Celebrate Oaks this National Tree Week
Mike Dunn, a social scientist working with the Bac-Stop project, reflects on our enduring love of oak trees.
National Tree Week 2021, the UK’s largest annual tree celebration, runs Saturday 27 November to Sunday 5 December. What better time to reflect on the value of trees, to consider why oaks in particular have historically been so esteemed, and to take action to help secure their future?
With their distinctive lobed leaves and seasonal acorns, oaks are perhaps the most widely known and recognised of the UK’s trees. Look to the logos of the Woodland Trust, the National Trust and the Conservative Party and you will find the foliage, fruit and majestic form of the oak. Curiously, our reverence for these trees dates back millennia – for example, Norfolk’s Seahenge, a 6.6 meter diameter monument consisting of 56 oak trees dates back some 4,000 years. But why oaks? What is it about these trees that for so long has set them apart from the dozens of others gracing our landscapes?
The tree of the gods
In Pre-Christian times, faith was influenced by the natural world and the threats posed by the elements. Our ancestors noticed that oaks had a peculiar habit of attracting lightning strikes. Today, this phenomenon is explained by oak’s tendency to grow taller than most other trees and the presence of water-filled cells in the trunk’s inner bark which act as a lightning conductor. These dramatic, yet somewhat predictable, occurrences led to an association between oak trees and the deities of thunder and lightning, such as the Celtic Dagda, Zeus and Thor. Ancient kings donned crowns of oak leaves to present themselves as the personifications of these gods. Oaks were similarly venerated by Celtic Druids who beleived lightning was a source of ‘awen’ or artistic inspiration, attained by ‘courting the flash’. They also believed that if mistletoe, itself a symbol of fertility and protection, was found on oak it had been divinely placed there through a flash of lightning.
A most useful tree
As well as having symbolic and spiritual importance, oaks have served many practical purposes through the ages. Leaves, bark and acorns were believed to heal ailments including diarrhoea, inflammation and kidney stones. Acorns also provided fodder for sheep and pigs or were processed into flour to make bread. Tannin found in the bark was used to tan leathers, while oak galls supplied a dye used for ink as early as the 5th Century. Come the ‘Age of Sail’ around the turn of the 16th Century, oak was the material of choice for constructing ships for trading and warfare. Building HMS Victory, captained by Admiral Nelson at the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, is said to have required 6,000 trees, most of them oaks. Oaks were so important during this period that the Royal Navy came to adopt William Boyce’s ‘Heart of Oak’ as the service’s official march.
Heart of oak are our ships, heart of oak are our men;
Chorus to Heart of Oak, 1759. Score by William Boyce, words by David Garrick.
We always are ready, steady, boys, steady!
We’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again.
Oaks can also be very long lived. Notable examples of surviving veteran trees include the Birnam Oak in Perth and Kinross, once part of the expansive Birnam Wood featured in Shakespeare’s 1606 play Macbeth, and Sherwood Forest’s Major Oak, alleged to have provided refuge to the 15th century folk hero Robin Hood. Such is the tree’s longevity that oak is the traditional gift for an 80th wedding anniversary, elevating it far above the gifts of gold and diamond we associate with less enduring unions.
An ancient solution to modern problems
Today we face very different threats, the likes of which would have been unforeseeable by Nelson, regardless of which eye his telescope was raised. Yet, the role of oaks and other trees in safeguarding our future is arguably no less important than it was in centuries past. Amidst a biodiversity crisis, we’ve discovered that no other UK tree species supports a greater diversity of life than oaks. They provide a haven for an estimated 2,300 different species, excluding bacteria and other microorganisms. With their capacity to lock up more than 100 tonnes of carbon per hectare, oak woodlands also represent a valuable asset in our efforts to avert or reduce the impacts of climate change. They can also be processed into other long-lasting, renewable and biodegradable products such as furniture, flooring and beams.
Do Britons still appreciate oak trees?
Despite becoming synonymous with strength and durability, oaks are not invulnerable specimens. Now more than ever these iconic trees are under pressure. A changing climate, housing and infrastructure developments, not to mention pests and diseases including oak processionary moth and acute oak decline all threaten the UK’s oaks. At the same time, many people in modern society have lost their sense of connectedness with nature, so-called nature deficit disorder. It begs the question, do people today see and value oaks as our ancestors once did?
It is this question which researchers from a Bacterial Plant Diseases Programme project known as BAC-STOP are looking to answer. Alongside a survey of 6,000 members of the public, the team are inviting submissions to their Odes 2 Oaks campaign. Odes 2 Oaks invites UK residents to celebrate oaks by contributing images, poems, short stories or messages about individual oak trees, oak woodland or oak products. Together with the survey data these submissions will offer examples and insights into the ways oak are perceived and enjoyed, ultimately strengthening the case for their protection into the future.
If you value oaks, why not mark National Tree Week by submitting your Ode 2 Oaks via https://bacterialplantdiseases.uk/odes2oaks/. Not only will you be helping to safeguard the future of our iconic oak trees, you might even win a prize!