The Tree Council of Ireland published a really helpful poster about the island’s native trees a few years ago.
It included vivid
illustrations of 12 such trees and their leaves alongside tri-lingual names and
succinct descriptions in English (1).
“The buds of the oak are borne on brownish twigs with three or four terminal buds clustered together. Catkin flowers are produced in early April and are wind-pollinated. The characteristic lobed leaves appear soon afterwards. The sessile, or stalkless, acorns which sit directly on the twigs ripen in autumn. Height - up to 37 metres.”
Interestingly, the poster also shows that only one of the other 11 trees, the Ash (Fraxinus excelsior, Fuinseóg), can exceed that height at 40 metres.
For the record, the other ten specimens on the Tree Council’s list are Scots pine, horse chestnut, silver birch, wych elm, alder, wild cherry, yew, rowan, holly and hazel.
Trees Matter
Contemporary anxieties about climate change and about personal health (including loss of knowledge about natural remedies) are increasingly focusing public concern for the state of nature.
The mid-May week saw the production of another authoritative report, this one from the
World Meteorological Organisation warning about a climatic event in the coming months, one that will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the natural environment (2).
To help deal with the threats, the need to implement adaptation and mitigation strategies advocated by bodies like the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Panel on Climate Change assumes more urgency, literally, month by month.
Acknowledgement of the crucial role of trees, not least their ability to capture carbon, becomes a strategic imperative.
Among the many facts we learned on a recent short course at Queens University Belfast (QUB), for instance, are that forests hold around 45% of the carbon stored on land; that a tree absorbs approx 10-40 kg of CO2 per year depending on species and stage of growth; and that most of the world’s biodiversity is in forests (3).
That is before even mentioning the physiological, psychological, aesthetic and other health-giving benefits bestowed by trees - while not forgetting the scientific links and priceless
clues that trees provide connecting us to our past.
Native trees in particular have an added advantage over exotic imported species with a natural ability to attract local wildlife and to promote biodiversity. Oaks, however, are the most special because they support more life than any other native tree, attracting wildlife and being the most friendly Irish native tree for biodiversity.
According to the Woodland Trust squirrels, jays and badgers love the sessile oak’s acorns; caterpillars flock to eat its leaves; and, uniquely, 326 species of wildlife are found only on oak.
The paradox, however, is that today this island, for all its wholesome emerald reputation, has one of Europe’s lowest rates of tree cover.
According to Coillte (4), Ireland’s figure in 2020 for forest cover is 11% compared to Europe’s average of 33½%. Less than 2% of Ireland's cover is native woodland. The plan is to extend cover from 11 to 18% in the coming decades (5).
The Woodland Trust’s comparative rate for the UK in 2021 is 13.2% (6), better but still low.
Dinnseanchas (the lore of place names)
Expertise that can provide clues about respecting our trees is available from other sources, going back in written records to medieval annals. These include the dinnseanchas (8), 11th and 12th century manuscripts of Irish literature including poetry and place-names.
The related Irish gaelic word seanchaí translates as a story-teller, in the sense of an old wise person, a reciter of ancient lore, where story-telling was and still is like a national art-form.
One such narrative author, the youthful linguist and folklorist Manchán Magan, takes up the challenge and deals with native trees in his recent best-selling book (7).
Referring to pre-Christian Ireland, he exemplifies the Irish word bile which means “sacred tree” or “ancient tree.” Such was the significance of ancient trees to communities that the word bile appears in place-names (e.g. Maigh Bhile or Moville in County Donegal).
As if to demonstrate the connections which trees have to people and communities here, he adds that of the more than 60,000 townlands across Ireland 13,000 are named after native trees.
They include
- beith (birch e.g East Tyrone’s enchanting Bronze Age stone circle built over an earlier neolithic site at Beaghmore, meaning a large birchland),
- iúr (yew e.g. An Iúr Newry),
- sceach (hawthorn e.g. in Co Tyrone the poetically-named Sceichín an rinnce, little hawthorn of the dancing place),
- coll (hazel),
- cuileann (holly) -
- with the most common tree-name being dair (oak).
This frequency of use was, he says, because the oak was considered to be the strongest, longest-lived and most venerable of trees.
As Magan puts it, the ancient laws of Ireland (the Brehon Laws) ranked trees in order of nobility, with the oak always at the top of the seven Nobles of the Wood.
Our forebears respected oak as the most dominant and slowest-growing, invaluable for construction, barrel-coopering, boat-building and furniture. Its bark, Magan adds, was used for tanning leather and for making black ink and dye.
We learned on the QUB course that Brehon Laws provided stiff punishment for those who damaged trees. For instance, for branch-cutting of Nobles the penalty was a 1 year old heifer, for fork-cutting a 2 year old heifer, for base-felling a milch cow, and for tree removal 2 and a half milch cows.
I suspect that if there were dinnseanchas awards in today's world, Sessile oak would be declared native tree of the current (or maybe any other) millennium.
Another author, linguist and folklorist Niall MacCoitir (9) says that such was the high regard that pre-Christian Ireland had for trees, the creators of the first known Gaelic alphabet Ogham named its letters after trees.
He shows, for instance, that Irish oak was the seventh consonant of the Ogham alphabet and was the ninth month of the Ogham tree calendar.
Elsewhere he cites botanist Charles Nelson’s finding that more than 1,600 townlands in Ireland contain the Irish word Doire (single oak or oakwood).
Magan expands on that theme saying that subsequent Christian sites at places like Doire (Derry) or at Cill Dara (Kildare, church of the oak) are likely to have been sites of pagan worship located in woodland before the first timber chapels and stone churches were built.
The same might apply to Éadan Doire (Edenderry Co Antrim, brow of the oakwood).
In line with his book’s absorbing thesis of attempting (and probably succeeding) to connect mythology to actual archaeological and sacred sites, Magan laments the fact that
“unfortunately our landscape lacks many of its old trees and its old-forest growth… our forests were felled for shipbuilding, construction and iron smelting.. These old trees
were believed to represent transition points between this land and realms beyond; each had a name and would have had guardians to protect it just as a
temple or holy well would have today.”
Trees in Ireland aren’t just sources of firewood or timber for construction.
Drawing on Niall MacCoitir’s book Magan also concludes that trees were regarded as sacred, imbued with supernatural powers, with oak the most sacred because it is the most practical.
To illustrate and provide a flavour of the folklore of Irish oak trees, consider the following five of many specific examples from MacCoitir’s fascinating research:-
- a poem in the Dinnshenchas talks about the ancient lore of Samhain (our family-oriented festival of Halloween) being learned in oakwoods from spirits and fairy folk;
- the most famous oak tree in Irish legend, the Oak of Mugna (Moone in County Kildare) was closely associated with kingship. The oak was enormous in size, girth and height, bearing three crops a year - acorns, nuts and apples - and there are two poems about it in the Dinnshenchas;
- Christian sites like Daire Calgaich (Derry) are associated with oak groves which were probably chosen for their pre-Christian significance. Such was his regard for this oakwood that Colmcillle declared that he was more fearful of the sound of axes in it than he was of death;
- the oak is a symbol of kingship because of its connotations of strength and fertility. The word oak in Irish also means a chief and the same applies in Welsh. MacCoitir adds that the Annals of Connaught for AD 1442 describe the children of king Ardgar Mór Mag Mathgamna as "fragrant trees and mighty oaks of bounty" for their generosity in distributing horses and treasure, money to every suppliant; and
- recent excavation at Navan Fort, the ancient site of Emain Macha, found a large oak post in the centre of a massive circular structure, the purpose of which is believed to be primarily ritual. It is thought, MacCoitir says, that the post may have been the focus of ritual activities to the Celtic Jupiter as a sacred symbol of tribal integrity.
Best examples of Irish Oak
Against this background, could it be that Lagan Valley Regional Park can claim to be the best place on the island to see Irish oak trees in the modern era? It seems so.
This is based on the findings of a survey led by Belfast City Council’s then Forest Officer in collaboration with Queens University (10).
More particularly, the survey found that Belvoir Forest is home to the oldest recorded oak trees in Ireland. Many are over 300 years old. The oldest specimen (1642) pre-dates the Battle of the Boyne by a half-century. According to the report’s author, Dr Ben Simon, “it is the oldest date so far found for any tree in a woodland in Ireland.”
He adds that the largest of Belvoir’s veteran oaks and known affectionately as Granddad, “is a massive squat hollow tree with a circumference of 8.8 metres just above ground level making it one of the largest oaks in Ireland.”
 |
| 14 May 2023 Dr Ben Simon at "Granddad" oak, Belvoir Forest Park Belfast |
On the recent guided walk (11), I asked him if Granddad is a sessile oak or a common oak. That, it seems, remains an open question.
He replied by saying that the survey’s field botanists and geneticists could not agree which of the veteran oaks are Quercus robur (common oak) and which are Quercus petraea (Irish oak).
His 2005 book (on its page 14) about Belvoir Park (12) made precisely the same point.
Perhaps almost two decades on, one wonders if a follow-up survey and analysis might add value to Dr Simon's initiative, given modern advancements in technology.
It's also encouraging to know, as the Lagan Valley Park Ranger pointed out on last month's walk/talk (10), that the Park's volunteers previously collected 13,000 oak acorns for planting; and that now, 15 years on, new areas of oakland are thriving, much of this in places close to the centre of Belfast.
Never before has humanity had greater need of these native specimens.
O ye mighty oaks.
© Michael McSorley 2023
References
- www.treecouncil.ie and irishtimes.com/treesofireland
- RTÉ News George Lee 17 May 2023 https://www.rte.ie/news/environment/2023/0517/1384030-climate-global/
- Queens University Belfast, School of Open Learning. "Native Trees: their identification and place in society" Roy Nelson. Spring 2023
- Coillte, Ireland’s State-owned commercial Forestry business. Oct 2020 report https://www.coillte.ie/a-brief-history-of-irelands-native-woodlands/
- https://www.teagasc.ie/crops/forestry/advice/general-topics/history-of-forestry-in-ireland/
- https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/state-of-uk-woods-and-trees/
- “Listen to the Land Speak” Manchán Magan 2022
- Dinnseanachas:- https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/Dinnshenchas_%C3%89renn
- “Ireland’s Trees, myths legends and folklore” Niall MacCoitir 2015 edition
- Dr Ben Simon “If Trees Could Talk: The Story of Woodlands around Belfast.” 2009
- “A Walk back in Time” 14 May 2023 and “Treasured Trees” 21 May 2023 Dr BenSimon, Lagan Valley Regional Park Events Programme 2023
- “A Treasured Landscape the heritage of Belvoir Park” Ben Simon 2005
New and great topic Michael
ReplyDeleteLong live the oak trees