(^50) an environmenTal hisTory of Wildlife in england
in 1651 boasting an average of 38 trees per hectare, while at Thorndon in
the same county there were apparently no less than 72 per hectare in 1742.^51
As late as 1784, a survey of West End Farm in Wormley in south-east
Hertfordshire recorded an incredible 1,496 trees scattered through 28 fields
covering a mere 38 hectares.^52
Surviving farmland trees from the seventeenth century or earlier are
overwhelmingly oaks, a fortunate circumstance given that this tree can
provide sustenance for more than 400 invertebrate species.^53 But this
dominance in part results from the greater longevity of this species compared
with others, as well as the wholesale loss of elm from the countryside as
a consequence of Dutch elm disease in the 1960s and 70s. Seventeenth-
and eighteenth-century surveys suggest that while in most districts oak was
indeed the most common tree, ash and elm might be close rivals. There was
much variation, even within the same district. At Langley in Norfolk 70 per
cent of the trees recorded in a mid-seventeenth-century survey were oak and
30 per cent ash;^54 but less than fifteen kilometres away at Buckenham in the
1690s 49 per cent were oak and 44 per cent ash, together with 6.6 per cent
elm (as well as six poplars and ‘young’ trees of unspecified species);^55 while
on a farm at Beeston in the middle of the same county in 1761 there were
actually more ash than oak trees recorded in the fields and hedges – 47 per
cent and 41 per cent, respectively, with 12 per cent elm.^56 Other species were
also present in many districts, such as hornbeam on heavy clay soils and
beech occasionally on lighter clays and chalk, and these too could be locally
dominant. John Norden commented in 1618 on the abundance of fruit trees
in the hedges of Devon, Gloucestershire, Kent, Shropshire, Somerset and
Worcestershire, as well as in many parts of Wales, and lamented the fact
that they were gradually disappearing from the hedges of Middlesex and
Hertfordshire due to a failure to replace ageing specimens.^57 He was perhaps
over-pessimistic. An undated early eighteenth-century map of a small farm
(49 acres or 20 hectares) in Flaunden, on the Chiltern dipslope in west
Hertfordshire, details 27 oak, 9 ash and 18 elm, together with 15 ‘asps’ –
probably aspen – growing in the hedges.^58 But these were outnumbered by
59 apple trees and no less than 165 cherries, growing not only in the hedges
close to the farmhouse but also in those scattered more generally through
the farm.
Most trees surviving in the countryside today which were planted
before c.1700 are former pollards. It is sometimes suggested that this is
because pollarding served to prolong the life of trees, ensuring that they
have survived well into senescence.^59 While there may be some truth in this
suggestion, the dominance of pollards among our stock of veteran trees has
a more straightforward economic explanation. Standard trees in farmland,
like those in woods, would not normally have been allowed to reach any
great age. For most purposes, timber merchants required oaks aged between
80 and 120 years: beyond this a tree’s rate of growth began to slow, so that
it made more sense to have it down, and replace it with another. Pollards,
elle
(Elle)
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