There was a massive snow storm in the northeast USA the end of Oct. that put a weight of snow on trees still in full-leaf which downed many trees and branches. We just returned from our daughter's town in northern New Jersey and saw much damage. Some homes still have no electricity. They said you could hear the tree removal companies' chippers working at 2 AM!
There was an article about an old oak tree in Connecticut that was a sapling before the white man arrived in America and I thought it was interesting that it is still surviving despite heavy damage. It made me curious about your old oaks in the UK and how they've survived the years.
http://www.finegardening.com/item/21268/reader-photos-the-aftermath-of-the-northeastern-october-snowstorm (http://www.finegardening.com/item/21268/reader-photos-the-aftermath-of-the-northeastern-october-snowstorm)
This is our 'local' famous oak tree.. http://www.eyemead.com/majoroak.htm
The trunk of it is hollow now and its like miracle that it keeps going..but it is well looked after too.
Sherwood forrest has loads of oak trees and many of them are very odd looking funny things.
I suppose all local woods have plenty of oak..certainly the ones I take my dog for walk.
I bet all those trees would have good tales to tell.. ;D
I remember back in the 70s on a visit to the UK taking little 'un to see The Mighty Oak (reported - yeah!!) - to be the Very One under which Robin Hood cavorted with Maid Marion ::)) which was even then being propped up - that still there?
Very co-incidentally, in bed this morning, I finally got round to upload pics of my family's oak which has died this year, after looking 'not well' for a couple of years.(I came back on the 6th October but, it's an Age Thing, y'know....these things take time :D ) Undoubtedly the '60s house was designed to take advantage of the shade it provided at that time, tho, can tell you, when its acorns started to drop in the early autumn and fell on the roof it sounded like being in a War Zone! They've not yet got round to finding the right Tree Fellas to do the job, but it's gotta be done before Winter, and we're all curious to find out, once it's down, how old it really was.
Birnam Oak.
(http://guide.visitscotland.com/vs/images/SIG/11/SIG58011Svs/LBDPNNQMCVa_200x175.jpg)
The oak is ancient and it's branches now need the support of props, and with its younger but still aged companion sycamore behind it, they're all that's left of the Birnam Wood of Shakespeare's Macbeth:
QuoteMacbeth shall never vanquish'd be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill
shall come against him
but Malcolm's men camoflaged themselves with branches from the wood and Macbeth got his comeuppance.
I was inspired by the idea that Birnam Oak and its attendant sycamore were the last remnants of that wood and wrote a poem about it:
Birnam Oak
You'd have been just a whip
when Malcolm's host left for Dunsinane.
Maybe you got overlooked in the melee
as all around, with heft of claymore,
clansmen hewed boughs off oaks
and felled birches with their battle axes,
but did they press the entire wood
into service as shaft, stave and haft?
However it was, you're all that's left
of Birnam Wood, you and your nurse.
Do you regale her with your war stories
as you lean on your crutches?
How romantic--you have both Sherwood Forest and Shakespeare's references.
And now A4A has its own poet waxing beautiful phrases! :D
Big Belly's another.
(http://www.ancient-tree-hunt.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/601C14F7-9DDD-49D9-9860-DDE48B17295A/0/Savernake142.jpg)
I pass Big Belly often in my truck as he's right on the side of the A364 Marlborough road, and he's more dead than alive with a hollow heart and a metal corset to keep him together. He's in Savernake Forest which is quite big but when Big Belly was young some short time after the Norman Conquest Savernake was vast and Big Belly and his friends - there are many ancient oaks in Savernake - were pollarded for poles, and it's this that gave them such spectacular long life, and their tortured shape.
It's quite a long walk from the car park, but I've made the treck to see Big Belly a couple of times - apparently if you dance round him naked a few times the devil will appear. I'm not afraid of Old Nick, but I wouldn't like Old Bill to catch me at it.
Great story........and poem :)
Yes, thank you. Love the stories, the pictures and, of course, the poem. 8)
I planted an acorn in a pot to mark the 150 year anniversary of HMS Victory! The land I live on belonged to the Admiralty and trees were grown on it for the Dockyard. THere are still loads of trees - some of them tall straight oaks - you need them tall and straight for shipbuilding, so all side branches were pruned out as they grew! It took over 4000 trees to build a wooden walled warship - even more for Victory!
I love old trees - a village churchyard near me has Yews that are over a 1000 years old - all proped up with iron and wood and the centres filled with concrete - but still alive! The stories they could tell would be worth hearing!
What lovely stories some of the posts are
When I was a child in ww2 I used to sit and play under a mighty oak, I love that tree, over the years saplins have grown all around the mother tree, bluebells have grown under the trees, how many of us have watched the growing of a small wood in our life time, I have . well here is the crunch a big shopping mall is going to be built in our once village, and Asda are coming to town.and my oaks are all going to be cut down to die, all my childhood memories will go to with them, people have tried to save the tree's, but Asda will they listen no.
I am very sad.
June.
(http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y253/nonrancher/62677e4e.jpg)
This is some of our grandkids and a niece in a tree in the Adirondacks in NY. It is an evergreen said to be shaped by the Indians long ago and everyone likes having their picture taken in its comforting "arms"
Aww..that tree looks nice...the limbs are like gigantic elephant trunks.. ;D
Lovely pic ;D
That's a shame, bridgehouse. :(
This is the old oak in the village where I grew up, Lingfield in Surrey. It's something like 400 years old, and hollow, Next to it is the old gaol and a little shop called the cabin. It was a newsagents when I was little, I think. It seems to be a barbers now. I used to know the tree really well, all the bark and the hollows and lumps. You climb all over things when you're small, and really pay attention to all the details you miss as an adult.
(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q124/pigeonseed/oak.jpg)
Quote from: pigeonseed on November 08, 2011, 22:39:02
That's a shame, bridgehouse. :(
This is the old oak in the village where I grew up, Lingfield in Surrey. It's something like 400 years old, and hollow, Next to it is the old gaol and a little shop called the cabin. It was a newsagents when I was little, I think. It seems to be a barbers now. I used to know the tree really well, all the bark and the hollows and lumps. You climb all over things when you're small, and really pay attention to all the details you miss as an adult.
(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q124/pigeonseed/oak.jpg)
We never saw such a cute jail!
Quote from: bridgehouse on November 08, 2011, 09:53:07
What lovely stories some of the posts are
When I was a child in ww2 I used to sit and play under a mighty oak, I love that tree, over the years saplins have grown all around the mother tree, bluebells have grown under the trees, how many of us have watched the growing of a small wood in our life time, I have . well here is the crunch a big shopping mall is going to be built in our once village, and Asda are coming to town.and my oaks are all going to be cut down to die, all my childhood memories will go to with them, people have tried to save the tree's, but Asda will they listen no.
I am very sad.
June.
That stinks! Bl@@dy ASBOS!
Once upon a day, you planted an tree so that your great grandkids could chop it down.
People dont appreciate, for example, the extent of forestation in the UK in times past. In the 15th century, the time of Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest, it was said to have been possible to travel the length of the country in the trees without ever touching the ground.
SInce all land was owned, despite there being 90% of the country forested, you coudl still be prosecuted for taking wood out the forest without the landowners permission, apart from the Common Law right of estovers (the right to take firewood no thicker than your thumb from common land)
By 1914, 90% of the forest in the UK has been taken down. The First World War then used another 2%, the period 1916-1939 used another 2% , and then the Second World War used another 2%, leaving just 4% of what there was in 1100 AD.
I perosnally had a battle with the local council to stop them allowing a private developer taking down 300 mixed deciduous trees, mainly Oaks, Ash, Beech, Alders and a few surviving Elms, all approx 150-170 years old. The trees were supposed to have tree preservation orders on, but the council's Tree Officer was in the pocket of the developer, and they were being allowed surreptitiously take the trees down in ones and two under the guise they were diseased. Luckily, i had a friendly tree surgeon who had a look at some of the felled trees, and he declared only 2 of 22 trees were actually diseased.
Anyhoo, it cumulated in my getting the local paper involved, and we got a front page spread about it, the useless Tree Officer was sacked and his replacement put a stop there and then to any more destruction of the trees. We have then all numbered and photographed now!
There was a postscript. Several months later i got a knock on the door, and this bod announced himself as from the same councils Planning Department, and said I had built a conservatory without planning permission. However, i knew the law, and I knew i didnt need planning permission for it, but he came in, measured and photographed it and left, but i heard nothing after that. Someone in the council had clearly decided to try and have a go back at me for embarrasing them in the paper.
The Woodland Trust has a Lottery-funded project on the go to record all the Notable, Veteran and Ancient trees in the UK. Website here:
http://www.ancient-tree-hunt.org.uk/ (http://www.ancient-tree-hunt.org.uk/)
There's an interactive map where you can zoom in on your area and find the trees that have been recorded.
http://www.ancient-tree-hunt.org.uk/discoveries/interactivemap (http://www.ancient-tree-hunt.org.uk/discoveries/interactivemap)
NB - when you zoom the map in the trees are slow to load. Be patient!