This version is the script for a presentation.
The original survey of the notable and veteran trees of the ancient woodland of Markstakes Common, a significant undertaking, was meticulously carried out by Jacqui Huston in 2010/2011.
This work features on the Friends of Markstakes Common website and has been my guide and reference for the last two years. I am contributing to this work.
Thirty-four trees were identified in the original survey and subsequently recognised on the Woodland Trust Ancient Tree Inventory as ‘notable’ or ‘veteran’. Interestingly, given that Markstakes Common is ‘ancient woodland’, we don’t have any ‘ancient’ trees – more on differentiating between the categories ‘notable, veteran, and ancient’ in a moment.
A quick word on maps.
This screenshot from The Woodland Trust Ancient Tree Inventory (the aerial image on the right) shows veteran trees in purple and notable trees in green. To date, I’ve had a further 16 trees: 15 notable and 2 veteran verified and added. There is a fourth category, ‘locally notable’ which is valuable for isolated trees and urban areas where a relatively young tree is of note for is position, character and aesthetic and environmental value to the local community.
According to the Land Registry UK (the map on the left), Markstakes Common includes the thin strip of land on the other side of Markstakes Lane to a boundary bank against Wilding Wood, the paths and boundary banks down to Balneath Lane, and down the western edge of Starvecrow Wood, as well a short piece of verge and boundary banks and on either side of the lane beyond the farm gate towards South Chailey.
I have found the boundary banks and ditches extraordinarily valuable for new finds.
As seen on this Woodland Trust table, hawthorn and field maple don’t need to be as old in years to be considered veteran or ancient as oak or yew. Girth is just one consideration. Ancient characteristics such as dead wood in the crown, hollowing wood, epiphytes, and fungi are also determinants.
This illustration of the stages in the life of an oak shows what an ‘ancient’ looks like compared to a mature tree. Our notable and veteran trees are all, probably without exception, ‘mature’ trees … on their way to becoming ancient.
Ted Green (of Windsor Great Park) cleverly illustrated the importance of hollowing in his book ‘Treetime’. Finding hollowing in the trunk is one of the reasons most likely for a tree to slip from ‘notable’ to ‘veteran’ because it is an important ‘ancient’ indicator.
Ancient characteristics to look out for include decaying wood in the crown, dead branches on the ground, hollowing, and epiphytes such as moss, lichens, ferns and ivy on the stems and branches. Disease and fungi are ‘ancient’ indicators, too, as are invertebrates, birds, bats and other animals.
Just a quick look at what is meant by coppice and pollard.
This practice has greatly increased the longevity of many of our trees in the past, so much so that in some managed woods and parks around England, it has been introduced as a strategy to develop future veteran and ancient trees.
If you’ve never been to Paris, you must visit the Eiffel Tower, though you don’t have to go up it. If you visit Markstakes Common, you must see the big oak in the Northern Bracken Field, though you don’t have to climb it!
This oak pollard (tree 13) (4.05m girth) is mature but not ancient. The trunk looks like a climbing frame made for a young elephant, but a few twists formed by the tree recovering from breaks when it was younger haven’t yet moved into the hollowing characteristics of an ancient tree.
From a distance, the canopy looks like a large piece of broccoli. From the air, it simply looks ‘mature’. It has found growth challenging given its position on the northern edge of the wood, looking into the Northern Bracken Field. Pictures from 2010/11 show little change since.
A north-facing branch dropped off earlier last year. Like my hair, the canopy is thinning a bit, but the tree still has the strength to put out and support a vast, long, adventurous branch stretching out beyond its own canopy which could possibly self-layer. I have found evidence of this with oak in the woods.
While here, we need, of course, to see our other veteran oak. The somewhat more embattled Oak (tree 14) (4.33m girth).
This is another veteran with ancient characteristics—somewhat more challenged and tucked into the wood; it lost the top of a significant stem in early 2022.
Like many moss-covered oaks, it also has epiphytic ferns growing on it – an ‘ancient’ indicator.
In summer, this oak, like the other one, appears like broccoli from a distance. It is a mature tree, but ‘ancient’, no. We call it a veteran tree with ‘ancient’ characteristics.
The oak is showing distinct signs of thinning and possible beginnings of retrenchment, or ‘downward growth,’ as Ted Green would call it. Perhaps it will slip into the ‘ancient’ category in several decades.
Then, over to the western boundary and footpath, for two more ‘must see’ trees; I’ve nicknamed the first our ‘monster’ beech as so dominates its spot in the wood and has the largest girth.
Then (December 2010). Recently (January 2024)
Since the original survey, Beech (tree 6) (4.86m girth @1.3m) has shown minimal change – the girth @1.5m I put at 5.12m. I think that it is about right that beech (oak and ash too) put on about 1.5-2cm in girth a year. I’ve not measured them all – maybe ‘we’ should!
The other must-see is our veteran hornbeam pollard (tree 5). (Its girth is 4.00m @1.5m.) Often, I make this the first tree to see, or one of the first …
Then (December 2010). Recently (March 2024)
A pollard last cut perhaps 200 years ago, the finger and thumb stems, outsized for the trunk, show signs of their struggle for light.
One huge, long, arching stem that had its leaves touching the ground in a patch of light to the northeast lost its leaves early during the drought, and they haven’t grown back, not a single fresh appearance of buds anywhere along the stem that dried out, broke and is now dropping in bits to the ground.
The two stems that command the canopy straight above the tree are the most robust. Each of the others shows signs of losing the competition for light with neighbouring trees.
The decay in one part of the trunk is fascinating: porcelain mushroom, candle snuff, cinder crust … and dead men’s fingers. As well as slime mould…
But it is not ‘ancient’. Yet? Maybe in a decade or two with increased hollowing. Or never?
Other hornbeam have self-layered successfully.
Next, and nearby, I need to pick out the only tree that has all but gone.
This is a notable beech (tree 7) (3.4m girth @60cm when standing), described in 2010 as ‘twin stems but one broken @ c. 2 m and decaying with old bracket fungus) now down and decaying.
December 2010 November 2023
There is now a thriving patch of decaying wood beneath an open canopy and a spectacular collection of bracket fungus in the still remaining hollow trunk.
Bracket fungus Ganoderma Australe
We often encounter fungal decay at various stages of advancement on the trees around Markstakes Common. The one shown here is a perennial bracket fungus that causes white heart rot. It is a parasitic fungus that indicates long-term decay, hollowing and increasing vulnerability to gravity and windfall.
I can think of at least four of the veteran beech trees (and others) with the same form of fungal decay present.
Beech (tree 21) (3.38m @1.5m) ‘Companion’ oak and bracket fungus
Beech (tree 6) (3.56m @1.5m) December 2010 and January 2023
Looking at this beech tree you can see that one significant branch has come down to the south west. Closer up you find bracket fungus deep between the buttressing base of this beech, while the companion hornbeam shows signs of Phytophthora Root Rot, where, according to the RHS it ‘kills plants by growing from the roots up through the root crown and into the lower trunk, where it kills the inner bark and causes a browning of the outer layer of sapwood’.
Take a look around the tree to find other signs of decay, hollowing, and competition with the companion hornbeam.
Wild Cherry (tree 34) has died, bloomed with fungi, broken and smashed to the ground.
Though it was dead when I first encountered it two years ago, such a dramatic change has only occurred in the last year.
Crust or Turkey Tail, then bracket fungus and holes drilled by woodpeckers.
Other trees showing advanced stages of significant decay and hollowing not on the ATI (yet) include a challenged though living hollowed-out beech (girth 2.79m @1.5m). You can see this same bracket fungus high up the trunk. Looking into a hole in the base, I used the flash on my phone to show that it is completely hollow. A bluetit was nesting in it. There is a good deal of dead wood on the ground, as well as other fungi, lichens, and moss.
There’s also a standing, dead, and decaying beech by the shallow pond, which may have looked solid for a decade or more but is covered in porcelain mushrooms.
Fungal decay is one matter, and disease, such as ash dieback, is another.
Tree no.1 on the original survey is an Ash (3-stems). By the way, this took me months to get right. There are many interesting three-stem, two-stem, and other sizable ash with companion ash trees and single, maiden ash trees in this corner of the wood by Furzeley Farm.
Ash (tree 1) (3-stemmed 3.20m @1.5m) has remained largely unchanged in 14 years. It has grown a bit, of course (3.51m @1.5m), but I think humans are better at seeing catastrophic change than incremental change.
My failed initial efforts to find this three-stem ash led me closer to Markstakes Lane, a dead maiden ash tree, and a two-stem ash. The maiden ash has been interesting, as I’ve seen it bloom with oyster mushrooms, become drilled with woodpecker holes, the bark loosen, fall off, and then shatter to the ground.
In my exploits shredding my legs and arms on the brambles, I’ve stumbled upon five further mature ash trees of interest, two of which are now on the Ancient Tree Inventory, one as ‘veteran’, the second as ‘notable’.
Features: extent of decaying wood in the trunk, its girth (not significant): evidence of fungi, insects and woodpeckers … and when I was minding my own business having a tea break – a doormouse, as well as unidentified skat for some animal scratching about here (we thought a hedgehog)
One of the originally recognised Ash (tree 24) on the boundary bank in the far southwestern corner.
Ash (multi-stem) boundary bank: Dec 2010 to Jan 2023
Ash dieback has impacted this tree, weakening a couple of the stems. One is decayed and broken, the other is thinned in the canopy, while the others appear healthy. I understand that older ash trees have greater resilience.
Intriguingly, the amount of new ash growth and seedlings making an appearance this spring are so dense in places that they form a carpet quite as remarkable as the bluebells and wood anemones.
Windfall breakages are commonplace; entire trees come down every year, some larger than others.
One example is the large beech that has been sliced and diced on the central path south. It will be interesting to observe how trees that were challenged under the canopy of this big beech grow back with renewed vigour.
The wood has it all.
These are the before-and-after shots of a veteran Beech (tree 9) (3.09m @1.5m) that broke off 3m above the ground and has since, in various ways, begun to grow back. It failed during the drought in 2022 and has been having another, less ambitious go since.
New shoots had been appearing in a burst of growth on the only surviving piece of branch—these, too, dried up in 2022 and have not grown back at the tip. However, not yet ready to give up, further epicormic shoots appeared lower down this branch and around the base of a new potential companion beech at the base.
Hornbeam (tree 23) (2.77m @2.18 m) is down but certainly not out. It’s as if where there is any glimmer of light, life will find a way to exploit it. The phoenix tree, one that has fallen and is living on, even thriving, is a common sight across the woods. Many far younger trees, partially toppled or even flat across the woodland floor, since grown a series of vertical poles and look like a section of living fencing.
Toppled and toppling trees are commonplace.
This is a downy birch that I have ‘followed’ closely this winter as it was clearly starting to fall away from the companion oak it had grown up with. Between February and March it slipped almost right over.
Companion trees are hardly that; whatever they share in the soil by default, like humans in the underground breathing the same air, does not make them companionable; these trees, different species or the same, even between stems of the same tree – compete for light.
Beech (tree 31) (girth 3.2m @1.5m) is an interesting example as there are many beech/oak ‘companions’ – here the oak is coping for now, while beneath their join canopies, a hornbeam which looks entirely dead, has in fact seen one stem fall flat to the north and then successfully put up a number of vertical rods.
Beech pollard (tree 12) has a companion oak that currently has the upper hand. Once you figure out you realise that the oak commands the centre of the canopy.
And there is so much more to share and discover:
The boundary bank here has proved fascinating and fruitful, from Furzeley Farm to Chart’s Wood and Caveridge Lane to South Chailey I have added Field Maple, Ash, Wild Cherry and Hornbeam (layered) and multistem (so far), with the likelihood of adding an oak, two-stem ash and another field maple in due course. It as if the temptation of light, the little bit extra they get on the western boundary of the denser wood canopy in some way assists … but its a tease, often leaving the tree challenged. . As well as wild apple, buckthorn and holly.
And companion trees and their stories of a slow wrestling match.
So, to bring this to a conclusion …
The main causes of change to the trees in an ancient wood include how the trees compete for light, as individual stems of the same tree can compete with each other, as well as how separate trees of the same or different species compete with each other: disease and fungal invasion which can cause decay in the living cells of the trunk, branches, or leaves. Additionally, the trees can be impacted by more short-term factors, such as wind, rain, and drought (and though I’ve seen no evidence of this in Markstakes Common, lightning strikes, and snow)
Long-term impacts include Climate Change (which adds energy to the atmosphere and oceans, allowing weather systems to carry more water and making storms more severe) … let alone the frequency and intensity of drought. Worryingly, there is mildew in saplings and mature trees in the Northern Bracken Field, which I first noticed in the late summer of the 2022 drought.
It’s also inevitable that we have to note human impact. Markstakes Common wouldn’t exist, but there was a lack of desire by someone to enclose and own the land centuries ago.
What can we do?
The Woodland Trust has short-term, modest 25-year and 50-year plans for each of the woods, small and large that it owns and manages.
Experience from similar areas of exceptional habitat and biodiversity in Sussex suggests that communication and outreach to the immediate community, as well as visitors, is important. They need to know that Markstakes Common is unique and requires care.
As is now the case in some woods and parks, coppicing and pollarding have been introduced to increase the longevity of treeses.
Surveys identifying and sharing the nature of Markstakes Common should also raise awareness – whether we do the right thing is another matter.
Conclusion
The Lost Wood Project, which aims to identify as many veteran and ancient trees is important. Once we know what we have, we should be in a better position to protect it, and manage that land and its trees in a way that will mean that our so-called ‘notable’ trees get to be veteran and ancient … and indeed that seedlings and saplings survive to maturity.
Other than that, let’s get out there and see the trees.
I also use GPS-based systems such as ‘AllTrails’ (here, overlaying the Friends of Markstakes Common Map)
Mind Bursts 