Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I'll protect it now.
- (George Pope Morris, 1830)
Or, the song would now go, in the age of sustainability, "if you're going to cut it down, plant another in its place".
Nine thousand years ago this land was covered in dense forests of oak and elm under whose canopies myriad other trees, plants and animal species flourished. Gradually these vast forests were torn down to make way for agriculture. Only as late as the early 20th century, when trees occupied as little as 1 per cent of our land, was the idea of replanting taken seriously. Even then it was as the crop of second choice, confined largely to land deemed unusable for agriculture, more suited to the now ubiquitous fast-growing conifer.
Today, we are at last beginning to rediscover the importance of trees - one-in-10 acres is now afforested and the national target is to treble that by 2035. Just as important is the need to increase the broadleaf and biodiversity share of that planting. The truth that we are all too inclined to forget is that trees are hugely important to us, physically, emotionally, artistically, and even spiritually. They are our lungs and the great woods are nature's cathedrals. They are venerated in many societies as repositories of ancient mystical powers, lore and customs.
"No bit of the natural world is more valuable or more vulnerable than the tree bit," Seamus Heaney has written. "Nothing is more like ourselves, standing upright, caught between heaven and earth, frail at the extremities, yet strong at the central trunk, and nothing is closer to us at the beginning and at the end, providing the timber boards that frame both the cradle and the coffin."
We, and those who share this shrinking planet with us, need the tree more than ever. Not least because in a single year a mature beech tree releases enough oxygen to keep a family of four alive - a typical tree absorbs a tonne of CO2 for every cubic metre's growth and produces 727 kilogrammes of oxygen. And even the humble, fast-retreating hedgerow is home, one survey has recorded, to as many as 37 species of shrubs and 105 species of wild flora. Not to mention fauna. A single oak recently felled was found to be populated by 57 different lichen, and oaks are known to harbour up to 284 insect species.
Today, in the second of a series of supplements on the natural world, we celebrate the magnificence of the tree.