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A Perfect Specimen
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Look at that – isn’t it amazing? Absolutely perfect!’ It’s a blustery afternoon in early autumn and I am standing in a pasture near the River Teign on the edge of Chagford with Mike Palmer, one of the Dartmoor National Park’s volunteer Tree Wardens. Mike is a very happy man.
‘A perfect specimen! Look at the shape of it – lovely!’ Mike is almost hopping up and down with excitement as he rummages in his rucksack for a piece of string to measure the tree’s girth. As tall as a house, its canopy spreading wide above us, it is indeed a beautiful oak. The bark is incredible, twisted, deeply ridged and speckled with lichen. How many years has this magnificent tree stood here, I wonder?
Estimating the age of a tree is more art than science. Having measured a metre and a half up from the base of the tree, Mike asks me to hold one end of the string while he disappears around the other side of the trunk. With age, the height and spread of a tree reach a maximum, and then decline. Neither height nor spread can be used accurately to estimate the age of a tree, but as the trunk increases in circumference throughout its life this can be used as a measure of age.
‘I’d seen the tree at a distance, but I waited until I knew you were coming. I thought it would be a good example of a veteran tree to show you,’ he says, reappearing next to me and marking where the two pieces of string meet.
We both guess the girth is about 12 feet. When we measure the string, we are amazed to find it is 17 feet. Most trees reach a point when fully mature, with a full crown, when the circumference equals 1 inch for each year of growth. So a tree like this one at 17 feet, measured at chest height, is over 200 years old. ‘The trouble is the only way to date a tree accurately is to cut it down and count the rings, which defeats the object really,’ says Mike.
He is one of 20 volunteer Tree Wardens on Dartmoor who each has a range of skills and differing levels of involvement with the scheme. The Tree Warden scheme is not set up to produce experts, but to help volunteers develop a greater understanding of tree issues and know where to get proper advice that can be fed back to their Councils.
Wardens have been carrying out a veteran tree survey across Dartmoor to identify and map veteran and ancient trees. Veteran trees are defined as: ‘Trees which, by virtue of their great age, size or condition, are of exceptional value culturally, in the landscape or for wildlife’.
A Day in the Life
