The 2004 AGM address. Veteran trees in Essex
MARK HANSON
3 Church Cottages, Church Road, Boreham, Essex CMS 3EG
Introduction
Everyone is now familiar with the term 'veteran tree1 and most people readily understand what the
term means and could identify such a tree fairly easily. A precise definition is however elusive,
probably the best I could give is that it is usually an ancient tree, often of notable girth and size for
its species and is considered to be of some aesthetic, wildlife or cultural value. Many people I have
spoken to during the course of my work recording trees in Essex know of at least one such notable
tree in their area, usually a giant pollard Oak but sometimes another species. It has become clear
during my work that Essex does not just have small numbers of these ancient trees, but makes a
significant contribution to the UK population and for reasons which 1 shall mention later actually
has an internationally important population of veteran trees of great importance at a N.W. European
level.
Management Types
The traditional image of a veteran tree is a huge ancient pollard Oak (in Essex almost always
Quercus robur but the term also embraces trees in coppiced woodland and also standard trees and
can quite legitimately include introduced species which may in fact have not been in the county for
very long. One such species that springs to mind is the Wellingtonia Sequoiadendron giganteum a
native of the Californian Sierras and a species which only celebrated the 150th anniversary of its
introduction last year. Already in Essex I have found a number of trees with girths over 20 ft.
(6.09m), a girth which would probably take one of our native oaks some 400 years to achieve. The
Horse Chestnut Aesculus hippocastanum is another, but longer established introduction, coming
from northern Greece and Albania originally and arriving in the UK in the 17th century. One of the
largest of these trees is to be found in Hylands Park the tree having a girth of 18 ft. 6.5 ins (5.65m).
There may be a larger example at Langleys, Great Waltham but I have yet to ascertain if this tree
still survives. Horse Chestnut can be important from a nature conservation point of view because it
can provide habitat such as deadwood, rot-holes and sap-runs for saproxylic invertebrates relatively
early on in its life. I reared the lovely red beetle Prionocyphon serricornis from a rot-hole in the
trunk of a shattered Horse Chestnut that was probably not more than forty years old.
Essex is a notable county for its ancient woodland; we are lucky in that much of our old woodland
has escaped destruction and more has survived than in many other counties. This has ensured that
there has been a significant survival of ancient coppice stools, some almost certainly from the
medieval period (many Essex woods have a documented history going back beyond 1600 to the
medieval period and probably much earlier). Many of these coppice stools arc now of an immense
size, some that come to mind are the massive Alder stools at Gosfield Park some now 10 ft. (3m)
across and Epping Forest, which although in reality wood-pasture, also has good numbers of ancient
Beech coppice stools particularly in St.Thomas' Quarters and around Loughton Camp. Many of
these are now immense - huge bulging bulks of sometimes unmeasurable vegetable matter. Two of
the most impressive of such trees are to be found near the Lost Pond and near the Wake Arms, the
latter is an oval of 23 poles, some pollarded, at its maximum extent the oval is some 33ft (c.l0m.)
across perhaps one of the oldest living organisms in the county.
Essex Naturalist (New Series) 21 (2004)
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