If, like me, you love trees, then you'll understand the joy of finding an ancient, gnarled old specimen. Put your palm against the bark and feel the heartbeat, put your ear to it and listen as it tells you stories of the history that it's witnessed.
Trouble is, unlike historic buildings, until recently nobody has been keeping a record of our spectacular ancient trees, so apart from the odd few they had little protection or recognition.
Now the Woodland Trust is changing things. A massive project, the Ancient Tree Hunt, has used volunteers and partner organisations such as The National Trust to "register, classify, celebrate and protect" the UKs most special trees, many of which are host to an enormous range of life too.
If you visit ancient-tree-hunt.org.uk you can access maps, satellite imagery and the inventory to find the ancient trees registered so far in your locality, and also details on which ones are accessible to the public, so that you can go and visit some of these mighty veterans.
I've photographed us climbing amongst a couple of ancient oaks at Croft Castle (National Trust near Leominster) -
What's your favourite ancient tree?
No comments:
Post a Comment