Best Of

FPT:

Whilst we await the start of Andy Burnham's cautionary tale of 'be careful what you wish for'

Here's my picture of the day - acorn collecting at the Major Oak:


We managed to grow a good number of seedlings on from said acorns for conservation planting, one of which may have ended up in my garden.

Climate change, soil compaction, old age, or fungus? I don't suppose anyone is quite sure yet. It might have been better to coppice it rather than propping up the limbs. It was almost certainly coppiced in the past.

For many trees in many situations, the best thing to do is to start again, as a steadily rolling programme. Everything has a season; a time to plant and a time to pluck up and whatnot.

A few weeks ago, one of the (possibly 1930s) street trees in our (definitely 1930s) street keeled over; it was the most exciting thing to happen in our road since Clap For Carers. But the gaps in the pattern are becoming increasingly obvious. But it feels very British to unsucessfully try to preserve old things beyond their lifespan and not create things that future generations might enjoy as old things.

Yes, I think that's fair. It is a disguised form of short term thinking.

The Major Oak would have been part of a woodland pasture, with only scattered trees, many of which would have been managed by coppicing. It became encircled by woodland only within the last 100 years or so, and during that time has probably been over-preserved as well as over-visited. The whole context in which the vast majority of its life was lived has gone, so we were preserving something that was already lost, much like keeping a building beyond its purpose.

If you want to see what it should have looked like, Windsor Great Park is probably your best bet.

Not according to the archaeology.

That's what I've always been told, but it could be wrong...

Early photographs of the tree show it in a parkland setting. Is there evidence that the tree predates the creation of the pasture?