This year's theme is 'Magnificent Oaks', and the competition aims to spread awareness that trees have little legal protection, according to organisers the Woodland Trust.
Magnificent oaks is the theme of the Woodland Trust’s 2024 Tree of the Year competition, for which the nominees have just been announced. Among the list of 12, with 11 put forward by experts and one voted for by the public via social media, is the Marton Oak in Cheshire, about 1,200 years old with a 14.02m (46ft) hollow trunk.
A little narrower at 13.38m (44ft) and with ancient graffiti to match its 1,000-year existence, Lincolnshire’s Bowthorpe Oak is said to have once fit three-dozen people inside it, standing shoulder to shoulder, and the fractionally younger Queen Elizabeth Oak in West Sussex marks where the monarch hunted in 1591. Another, on the Ickworth estate in Suffolk, was a setting for the tea parties of 19th-century village children; the Capon Oak is one of the last surviving of the ancient Jed-forest in the Borders; and a 300-year-old pollard oak in the New Forest resembles an elephant.
The Darwin Oak is under threat from a new bypass, which has prompted the Woodland Trust to call for greater legal protections for trees. Credit: Neil Rowley
Sadly, the Darwin Oak in Shropshire, just outside The Mount, where Charles Darwin grew up, could be felled, together with eight other ancient trees, to make way for the Shrewsbury Bypass. Trees seem to have little legal protection and the public is invited to sign a Living Legends petition, calling for stronger laws around cutting down valuable trees.
‘The history of our country is interwoven with these wonderful trees, which have built our ships and cities, and after which we have named so many places — and pubs! It is essential that future generations have the opportunity to stand under a centuries-old oak and wonder what stories it holds,’ says Adam Cormack, Woodland Trust’s head of campaigns. ‘For that to happen, we must act now to protect these incredible ancient trees.’
‘It’s humbling to think how many events these trees have lived through and that reaching full maturity they can stand for hundreds of years as ancient trees — all the time continuing to provide vital habitat as they hollow and produce dead wood,’ adds Dr Kate Lewthwaite, citizen-science manager at the Woodland Trust. ‘Each individual oak is like a miniature nature reserve. There are so many species that live and rely on them and have evolved alongside them.’
Tree of the Year voting is open until October 21, with the winner announced on October 29.
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