Hugh arrived today and we spent an amazing couple of hours learning more about the tree. First he thought it had probably been pollarded at some time. (Pollarding means you cut the branches at about 8ft or so (2-3 metres) and then harvest the branches for first building hay-ricks on and then for firewood the next year. There is a nice article on pollarding at:
http://www.countrysideinfo.co.uk/woodland_manage/coppice2.htm)
Our tree is probably older than we thought (I guessed 350 years and it seems it was too little.) It's always been in the open, probably with cattle grazing beneath it (as they do now.) Barring catastrophe, our tree should outlive us with ease. It is perfectly healthy with very little fungus damage. There is hardly any sign of stag's head (or do I mean stag's horn?) growth except at the top right. See photo for an example of major stag horn growth in a nearby tree.
There is new good new growth from the middle left which I failed to photograph. Oaks can live more than one thousand years and it is nearly always the pollarded trees that live longest.
Here Jeanie and Hugh are measuring the tree at breast height (1.3 metres), so he can make an accurate estimate of its age. Hugh is amazingly knowledgeable and (oh it's wonderful to talk with someone who knows what he is talking about.) I have invited Hugh to contribute to this blog and I hope he will. Hugh asked us if it was a "named tree," as far as we know it isn't, so I am quickly naming it Yseult. Yseult, as those who knew her will tell you, certainly deserves to have a tree named after her. (The name is the cornish version of Isolde and is pronounced Izzult.)
Tomorrow marks one month since we first started photographing this tree and there should be a series of photos that show the changes so far, and as the weeks go on I'll pass on the information that we picked up from Hugh.
One more thing, there is a series of long black marks down the trunk which are where rainwater has flowed down from a little pool in the fork of the tree to a tiny pool at the bottom. Apparently areas like this are amazing places for finding different forms of life (insects, the birds that live off them and probably all sorts of bacteria).
1 comment:
This wasn't easy to find in google but in the end I found a few brief mentions.
Staghead or stag-head or dieback is when individual branches gradually die off, starting at the twigs and working back towards the trunk. It's often found in old trees.
Apart from age, other causes can be a combination of pests and environmental stresses. It seems that sometimes lots of trees in an area can get affected, sparked by a drought and then exacerbated by various fungus or insect pests that take hold on the weakened trees. This is called oak decline. This page will tell you all about it.
http://na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/fidls/oakdecline/oakdecline.htm
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