From ancient oaks to walking yews: Britain’s great trees, forests and avenues | Hacker News Reader

From ancient oaks to walking yews: Britain’s great trees, forests and avenues

theguardian.com

52 pointstolerable11 comments

Very interesting! I didn’t know about the redwoods in Scotland. I wonder if you’d be allowed to plant non-native trees now.

There’s a dawn redwood in Brooklyn:

https://greatesttreesofnyc.tumblr.com/post/125394832885/dawn...

For anyone interested in more trees, or specific to their environment. This website hosts quite a large overview of interesting specimen and data points:

http://monumentaltrees.com

That site is awesome. Unfortunately, some of the best sort links aren't working

From the photos page all of the sort links are broken:

Highest average rating first · Most viewed photos first · Newest photos first · Photos of largest girth trees first · Photos of largest girth single trunk trees first · Photos of tallest trees first (only accurate measurements) · Photos of tallest trees first (including less accurate estimates) · Photos of oldest trees first · Highest own rating first

I havent ran in that issue actually, perhaps as I am using the site a bit different. The way I navigate it is by filtering on a country (or not) first, and than ordering by the properties (girth / height) and than selecting the specific link which pops up the relevant page.

The yews at Kingley Vale are well worth a visit if you're in the Chichester area. They're fantastically twisted and gnarled, like giant limbs reaching out to grab you as you pass.

Most are believed to have been planted by the Saxons to celebrate a victory over the Vikings, but apparently some may go back to Roman times.

Unbelievably, it was used as a bombing practice range by the RAF in WW2!

In what is possibly the most British thing ever, there is a volunteer group called the The Tree Register that catalogs all the best trees in the country and awards the exclusive status of "Champion Tree" to those specific trees.

Champion Trees get awarded a special blue plaque and are added to the national database. Then people who are so inclined can visit all the best specimens of each species.

"CHAMPION TREES are the tallest and fattest of their type and the database of 69,000+ champion trees is available online to members."

https://www.treeregister.org/about-us/who-we-are/

Good for them. They should cherish what little they have left. I've only visited England twice and there are hardly any trees in the wild. Well, at least compared to central and eastern Europe.

Lots of green, mind you. Just not trees.

Not sure what all the down votes are for, I’m English and this is completely correct.

Related tangent (on wild bees that nest in the trunks of very old British oaks):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29137277 ("Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate")

I still didn't get over the actual size of the Sherwood forest. It's like 2-3 miles across.

People were shorter back in Robin Hood's day, so Sherwood was bigger for them.

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