Alexander von Humboldt, in his work entitled _Views of Nature_ (pp. 220.
268-276. ed. Bohn), has some interesting remarks on the age of trees.
"In vegetable forms (he says) _massive size_ is indicative of age;
and in the vegetable kingdom alone are age and the manifestation
of an ever-renewed vigour linked together."
Following up this remark, he refers to specimens of the Baobab
(_Adansonia digitata_), with trunks measuring more than thirty feet in
diameter, the age of which is estimated by Adanson at 5150 years. All
calculations of the age of a tree, founded merely on the _size of its
trunk_, are, however, uncertain, unless the law of its growth, and the
limits of the variation producible by peculiar circumstances, are
ascertained, which, in the case of the Adansonia, have not been
determined. For the same reason, the calculation of 2,500 years for a
gigantic cypress in Persia, mentioned by Evelyn in his _Silva_, is of no
value.
Humboldt afterwards refers to "the more certain estimations yielded by
_annular rings_, and by the relation found to exist between the
thickness of the layer of wood and the duration of growth;" which, he
adds, give us shorter periods for our temperate northern zone. The
calculation of the age of a tree, founded on its successive rings,
appears to be quite certain; and whenever these can be counted, the age
of a tree can be determined without risk of error. Humboldt quotes a
statement from Endlicher, that "in Lithuania linden (or lime) trees have
been felled which measured 87 feet round, and in which 815 annular rings
have been counted." The section of a trunk of a silver fir, which grew
near Barr, is preserved in the Museum at Strasburg: its diameter was
eight feet close to the ground, and the number of rings is said to
amount to several hundreds.
Unfortunately this mode of determining a tree's age cannot be applied to
a living tree; and it is only certain where the tree is sound at the
heart. Where a tree has become hollow from old age, the rings near the
centre, which constitute a part of the evidence of its duration, no
longer exist. Hence the age of the great oak of Saintes, in the
department of the Charente Inferieure, which measures twenty-three feet
in diameter five feet from the ground, and is large enough to contain a
small chamber, can only be estimated; and the antiquity of 1800 or 2000
years, which is assigned to it, must rest on an uncertain conjecture.
Decandolle lays it down that, of all European trees, the _yew_ attains
the greatest age; and he assigns an antiquity of thirty centuries to the
_Taxus baccata_ of Braburn in Kent; from twenty-five to thirty centuries
to the Scotch yew of Fortingal; and fourteen and a half and twelve
centuries respectively to those of Crowhurst in Surrey and Ripon
(Fountains Abbey) in Yorkshire. These ages are fixed by a conjecture
founded on the _size_, which can lead to no certain result.
Can any of your correspondents state what is the greatest number of
rings which have been actually counted in any yew, or other tree, which
has grown in the British Isles, or elsewhere? It Is only by actual
enumeration that vegetable chronology can be satisfactorily determined:
but if the rings in many trees were counted, some relation between the
number of rings and the diameter of the trunk, for each species, might
probably be laid down within certain limits. These rings, being annually
deposited, form a natural chronicle of time, by which the age of a tree
is determined with as much precision as the lapse of human events is
determined by the cotemporaneous registration of annalists. Hence Milton
speaks of "monumental oak." Evelyn, who has devoted a long chapter of
his _Silva_ to an investigation of the age of trees (b. iii. c. iii.),
founds his inferences chiefly on their _size_; but he cites the
following remark from Dr. Goddard:
"It is commonly and very probably asserted, that a tree gains a
new ring every year. In the body of a great oak in the New Forest,
cut transversely even, (where many of the trees are accounted to
be some hundreds of years old) three and four hundred have been
distinguished."--Vol. ii. p. 202. ed. Hunter.
A delineation and description of the largest and most celebrated trees
of Great Britain may be seen in the interesting work of Jacob George
Strutt, entitled _Sylva Britannica, or Portraits of Forest Trees,
distinguished for their Antiquity, Magnitude, or Beauty_: London, 1822,
folio.
The age of some trees is determined by historical records, in the same
manner that we know the age of an ancient building, as the Parthenon,
the Colosseum, or the Tower of London. It is, however, important that
such historical evidence should be carefully scrutinised; for trees
which are known to be of great antiquity sometimes give rise to fabulous
legends, destitute of any foundation in fact. Such, for example, was the
plane-tree near Caphyae, in Arcadia, seen by Pausanias in the second
century after Christ, which was reported by the inhabitants to have been
planted by Menelaus when he was collecting the army for the expedition
against Troy. (_Paus._ VIII. 23.) Such too, doubtless, was the oak of
Mamre, where the angels were said to have appeared to Abraham.
(_Sozomen_, ii. 3.) A rose-tree growing in the crypt of the cathedral of
Hildesheim is referred, by a church-legend, to a date anterior to 1061;
which would imply an age of more than 800 years, but the evidence
adduced seems scarcely sufficient to identify the existing rose-tree
with the rose-tree of 1061. (See _Humboldt_, p. 275.)
In other cases, however, the historical evidence extant, if not
altogether free from doubt, is sufficient to carry the age of a tree
back to a remote date. The Swilcar Lawn oak, in Needwood Forest,
Staffordshire, is stated by Strutt, p. 2., "to be known by historical
documents to be at this time [1822] six hundred years old; and it is
still far from being in the last stage of decay." Of a great elm growing
at Chipstead Place in Kent, he says: "Its appearance altogether savours
enough of antiquity to bear out the tradition annexed to it, that in the
time of Henry V. a fair was held annually under its branches; the high
road from Rye in Sussex to London then passing close by it." (P. 5.) If
this tradition be authentic, the elm in question must have been a large
and wide-spreading tree in the years 1413-22. A yew-tree at Ankerwyke
House, near Staines, is supposed to be of great antiquity. There is a
tradition that Henry VIII. occasionally met Anne Boleyn under its
branches: but it is not stated how high this tradition ascends. (_Ib._,
p. 8.) The Abbot's Oak, near Woburn Abbey, is stated to derive its name
from the fact that the abbot of the monastery was, by order of Henry
VIII., hung from its branches in 1537. (_Ib._, p. 10.) But Query, is
this an authentic fact?
There is a tradition respecting the Shelton Oak near Shrewsbury, that
before the battle of Shrewsbury between Henry IV. and Hotspur, in 1403,
Owen Glendower reconnoitred the field from its branches, and afterwards
drew off his men. Positive documentary evidence, in the possession of
Richard Hill Waring, Esq., is likewise cited, which shows that this tree
was called "the Great Oak" in the year 1543 (_Ib._ p. 17.). There is a
traditional account that the old yew-trees at Fountains Abbey existed at
the foundation of the abbey, in the year 1132; but the authority for
this tradition, and the time at which it was first recorded, is not
stated. (P. 21.) The Abbot's Willow, near Bury St. Edmund's, stands on a
part of the ancient demesne of the Abbot of Bury, and is hence
conjectured to be anterior to the dissolution of the monastery in the
reign of Henry VIII. (P. 23.) The Queen's Oak at Huntingfield, in
Suffolk, was situated in a park belonging to Lord Hunsdon, where he had
the honour of entertaining Queen Elizabeth. The queen is reported to
have shot a buck with her own hand from this oak. (P. 26.) Sir Philip
Sidney's Oak, near Penshurst, is said to have been planted at his birth,
in 1554: it has been celebrated by Ben Jonson and Waller. This oak is
above twenty-two feet in girth; it is hollow, and stag-headed; and, so
far as can be judged from the engraving, has an appearance of great
antiquity, though its age only reaches back to the sixteenth century.
(P. 27.) The Tortworth Chestnut is described as being not only the
largest, but the oldest tree in England: Evelyn alleges that "it
continued a signal boundary to that manor in King Stephen's time, as it
stands upon record;" but the date of the record is not mentioned. We
can hardly suppose that it was cotemporaneous. (_Ib._ p. 29.) An elm at
Chequers in Buckinghamshire is reported, by a tradition handed down in
the families of the successive owners, to have been planted in the reign
of Stephen. (_Ib._ p. 38.) Respecting the Wallace Oak, at Ellerslie near
Paisley, it is reported that Sir William Wallace, and three hundred of
his men, hid themselves among its branches from the English. This legend
is probably fabulous; if it were true, it would imply that the tree was
in its full vigour at the end of the thirteenth century. (_Ib._ p. 5.)
The ash at Carnock, in Stirlingshire, supposed to be the largest in
Scotland, and still a luxuriant tree, was planted about the year 1596,
by Sir Thomas Nicholson of Carnock, Lord Advocate of Scotland in the
reign of James VI. (_Ib._ p. 8.)
Marshall, in his Work on _Planting and Rural Ornament_ (2 vols. 1796)
refers to a paper on the age of trees, by Mr. Marsham, in the first
volume of the _Transactions of the Bath Agriculture Society_, in which
the Tortworth Chestnut is calculated to be not less than 1100 years old.
Marshall, who appears to have examined this tree with great care,
corrects the account given by Mr. Marsham, and states that it is not
one, but two trees. Sir Robert Atkins, in his _History of
Gloucestershire_, says: "By tradition this tree was growing in King
John's reign." Evelyn, however, as we have already seen, speaks of a
record that it served as a manor boundary in the reign of Stephen.
Query, on what authority do these statements rest? Marshall thinks that
a duration of nearly a thousand years may be fairly assigned to the
Tortworth tree; and he adds:
"If we consider the quick growth of the chestnut, compared with
that of the oak, and at the same time the inferior bulk of the
Tortworth Chestnut to the Cowthorp, the Bentley, and the
Boddington oaks, may we not venture to infer that the existence of
these truly venerable trees commenced some centuries prior to the
era of Christianity?"
The oaks here alluded to by Marshall are of immense size. The Cowthorp
Oak is near Wetherby; the Bentley Oak, in Holt Forest, near Bentley; the
Boddington Oak, between Cheltenham and Tewksbury (vol. ii. pp. 127.
298.).
Perhaps some of your correspondents may be able to point out authentic
evidence respecting the true dates of ancient trees. A large tree is a
subject of interest to the entire neighbourhood: it receives an
individual name, like a river, a mountain, or a building; and by its
permanence it affords a fixed point for a faithful local tradition to
rest upon. On the other hand, the infidelity of oral tradition is well
known; and the mere interest which attaches to a tree of unusual size is
likely to give birth to a romantic legend, when its true history has
been forgotten. The antiquary and the botanist may assist one another in
determining the age of trees. By the authentic evidence of their
duration which the former is able to furnish, the latter may establish
tests by which their longevity may be calculated.