Having recently returned from a jungle trip to South America, only now do we (team Colinsmudger) fully appreciate how vitally important these magnificent organisms really are.
Altogether, more than 1500 species grow in Britain.
Now let’s start with my favourite, the mighty Oak. The demands of the navy during the reign of Elizabeth I led to extensive planting of oaks in royal forests; many of these survive today to give pleasure to the countrygoer, and cacher!
Another huge specimen is the Ash. Scandinavians worshipped this as a sacred tree, a symbol of life force. Odin, the greatest of the Norse gods, carved the first man out of ash wood.
Not to be outdone, the massive 120ft Beech is another spectacle of the British countryside. A favourite wood of chairmakers – or “bodgers” – these craftsmen fashioned primitive lathes to turn the timber into chair legs, amongst other things.
The common Lime is the tallest broad-leaved tree in Britain. It grows vigorously and can live for 500 years. Lime wood is light and fine-grained, and is used for woodcarvings and for the making of musical instruments.
Country folk used to believe that the constant trembling of its leaves in the slightest breeze indicated some secret grief or guilt on the part of the Aspen. Some said the guilt was that of having provided the wood used for the cross on which Christ was crucified.
Which incidentally brings us on to the next candidate, the Judas tree. It is said to be the tree on which Judas Iscariot hanged himself after betraying Christ.
The seeds of the Monkey puzzle tree were eaten, fresh or boiled, by the Araucanian Indians of Chile and Argentina. The tree was introduced to Britain in 1795 by Archibald Menzies, who saved the seeds served to him as a dessert and planted them on board the ship Discovery, on which he was travelling as a botanist.
The ancient Egyptians used cedar oil made from the aromatic leaves of the Juniper, in the preservation of the bodies of their dead by mummification. The berries provided a brown dye and, used medicinally, were said to resist the plague, cure the bites of savage beasts, and generally act as an antidote to poison.
In biblical times, the hard and enduring wood of the Cedar of Lebanon was extensively used in the building of temples and palaces. The Cedar was introduced to Britain as an ornamental tree in 1638, and was widely used by the eminent 18th century landscape gardener “Capability” Brown.
Captain Robert Fitzroy was the commander of HMS Beagle, the ship on which Charles Darwin made the five-year voyage around the world, which resulted in the writing of his On the Origin of Species. In 1849, 13 years after the Beagle returned to England, the Patagonian cypress was introduced to Britain and its generic name – Fitzroya cupressoides – is a tribute to Captain Fitzroy.
Many a Holly tree was spared the woodman’s axe in days gone by because of a superstition that it was unlucky to cut down a holly tree. A bumper crop of berries is not an augury of bad weather to come, but the result of a fine summer just past.
Goat willow, or Great sallow comes into the public eye once a year when its golden, male catkins are used to decorate churches on Palm Sunday. Although little used now, the light wood was once made into clothes pegs, rake teeth and hatchet handles.
The Sycamore is Europe’s largest maple, growing to 115ft. and is sometimes known as the great plane or great maple. It was under a sycamore tree at Tolpuddle in Dorset that six farm labourers met in 1834 to form a society to fight starvation wages. For this deed, the so-called Tolpuddle Martyrs were sentenced to seven years’ transportation to Australia. The tree became known as the Martyrs’ tree.
