Reading through the news stories today (as you do!) i came across a story of the Woodland Trust charity requesting for members of the UK public to help in creating a map of the UK’s ancient woodlands.

They also do a small mention of the Fortingall Yew, which is a 5,000 year old Yew tree that resides in a churchyard in Fortingall, Perthshire.  This yew tree is supposedly the oldest recorded tree in Europe and the Woodland Trust charity are on the lookout for similar tree’s here in the UK.

To me these tree’s are living monuments, and seeing that a tiny number of our ancient woodland still remains, they need to be preserved and cared for for many generations to come.

Dr Gordon Stark who is the session clerk at Fortingall Kirk has stated what we should be looking out for with potential ancient tree’s:

“If it’s old, fat and gnarled then you should record it,” he says.

“An example is, if you’re looking at an oak tree, if you and two friends can hug the tree standing finger to finger, then that’s the sort of width we’re looking for.”

If your interested in helping out the Woodland Trust with their ancient tree hunt then i have put a few links about it below:

• The Woodland Trust
• Woods Under Threat
• Fortingall Yew

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 10:17 am and is filed under Day to day, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.