Celebrating an Ancient Oak
‘And here is the unremarkable footpath that leads to a most remarkable tree, an old friend standing alone away from the path’
Did I set out on this walk intentionally or decide halfway there? I’m striding across muddy fields, slithering on slopes, looking forward to seeing the river. She’s different whenever I visit – sometimes slow and languid, sometimes clear and chattery, but today fast and rich, a thick brown. I stop to look at the shape of the flow, at a stripe of bracket fungi wiggling down a dead tree on the opposite bank in two contrasting colours. Crab apples are mushed underfoot, but I’m going over the bridge now, on a mission because I’ve found a plastic carrier bag in my pocket.
Round a little stretch of road and past the vast and impressive church house where generations of clergymen must have suffered in freezing splendour every winter. I turn off uphill here to follow a deep lane worthy of being in Wales, its steep banks lined with harts tongue ferns and mosses, dappled in summer, dank in winter. And here is the unremarkable footpath that leads to a most remarkable tree, an old friend standing alone away from the path, an oak so old that its outline is a full square, it’s hollow trunk topped by branches that must have been massive before they were attenuated by gales and erosion over the course of many centuries.
In earlier years I’ve climbed inside – too slippery to try again today in wellingtons. There was the day I played ‘catch the falling leaf before it hits the ground’ with a good friend, and between us, wrecked and breathless half an hour later, we hadn’t caught a single one.
One year we measured its girth with a piece of string – 30 feet, or ten foot diameter. And then we put a thirty foot rope light round the living room and spent every winter evening ‘inside’ the tree. And many times I’ve drawn the waterfalls of its trunk, photographed it, chatted to it, stroked it.
Today I’ve come to collect its acorns. It’s been a mast year – a total glut of acorns from all the trees in the area. It’s thought that trees co-ordinate mast years to give seed predators more nuts than they can possibly eat, giving the spare seeds the possibility of survival. And then several years of sparse fruiting, bringing down seed predator numbers. I’ve been involved in a burgeoning tree planting project for the last year.
I’m hoping to grow on some of the acorns from this beautiful, ancient beast to carry on its progeny into the future. It makes me smile whenever I think about this plan.
I look around and can’t see any acorns at all. It’s late November – have I arrived too late? It starts to rain. Gently at first and then with increasing ferocity, squalls of rain blowing horizontally across the field. I start to rummage among the thick layers of leaves below the tree.
My hands are icy, my hood keeps slipping over my eyes and my face is drenched and muddy as I repeatedly push my hood up with hands now covered in sheep and deer dung. Yes, under the leaves, especially in little hollows made by the roots, are collections of acorns that have rolled into snug crevices like marbles, all rolling to the lowest point.
Is it planned this way, that the acorns fall first, and then the leaves fall to cover them up, protecting them from dropping temperatures and deer?
To my surprise many of them are reluctant to be gathered – they’ve already put out a hungry root, burrowing straight down into the compacted soil, and won’t be pulled up, and many others are germinating, that first all important root showing pale yellow or red tipped against the dull brown of the acorn’s shell. I wonder if they ought to be so keen – will they survive frosts, snow and interminable wetness?
I’m stuffing acorns into the plastic carrier and hoping I’m doing the right thing. I leave the ones that have already chosen where they’re growing, and hope that I don’t damage the roots of the ones that I pick up that have begun sprouting. I’m aware that I have little real knowledge and am acting on presumption.
A twinge of uncertainty compels me to stuff leaves into the bag too, a vague desire to make then feel ‘at home’ under a safe blanket when I plant them.
Back in my garden I recall other acorn growing attempts that have failed because the acorns mysteriously ‘disappear’. I’m guessing its mice or rats, so this time I plant them in an old recycling box with the leafy blanket and then some serious iron sheeting on top, that I’d nicked from a rotting piece of farm machinery a few years ago because it looked sculptural. I think about them a lot – are they too cold? Will mice nibble their way in? Are they getting enough light? Might the box get waterlogged? Will I find good homes for them all? Will I visit the parent tree in a couple of years, a big smile slapped across my face, and silently let it know that it has youngsters out there?