Trees and conservation

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TREES AND CONSERVATION J. EDWARD MILNER When trees and conservation are mentioned together perhaps we tend to think of trees en masse - in other words woodland or forests, and we then go on to bemoan their historical decimation in this country. But I have been approaching trees and conservation from the other way round and looking at individual trees.

First of all special ones - individual trees of great age, but also of great character and individuality.

Ancient Times I would like to Start with one of my favourites, the Crowhurst Yew, a wonderful tree in a churchyard near Gatwick Airport. It is hollow, has a door to the interior and is celebrated for several things among them the fact that 12 local people sat down to dinner inside it one Saturday night in the middle of the last Century.

This tree, although nearly 30 feet in circumference has changed in girth by no more than a few inches in the last 300 years - we know this because of successive measurements made by observers since the early seventeenth Century.

So how old must it be? At that rate of growth it must be not hundreds, but thousands of years old.

My second tree is not so old, but may be growing even more slowly. It's an ancient hawthorn growing very slowly indeed on an exposed limestone pavement near Kirby Stephen in Cumbria, Trees like this are the only ones in the landscape in this area; every one is an individual - many have a raptor's nest in the upper branches.

Bristlecone pines grow even more slowly and are very ancient indeed - in fact they are some of the oldest living plants in the world. They are found between about 9,500 and 11,000 feet in the White Mountains of California.

Unlike many other trees their heartwood does not rot, so individual specimens still growing on these slopes can have over 4,000 consecutive rings.

Of course bristlecone pines are not British trees but I want to draw attention to these very old trees because for several reasons they are vital to a better understanding of trees and conservation everywhere. These ancient trees whether in mountains in California or in English churchyards are perhaps the most important trees for us to conserve; they are of the greatest biological, historical and cultural value, and they are of course irreplaceable. We may be poor in ancient forests, but in England through historical and cultural accident we have more ancient trees than perhaps anywhere eise in Europe. Many ancient trees occur in England because historically the system of wood pasture was widespread and the system of land tenure still largely traditional. Many hereditary estates and parks still contain thousands of ancient pollards whether predominantly beech (Burnham Beeches), oak (Windsor), hornbeam (Hatfield Forest) or other species such as ash, hawthorn or crab-apple.

Not only do ancient trees often contain within them precise and decipherable accounts of their lives in the form of tree-rings, but they are also home to a wide assemblage of other organisms. We tend to think of trees in tropical forests as being weighed down with epiphytes and creeping lianes - as many are especially where the climate is humid - but old and ancient trees in almost any

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climate gather together great assemblages of other organisms. These ränge from mosses and hchens on their trunks, to the vast array of invertebrates living in or on the wood, the roots or the foliage.

Galls are seen by foresters or gardeners as symptoms of disease or of trees living under stress, but these parasitic organisms and their own parasites are also remarkable and valuable in their own right. There are also many very rare species of beetle which are associated with ancient trees, and need the very peculiar conditions to thrive; losing ancient trees means the associated loss of all these other species.

There is also the historical and cultural significance of ancient trees; they are living things that connect us with our ancestors and with their traditions The ancient black poplar at Aston-on-Clun is known in the area as an Arbor Tree one that is permanently decorated with flags and banners. These are renewed each year on Arbor Day - usually a Saturday in June. There are so many old traditions and stories associated with this tree that it has become virtually a focal point for the whole Community. Messages were dropped down the hollow trunk by villagers in distress; sprigs were given to couples marrying in the village church as a fertility charm. Arbor Day became the cultural event of the year for the whole village. (Since last year the tree has blown down, as was pointed out by the following Speaker, Richard Mabey. More recently still I have heard that a new tree was planted in summer 1996.)

Other ancient trees have a spiritual significance especially in Ireland where fairy trees and the trees associated with holy wells are almost always the oldest trees still standing in any locality (as are sacred trees or sacred groves in many other parts of the world). The "fairy tree" on Jimmy Burke's land in the Blue Stack Mountains, Co. Donegal is, like most "fairy trees" a rowan. This is a species which in Ireland has many traditional beliefs associated with it. But it is not a tree that is generally found near a holy well; that is much more likely to be a thorn or an ash. The Money Tree at Clanenagh is associated with memories of Saint Fintan. Strangely this is an introduced species - a sycamore.

By tradition travellers stop to hammer a coin into the trunk and hope for a safe journey; unfortunately this is another ancient tree whose demise has recently been witnessed, for it was blown down in 1994.

Most cultures in all continents respect sacred trees; at Paphos in Cyprus the ancient tree is a terebinth, growing out of the catacombs where an early Christian martyr had a chapel. The Holy Water here traditionally eures eye disorders, but the tree has come to be associated with all types of healing, and people come from all over the island for the curative benefit, tying garments associated with the particular ailment onto the tree's branches. My own Observation of the tree suggests that the most frequent is a broken heart, as most of the items tied to the tree seem to be handkerchiefs!

New trees are being designated for attention all the time. Trees which are found growing at the site of road accidents are increasingly garlanded; a medium-sized sycamore tree at Barnes Common is adorned as a memorial to the pop singer Marc Bolan, who died nearly 20 years ago in a road accident at the site. Here we see an early stage in the life of a future ancient tree! Perhaps our descendants may even discover restorative or musical properties in the sap of this tree.

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Native trees A second aspect of trees and conservation that is often neglected is the need to better appreciate the natural diversity of our trees in these islands. We may not have a very extensive tree flora in terms of different species - there are only about 35 native tree species in the UK and Ireland whereas a Single acre of rainforest in Amazonia or Malaysia can have 40-50 times this number.

But many of our species show considerable intra-specific diversity - the native juniper Juniperus communis being one of these. Its form varies from upright fastigiate forms, to flat-crowned individuals many of which are found in Little Langdale in the Lake District. But stranger is the decumbent form that clings to a rock-face and is fairly common in the mountains of Scotland as far north as Shetland. Juniper used to be found growing naturally in many places from which it has now disappeared; Hampstead Heath used to be covered with open juniper woodland. Conserving the remaining natural stands of all forms of such trees must now be a priority.

Other native trees are also very scarce; the native black poplar which produces the spectacular red male catkins known as "Devil's fingers" for a few days in April, depends on recently exposed wet mud for its tiny and fragile seedlings to germinate. As a result of human interference and "improvement", few of our rivers still produce such a habitat. The result is that even in those few places where male and female native black poplar trees occur together, conditions are rarely suitable for the germination of the seedlings. Unable to reproduce itself the tree would be heading for imminent demise without assistance which perhaps we owe it.

The Plymouth Pear (Pyrus cordatä) is an even rarer native tree (though not as rare as the recently rediscovered Sorbus domestica) which occurs in a handful of hedgerows in Devon and Cornwall. It is now the subject of a special Species Recovery Programme initiative promoted by English Nature. In this case the advantages are aesthetic (although the attractive blossom is pollinated by flies, attracted by a "fragrance" that observers have likened to a whiff of rotting scampi) and utilitarian; there may well be genetic characteristics in the fruit which could be used by future fruit-tree breeders. Meanwhile, beekeepers try to keep their hives well away from this aromatically-challenged species.

Common trees species also have diversities of genetic make-up which are important. The birches, two of our commonest native species have evolved different characteristics in various parts of the country in respose to local conditions. Genetically, Betula pubescens from different parts of Scotland are distinctive; typically those from the east are more tolerant of low temperatures, while those from the west coast resist airborne salt better. Several tree species including birch and rowan used to occur further up the Scottish mountains and over much of the northern islands of Orkney and Shetland before the invasion of sheep and the great increase in deer. Genetically these populations may have been significantly different; most are now lost. Where sheep and deer are now being excluded in special projects it is found that the local variety of these native trees can recolonise areas that are at present moorland, most remarkably above what had been thought to be the natural tree-line at over 2,200 feet on the west side of the Cairngorms.

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So conservation of our native trees should mean in-situ conservation for without these areas of natural Vegetation the genetic degradation of even our common species may be inevitable. At a future date, if not already now, the re-forestation of areas such as the Cairngorms and Shetland may be considered desirable and it will depend on this genetic stock.

Traditional tree management Many of our native trees and their associated flora and fauna have for millenia thrived and evolved under strongly Interventionist management regimes. Much of our woodland was traditionally managed as coppice with Standards, wood pasture, withy beds or orchards. Most such areas have declined disastrously this Century - and some, such as withy beds and traditional orchards are still disappearing. Much of this decline has been actively promoted under the influence of a series of misguided grant-aid schemes; for many years the Ministry of Agriculture paid farmers to grub up old orchards and hedgerows. Lately the European Commission has taken over the role of paymaster; it has been left to voluntary bodies like the C P R E and Common Ground to document the depressing results and campaign for changes.

Since the Earth Summit the idea that diversity could be important and worth conserving has finally become acceptable and some of these policies surreptitiously put into reverse. Farm woodland schemes will now pay farmers (some of them no doubt the same ones) to plant new hedges, even lay new orchards. And admirable though some of these new schemes are, it would be better if the old features had not been removed; the damage has been done and of course the newly planted features have virtually no conservation value at all.

But traditional varieties of fruit tree, many of them lost forever in the zeal of orchard destruction, are still being conserved, as at Brogdale National Fruit Collection. With little official support, this aspect of conserving our natural tree heritage is mostly left to volunteers and campaigners like Paul Hand (of Bees and Trees Trust*), an "apple dectective" who has been responsible singlehanded for preserving several traditional fruit varieties in his native Shropshire.

By their nature they originate from Single, genetically unique trees. These are little-known varieties like the unique Onibury Pippin, previously thought to be extinct, an apple which tastes "like lemon meringue pie". Recently Paul Hand rediscovered the original tree in an old kitchen garden; it is now protected.

Concluding remarks The significance of ancient trees, our native species and our traditional management of trees in their man-made habitats is that they are all the natural centres of biodiversity, whether we consider the natural diversity of the trees themselves or the rieh Community of other organisms associated with them. The Single ancient tree like a yew in a churchyard, the hedgerow containing the rare native tree species or the old orchard with the unique fruit tree, are all likely to be places less altered by changes that have affected the surrounding landscape.

In some places and regions they may be the only places that have remained unaltered for centuries, even millenia. If conservation for biodiversity is to be taken seriously, the true value and importance of these places must be understood.

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J. Edward Milner, 80 Weston Park, London N8 9TB * BEES AND TREBS TRUST promotes the discovery and conservation of old apple varieties and tradiorchards native honeybees and traditional straw skep hives. The co-ordinator, Paul Hand can be contacted at 36 Rock Lane, Ludlow, Shropshire SY8 IST.

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