Trunk call

With the support of The King, a pioneering initiative is fighting to save majestic oaks, the age-old stalwarts of the British landscape, for generations to come, finds Julie Harding

- Julie Harding

KING OFFA'S OAK has been a quiet bystander to history for more than a millennium. Probably a sapling in the early 700s, it was nearing 400-year-old ‘ancient’ status by the time of the Norman Conquest. Its age had doubled when Henry VIII was crowned in 1509 and its 1,000th birthday probably passed unmarked during the Jacobite Rebellions. Now gnarled, split, hollowed and misshapen by the march of time, this long-standing resident of the north-west edge of Windsor Great Park no doubt welcomes the modern props that help to keep its hefty branches aloft. Long before they were required, perhaps William I and Henry VIII dashed past on horseback in pursuit of boar or deer.

So awestruck do we feel in the presence of this venerable living entity that even Geraint Richards, head forester to the Duchy of Cornwall and The King—and for whom trees are an everyday staple—is quiet. As he treads through the leaf carpet discarded last autumn by this tree named after the 8th-century King of Mercia, he notes: ‘Some of the oldest trees in Britain are oaks, but only the exceptional, like this one, survive this long.’

Britain is home to 171 million oaks, 3,400 of them ancient, and several distinguished specimens are here in Windsor Great Park. The nearby Signing Oak is so called because, in 1972, beside its near 1,000-year-old trunk, signatures were placed on a document that confirmed the importance of the park as a special conservation area. Elephant Oak is apparently eight centuries old, its trunk and branches forming the shape of an imposing mammal and its offspring.

Watch Oak, which stands solo and is more stout than its aforementioned cousins, is dying. 'I think it's not long for this world,' laments Mr Richards: a 20-year-old ratchet strap pinches its weakening twin trunks together. Its bark is streaked with the telltale sticky black 'tar' of acute oak decline (AOD); the D-shaped exit holes of the native oak jewel beetle (