped the oak, overshadowing it. There is more light at the canopy now.

Currently we can’t go to see how it is doing following the 2017 management, due to the Covid 19 movement restrictions.

Ancient Oak in Eastern Poland

 We came across this huge old tree near Elblag in NE. Poland, formerly part of the German province of Prussia. A fence protects this tree from compaction of the surrounding soil by visitors and a seat is provided so that one can sit and reflect....It is a 700 plus year-old Oak (Quercus robur) Height now 25M. but it looks as if it has had its top blown out at some stage and has also possibly been struck by lightning. Its girth is 10m15cms. We saw that for some reason holes in its trunk had been covered by wire netting as if to keep birds or animals out.

Ancient Oak near Elblag in NE Poland

Old Grove of Planes in Lesvos

I quote from our travel log of May 13^th 2019 “on the way down the lower slopes of Mt Olympos (the highest mountain on the Greek island of Lesvos in the Eastern Mediterranean) we stopped where the road crossed a wet rocky ravine in the woods. In the crook of the bend was a grove of gigantic old Plane trees. Their boles were hollow and the outer layers of wood tissue and bark had peeled back like ten or fifteen foot kippers frying in the pan. Although looking more ragged and hollow than any trees we had seen before, their canopies were wide-spreading and well leafed. In the dappled shade below them and among damp seepages were some nice plants --  an Arum of some kind with menacing dark-speckled purple spathes, Star of Bethlehem, crimson Anemones, a big Fritillary with umber and buff edges on its downward hanging bell flower (Fritillaria pontica)  Toothed Orchids, a fine yellow buttercup of some sort....”

Huge old Plane tree on Lesvos

Australian Giants

There are many ancient and enormous trees in various parts of Australia where the rainfall supports forest and which have escaped the timber-getters’ axes. In the Atherton Tablelands in  Queensland we saw the gigantic Curtain Fig (Ficus virens) Fig trees scramble up trees in search of light, enveloping and strangling their host. Once up in the canopy they send down aerial roots and rapidly become a self-supporting tree in their own right. This fig-infested tree had at some time in the past, partly fallen and had rested against another tree, hence the somewhat bizarre shape.

Curtain Fig, Queensland 1989

 

Stump of giant Swamp Gum, Tasmania

Some of the Eucalyptus species in the SW and SE of Australia and Tasmania grow to enormous proportions. This huge stump of a Swamp Gum was cut by the early timber-getters. You can see the slots where they fitted planks to stand on so they could reach higher up the trunk, like a primitive scaffold. They presumably wanted to avoid the lowest, biggest part of the tree as the bases were often hollowing and no good for timber.

           

Petrified Forests

Road works in the western end of Lesvos revealed this petrified tree, one of many trunks and branches. They had been safeguarded by coating them with wire-netting reinforced plaster, whether for later transport to a safer place I don’t know. They lay in situ like mummified remains. We first saw this in 2015 when all work was stopped, possibly because of financial problems on the island.

Remains of petrified tree trunk exposed by roadworks in western Lesvos

  When we went back in 2019 there had been no further progress. Nearby, in a great bowl of open country, studded by low scrub , rock giant Fennel, and cushions of our family nicknamed ‘wire netting plant’ ( Sarcopoterium spinosum or Prickly Burnet) is a World Heritage site, enclosing many more great tree remains of an ancient forest which was engulfed by the ash  and lava from a gigantic volcanic explosion 20 million years ago. Conifer species still recognizable are cypress, pines and yew.  I quote from our log again: “Many trunks and roots, some enormous, are left exposed. You can see the sap or resin in a thin layer of black or red translucent amber or obsidian-like material. In the shade of the rocks were crickets with stripes of yellow and sepia, and large millipedes with rows of yellow dots running along their black backs.’

Arizona

In the badlands of NE Arizona the deep layers of largely fine-grained mudstones have been eroded over thousands of years to expose the fossilized remains of a sub-tropical forest dating from the Triassic era some 225 million years ago.

Petrified tree lying where it fell 225 million years ago.

  Huge fossilized tree trunks can be seen where they had fallen and the woody tissue is now replaced by colourful silica. Other plant remains can be identified : ferns, Ginkos, and Cycads among many others, and the fossils of giant reptiles and early dinosaurs have also been found. 

(Apologies for picture quality. Some of them are copies of old slides and the digitalization is less than satisfactory!)