Wealden Times | WT224 | Nov & Dec 2020 | Christmas supplement inside

Garden
Canopies
of Wonder
Sue Whigham shares her
love of native trees and their
regional differences
Wayland’s Smithy is a
Neolithic long barrow
in Oxfordshire built
about a mile and a half along the
ancient Ridgeway from the Uffington
White Horse. History has it that its
foundations date back to the thirty-sixth
century BC. A magical and atmospheric
place, the Smithy is surrounded by a
grove of the most glorious beech trees.
We actually found ourselves whispering
whilst we were there, whilst candles
had been lit just inside the tomb.
But rather than wander along the
Ridgeway from where we’d left the
car, we first stepped into a beech
wood where once conifers – long since
harvested – had stood, just stopping
occasionally to try out the ‘dens’ that
line the central track. We followed
the line of the Ridgeway towards
the Smithy through tall beeches,
all competing with each other for
sunlight and the resources they need
for life. I can’t tell you how beautiful
it was in there. I read somewhere
that another visitor to these very
woods could almost imagine the
Green Knight of Arthurian legend
appearing. I know what he meant.
Every so often we found a few
beech seedlings about a foot high and
when we looked up and saw that little
patch of blue sky we realised how
lucky they had been in comparison
with hundreds of would-be siblings
which hadn’t had the luck to land
from their parent tree and take root
in these light filled clearings.
Young beech trees grow fast given
optimum conditions; let’s say eighteen
inches a season. However, often the
crowns of their parents block out
a lot of the light and only leave a
tiny amount for their offspring to
survive with. But as long as they can
photosynthesise, they’ll live and slowly
grow. It seems that these beeches
benefit from a slow start as it leads to
a good old age (barring all manner of
accidents, of course) – the parent can
be two hundred years old by the time
that their ‘child’ reaches eighty years.
The fascinating thing is that these
trees will be in symbiotic contact
with their offspring through their
root systems throughout their lives
and provide them with essential
nutrients. Peter Wohllenben, in his
book ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’
describes finding what he thought were
mossy stones in the 3,000 acre wood
that he used to manage in Germany.
He lifted the moss and scraped it
away. Much to his astonishment, he
discovered old wood still attached
to the ground. He got down to a
greenish layer which told him that
there was still chlorophyll there. He
had found the remains of an ancient
tree, the centre of which had rotted
away centuries ago. The surrounding
trees were still providing sugar to
this stump and thus it had been kept
alive for at least four to five hundred
years. Oh, if only trees could talk...
A single tree is at the mercy of the
vagaries of the weather but together,
like the occupants of these beech
woods, the trees work as a team and as
a result can and do, reach a great age.
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