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in your head you can create an old england, filled with nothing but bird song, and the wisps of wind curling their way through the trees. I'd love to get lost in a place like this
I know this forest or one exactly like it, shame he didn't visit it when the blue bells are out, they cover the forest floor like a carpet. I hate to spoil the 'old England' vibe but it's in Scotland ( or one exactly like it). There's one section that was planted around the time of Mary Queen of Scot's
Most of my family left England for the American colonies very early on. Some were literally on the Mayflower. In the early 80s I was stationed at RAF Chicksands. I always thought it was interesting that some of the trees I saw in the UK could have been seen by my forefathers. Amazing trees indeed.
I live in SW Scotland, and very fortunate to live near some ancient Oaks - and the generous supply of edible mushrooms they produce. I've not seen this condition they're suffering from elsewhere in the country, but we have lost too many from storms and riverbank collapse during more frequent flooding.
Trees are meant to grow in communities of interlocked roots and branches which help shield them from winds and slips. Too many have been left as specimen trees thanks to the earlier fashion of clearing out forests leaving only the larger trees and allowing huge lawns to replace the original forest floor.
Something similar is in Slovakia and it’s called Gavurky. It’s really amazing place with huge energy of this relicts of time. I totally love this type of old forest.
Great stuff. The importance of deadwood cannot be understated, really important that people understand how important deadwood is for wildlife - whether it’s still standing or slowly breaking down in the woodland soil. I forget how lucky we are in Scotland with the right to roam, hellish that you couldn’t simply leap the fence and explore further!
It's lousy below the border for that, and incredibly sad. Although... the population is also far higher, so if we had littering idiots going everywhere they wanted, it would probably cause damage on a massive scale so there may be something to it!
@@Truth-And-Freedom I know you think that’s cool and free and all but that’s not a good idea man. Most fences are there for a reason, whether you agree with it or not. Hopping fences can be dangerous.
Yeah, we've lost a lot, but we've also kept more ancient trees than comparable European countries. We have also managed to keep areas of ancient non-treed habitats such as chalk grassland and heathland (both plagioclimaxes evolving from neolithic agricultural clearances) and peat bogs, ditto and important in carbon sequestration. Plant trees on these habitats and you lose them and, with peat bogs, you wind up releasing sequestered carbon. Plant trees, but be aware that it's not a panacea. And manage them after planting......
As someone who struggles to calm my brain and relax, I needed to find new ways of switching my head off. I don't always have the time to go out to the woods which has always helped me. So watching channels like yours really helps bring peace. Just want you to know that I really appreciate what you do not just for nature but those of us who don't have brains capable of switching off.
Beautiful content on your channel! I am lucky to live in the Lake District and we have some amazing trees and the wildlife they support such as our beloved red squirrel. I find it mind blowing how forestry commission was ever allowed here or invasive species for that matter. I work in early years and I bring my love for nature into my classroom on a daily basis. The children love sowing and growing, making bird feeds and bug shelters, tree and plant identification. .. the learning is endless! Can't wait to show them clips of this video about giant , ancient and magnificent trees! " Now is the time. If we don't embrace nature in our children's hearts. We will lose it" Steve Irwin
@@LeaveCurious I believe that all living things have souls, including plants, and a tree that old, while still not a conscious being, would have a deep and complex soul.
Nice. Thought I knew this site when the video first started, but quickly realised I didn't. Pretty clear it's ancient pasture woodland though. Glad you mentioned the oaks are pollards. Might be nice to mention that pollarding was done because of the overwhelming need for usable timber coupled with an overwhelming pressure for grazing. Coppice is easier for production of anything but saw logs (not forgetting standard trees in coppice), but you have to exclude stock. If you pollard, you can have your coppice 'on a stick' - sprouting above the height that cattle can reach (or deer). But pollards used to be known as 'widowmakers'. Think of getting up in the crown with a hand saw and maybe a single rope, even if the stems you are cutting are much smaller than the long-derelict ones you see in your excellent video. No harnesses, no mupe. Now try it with an axe. Overwhelming pressure.... Pollards can be of several species. Oak are most common, but poplar, crack willow, hornbeam, beech and ash can all be found. All those timbers had their place. They are a product of the high population density of the British Isles and England especially. Overwhelming pressure. Why have they survived? Various reasons. Difficulty in harvesting (widow makers). Easier/safer now, but very expensive and re-cutting oaks like those is probably going to be sectional fells leaving no usable timber. No high quality timber in the bollings (main trunks). They are hollow, rotten and gnarly. Tied into former 'prestige' landscapes so didn't get 'the chop' in WW1 or WW2. Not all pollards are tied to former hunting forests, not by any means. Some are in old farm hedges, so present scattered in small numbers. Where those hedges were also boundaries (like a Parish boundary) they were more likely to have been kept as a boundary marker. This vid is an ash (3 actually) in Somerset. Boot it off if you think my commenting a link is a liberty. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FOXRiyAILQM.html Some are found in farmed fields or horse paddocks where they are crib-bitten. There's a vid on the channel showing both and what it means for their continued existence. Some are on grazed commons (several sites around London). Then there are stob-cuts in ancient hedges and assarts in woodland. Many of these hold similar value to pollards, they approach pollards of the same species in terms of age (if not in size) and many have no protection whatsoever or are even mapped. There is a very big question that arises: We have a huge wealth of biodiversity associated with ancient trees, with pollards featuring very strongly. Pollarding can induce ancient tree characteristics (the knots and rots and hollows) in a tree much quicker and in more variety and with more long-term structural stability and niche continuity than they arise in maiden trees. These characteristics are the niches that many rare species require and which are almost completely absent in (say) recent plantations or secondary woodland. But many of our pollards have not bee re-cut for many generations. So here is the question: How do we provide for continuity of these niches (and those species) when pollards are neither being managed nor replaced?
Those trees need management if they are to survive for much longer: comparing to southern Iberia, with old Holm and Cork Oaks, they have been breaking large branches/forks regularly, specially after droughts and windstorms. These result in open trunks or a completely broken trunk below the 'Pollard' level.
@@lobster5782 True. Resources? Even crown relief (reducing shading by felling younger, taller, older surrounding trees that are killing old pollards) is expensive.
Another factor is surely the following: These trees would have been mature specimens when the sail fleet of the British Navy was at its peak Had they not been pollarded, they could have produced large enough timbers to be used for ships of the line and so would have been much less likely to survive
@@Coherers True. But they (of course) wouldn't have been first pollarded as mature trees. Would have been first cut at 'waiver' size 'cos lopping the top out of an already-mature tree would have been dangerous and likely too much of a shock to the maiden tree.
Living in Australia, it is easy to forget how lucky we are to still have many ancient places. There are at least three 300 year old trees on my property alone. So many were lost to forestry and clearing for agriculture, but many still remain. They are beautiful but also so important for biodiversity and ensuring genetic diversity.
Same thing here in New Zealand. It’s a bloody shame that large scale deforestation is still ongoing in Australia though, you Aussies gotta get your shit together before it’s all lost.
Another great video. Mossy Earth is great for its breadth and depth of projects in many varied areas, but as someone in the UK its great to see content highlighting the wonders on our doorstep
Theres something so magical about the cinemaphotography in this video, the big trees towering over you in every direction kinda makes you feel like a kid again.
Please make a video on your beginnings! Will definitely inspire many passionate conservationists for the future! Your work is truly astounding thank you so much for providing us with such awe inspiring videos! Been a proud member of mossy earth for jus abiut over a year now, I encourage anyone with a spare fiver a month to sign up and join the cause. 😊
In southern Maine years ago I came across an ancient oak, almost completely hollowed out like the one at the start of this vid. It was easily 8’ in diameter. There was one section of live bark maybe 10” wide running up the side and terminating in a single live branch.
There is a stob-cut (like a short pollard) oak in a scrubbed-up road verge (actually a strip of common land) in a place called Malden Rushett in Greater London. This tree has regenerated from a strip like this and has almost re-formed a circular trunk. The wreckage of it's former body lies all around. Thousands drive past it every day and never see it (and others like it).
I grew up in Sonoma county California which is home to the largest remaining Oak forests on earth. Some of them are a thousand years old and are protected by law. My home county was also one of Ansel Adams favorite places to photograph because of the ancient Oak forests. I live in Astoria Oregon now about 800 miles north in the land of ancient Douglas Fir forests, but I always miss my old Oak trees of my home state and county. 🌳
I love trees, they are individual natural sculptures, I used to live, close to Sherwood Forest, and Clumber park Nottinghamshire. and the major oak, featured in the Robin Hood legend. Acorn coffee isn't bad. I loved Elm trees too.
Those trees are beautiful. And indeed here in the Netherlands we do not have many ancient trees, if any at all. I would love to hear more about your background. You are a natural born teacher. I love to listen to you and to learn from you. Your passion for the preservation and restoration from nature is contagious for all the right reasons. 👍
@@damionkeeling3103 Well, I think that here in the Netherlands it is a bit more complicated than that. Large parts of the Netherlands used to be a swamp, or to be more exact a river delta that would be influenced by the tidal wave action from the sea before humans made dikes and all sorts of barriers to keep the sea out. But It had many swampy areas and river tributaries. So I am not sure if those conditions were the best conditions for oak trees to grow old to begin with, or to grow at all for that matter. I do know that every centimeter from our land has been touched and modified by humans. And that over centuries of time the rivers have been tamed with dikes and other barriers and that all the swampy areas have been pumped dry and most of it became agricultural land or cities or an industrial zone. So we do not have any ancient forests to begin with, the forests that we have, have been planted by humans at some point in time. And I suppose that the trees were used for commercial purposes such as building ships. I can also imagine that they bought wood from other countries, such as Germany and the Scandinavian countries. But I am not sure if that were indeed the case. We are also one of the most dense populated countries in the world. Both with humans and cattle and pigs and goats. 60% of the land is agricultural land, 18% of the surface area is water, and what is left over must be shared by all the people and the companies and the wildlife animal species that are not extinct yet. On top of that we had the war with big bombardments and battles, and during that time we also had the hunger winter where people were starving to death, most dominantly the smaller farmers but also people in the cities who had no money, and they had to warm themselves with wood or coal or oil stoves, depending on what was the most accessible and cheapest fuel for their situation. Many trees did not survive that time. And preservation of nature and natural ecosystems did not exist either at that time. So it is easy to see why ancient forests do not exist in the Netherlands and why ancient trees are rare or of none existence in the Netherlands. I live near a forest where the planting of trees was started many hundreds of years ago, and that lasted over centuries of time in an attempt by multiple generations of people to prevent the desertification from their local area of land that was caused by over grazing from the land. It swallowed and buried a small village and and a local homestead with big sand dunes. And over centuries of time people were desperate to stop the desertification by planting trees. And it worked. However, the still moving sand dunes that it created are still there. It even has its own very own local desert type of micro climate. With relative cold night during hot summer nights. But those trees have also been selectively used for commercial purposes. Most of the trees in that small forest that are alive today are not that old. And most trees are pine trees. But I am not a historical expert by any means. The things that I mentioned are just some general things that I have picked up and learned over time out of personal interest. And I could be very wrong with my conclusions.
To @insAneTunA Though no-one could claim that it is natural, the Netherlands has one of the most beautiful landscapes anywhere. People are ofttimes surprised when I tell them that after Switzerland, I think that the Netherlands is one of the loveliest countries in Europe in terms of the countryside.
@@RCSVirginia I could not disagree more with you. It is green and very well organized, and not a single inch of land has been untouched, but the Netherlands was a disaster for the wildlife that used to live here before we started applying all the destructive farming practices and changing the landscape and destroying the habitat for wildlife. It is flat and boring, and once you have seen one polder, you have seen them all. (A polder is how we call all the combined pasture land that is surrounding the villages and cities and each region has their own polders, and in total the polders make up about 60% of the total land surface from the Netherlands) We do not have a single mountain or valley, and compared to Switzerland the Netherlands is as flat as a pancake. We don't have bedrock either. Only a small portion of the land has some sandstone. So how you can make the comparison between Switzerland and the Netherlands is a complete mystery to me. At the end of the day beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One can consider the Dutch landscape as beautiful, but once you know more about it, and when you understand how biodivers the plants and animals used to be, and how much we humans have destroyed over the most recent past centuries, it becomes increasingly difficult to call it beautiful. I do not blame or shame you, because if I did not know any better, I probably would call it nice too. But now that I have learned more about it I see a lot of pure destruction for greed when I look at our countryside.
Lots of Oaks were planted to grow wood for the British Navy over the centuries as well. Wasn't sure about the tash but it grew on me lol. Looks great but isn't it a bit monocultural? Interested whether it's got diversity of wildlife anywhere approaching Knepp? Although I guess it needs a complicated eco survey to establish that, but any rough idea? Thanks again for super views with your great commentary. 🤩😀
Were there many younger trees there - as in: is the forest regenerating or is it all ancient growth? Was difficult to spot saplings and it would be a terrible shame if that forest was essentially just a retirement home even though it's an amazing habitat.
@@31Blaize I was wondering exactly the same thing about regeneration as it looked more like an old folks home, but then I saw what looks like a youngster at 4:41 on the left near its mum.
The fenced areas are too keep the cows in not to keeps people out btw. Some areas have conservation grazing with english longhorns at some times of year.@@LeaveCurious
That's a key question. Typically oaks will not successfully regenerate under a canopy of oaks - they need a gap. Gaps can arise if a pollard collapses. Providing for replacement trees in a system which runs on a 'cycle' of many hundreds of years is fraught with difficulties when 'a week is a long time in politics', budgets are cast yearly (often in arrears) and if a management plan for a site is cast and funded for 5 years, that's unusually long.
I live in SW France not far from the Pyrenees and there is lots of woodland. But there are very old trees so that whole section of plants, animals and fungi that live on old trees is missing. On the face of it with so much woodland it seems great, but it’s not as healthy as it could be. Thanks for sharing this video.
@@helenswan705 there are very few old trees. A friend has a picture of a nearby hill (nearly 800m so not small) completely stripped in the early 1900s. The woodland has been growing since then but that makes the oldest trees only 100 years. The people responsible seem to carry out rotational clear cutting. So no trees older than about 100 years. That’s my observations.
It’s comforting to hear the medieval had the feeling we do today with forbidden of cutting certain trees. Some amazing old trees here in QLD Oz at an ancient dormant volcano “Mount Warning” when you walk through this ancient nature wonderland you see huge insects, cicadas lizards with ancient preserved massive logs laying down with colourful layers of fungi
Simply stunning footage and great commentary. As an arboriculturist myself, I really think you put this across so well! Well done, Sharon from Tree Lady Talks
Wonderful looks like the oak forest around the shores and on the Islands of lake Mälaren that begins at Stockholm and goes inland. There are many very old ones. The oaks of Sweden was also protected by the king, and oak forest used to cover much of Southern Sweden historically. During the bronze age when it was warmer the oak forests stretched much more far north beyond todays limits around the River Dalaälven. Further north the spring comes to late for them to bloom properly but there are planted oaks.
A truly amazing place, not far from Woodbridge in Suffolk. We are so lucky in England to have so may veteran trees. Just a little more work needed to protect and care for them, getting some pollards (where possible) back into cycle and starting new pollards from scrub oaks in these communities to ensure the best condition of these places for our great great grandchildren to enjoy ;-)
Thank you so much for taking us to this magical forest! I hadn't considered William the Conqueror as an environmentalist lol, but that's quite the silver lining to a thousand year old invasion lol. Sadly the English came to America and continued the practice of land clearing and deforestation. I know of only a handful of old growth forests here in Massachusetts, and a few sacred ancient tree survivors.
I've just recently discovered your channel and I'm loving it to bits! Is it possible you could consider doing a video about invasive species? My local area has quite a severe problem with Himalayan Balsam choking out native species and I'm sure similar situations are happening elsewhere in the UK. Many thanks for all the amazing stuff you do!
There's something special and magical about ancient trees. We have some left in the US but not as much as we should. I'm growing a sapling from the elder tree (100 year old or more white oak) of my last home. Had to sell but I'll be planting the sapling when it gets bigger at our new home.
Gteetings from Auckland New Zealand 🇳🇿 We have lots of Oak trees here, in Auckland and throughout NZ . Mostly introduced and planted in town centres and farms by early Settlers. They mostly go very well. Not many are ever pollarded. The oldest Oaks here would only be about 250 uears old. They are respected and loved
@@LeaveCurious So pleased you've been to NZ. Do come again when you're able. In the North Island, we have huge Pohutukawa trees, many are ancient and date to pre-European times. The oldest is estimated at nearly 800 - 1,000 years. It's called "Tane Mahuta" and is on the Western North coast of the North Island. Magnifincent.
@@LeaveCurious Oaks grow faster here so I guess the wood wont be as strong but they look amazing. Bright green in spring then nice dark green over summer and providing shade. They seem to produce a ton of seedlings, is that the case in the UK too?
Oops! Yes you are quite right, thank you. I was online waay too late at night and lost my concentration. Also lost in admiration for huge, ancient, trees ! xx@@damionkeeling3103
This is an inspirational video! I do notice that you seem to avoid saying where it is and for someone like me who would absolutely delight in photographing these trees it is very frustrating. Nearly ten years ago now I visited Bradgate Park in Leicestershire having been similarly inspired by photos taken by a local guy and shared on the internet. This was a wonderful place for oaks. I live in South Manchester and, although my native Cheshire is known for its oaks, there are no ancient woodlands to the best of my knowledge, that stand compare with wherever you were. I only learnt of the existence of Staverton Park in Suffolk by reading your viewers comments. If I've got to do a long drive to reach such a woodland I need to know where to go.
He doesn't give away the location of endangered species in order to protect them. Some idiot would absolutely try to destroy the area for their version of fun.
Recently went to Blenheim again, another place that has Oaks that are huge (one was used as the womping willow in Harry Potter) and there is something magical and majestic about these trees that have been there for centuries!
Enjoyed this video - thanks. I also found Judi Dench’s 2017 video “My Passion for Trees” quite fascinating too. I have always loved trees (all types, all sizes), especially as a child. I often talk to them and run my hand across the trunks of large ones to see if I can pick up any thoughts or bits of sentiments….. it’s rarely a two way street but on the odd occasion it is, it’s magical!!
Would love to hear more about your previous experience and how you came to start Leave Curious. I have a career in the marine environment but really interested to hear about terrestrial career pathways too
Hey, so with what you asked (if we’d like to know how you began the channel), I think it be an interesting video. I’ve just started collage (applied science, but I’m finding that difficult)I know I’d like to work with the environment, I see the work you do and I think, “wow you’re lucky, wish I could do that”, it be amazing to help the environment, most of all the wildlife. Love your channel 🍁
I wish our govt, in the US, actually wanted to protect large swaths of the 1% of the prairies, and at least 15-20% of the forests and such places still we have left. Not just for environmental reasons but for legacy of nature.
