What's a century or two in a tree? We must have thousands of them, in old established farms, in estates. Thomas Pakenham's splendid book Meetings with Famous Trees sails on. And, by coincidence there comes from a friend in Switzerland a handsome volume Les Plus Beaux Arbres Centenaires Genevois or The Handsomest Centenarian Trees of Geneva. A smaller range in age and extent than Pakenham, but stimulating. What is the fascination of looking at, and admiring old trees? Well, it should give one a sense of proportion, a certain humility, maybe; and to some it becomes a lifelong fascination.
Fifty-eight trees are featured, often with more than one photograph, and in some cases, a section of the tree-trunk, or rather of a tree of the same species. In addition to the details of each tree and a dissertation on it, you are told where other specimens of it can be found in Geneva and surroundings. How much is an ecu, a word we have been hearing from Brussels in recent years. For one of the first trees mentioned is The Tree of Forty Ecus. This sum "astronomical for the period", was paid in the 18th century by a French collector for a young specimen bought in England. This is the Ginkgo. First came to Europe in 1710, to Utrecht, but reached Geneva only in 1818. Although it usually doesn't flower in these islands it does in Geneva, in streets and parks. The fruit, the size of a cherry, stinks abominably, so they try to plant only the male which doesn't fruit. Lovely leaf, like a fan or, as the Chinese have it, a duck's foot; goes a beautiful light yellow in autumn.
Then there is a fine hornbeam pictured, with a lovely grotesque base, all curls and knobbles around it. Not much noticed in this country, the famous landscaper Le Notre used it for the making of arbours and mazes and other geometrical plantings for Louis XIV of France. The pedunculate oak (le chene commun) is claimed as our "national tree" being of the original forest there. And there are still something like 20,000 in and around the city. Much used in the past for farm animal feed, were the acorns. And when the book claims that it can reach a thousand years in age, look twice at that acorn at your feet. They sprout easily.
The introduction to the book, learned and comprehensive has a message for us in Ireland, perhaps especially in the cities. Monsieur Chavanne, in his concluding lines, thanks people including botanists of Geneva but also thanks the young people of today who give special consideration to the quality of life, which is enchanced by the living world, animal and plant life around us. No vandalism of trees? How lucky.
