David North, Head of People and Wildlife
This is my
personal selection of the 100 species that ‘make Norfolk’ Your list might be
different of course. However I guarantee that should you take up my challenge
of finding these 100 species then you will end up exploring many of Norfolk’s
varied landscapes, you will have visited some of Norfolk’s most special nature
reserves and have discovered for yourself a huge amount about the range of
wildlife habitats that make wild Norfolk simply the best county in England for
wildlife. Yes, I know I’m biased, but Norfolk, with the Brecks, Broads, Fens
and its varied coastline, is home to some very special wildlife. You might also
end up visiting some quite odd places, from museums to city centres and from
farms to forestry plantations if you do decide to track my hundred down. Follow
my 100, whether virtually through these weekly posts, or by taking up the quest
to track them down in the wild. Either way will hopefully take you on a
fascinating journey exploring how these 100 species link in all kinds of
strange ways to Norfolk’s past, its present, its places and the fascinating
ways people and wildlife together have created its present.
Let us know
how you get on. I would welcome your own local stories, folklore, unusual
Norfolk facts or any unusual experiences of these 100 species. Did any of these
species change your life?
Many of the
species on my 100 are extremely common. Indeed common species are often more
important in creating our landscapes than the rarer ones. So no apologies that
number 1 on my list won’t pose you too many problems to find – it’s certainly
big enough, been around long enough and is common enough to be familiar. But
did you know?
Species 1
English Oak (Pendunculate Oak) Quercus robur
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| Oak tree, David North |
‘Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn.
Greater are none beneath the sun
Than oak, and ash and thorn.
(Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook’s Hill)
Trees are our
past and our future.
I’ve no idea
how many oaks there are in Norfolk but it’s said there are 200 million oaks in
the UK. In the past we might have been rocked as babies in cradles made from
oak and on our deaths had our bodies buried in oak coffins. While that may no
longer be true there are still plenty of people in Norfolk who eat sitting at
an oak table, and live in houses held together with oak beams. Oak is one of
our commonest trees and in a recent study Gerry Barnes and Tom Williamson found
that English oak was not only the commonest deciduous tree in Norfolk’s
woodlands it was also found in more than 50% of Norfolk’s hedges.
The links
between this tree species and people go back to the dawn of time. Some of the
flint hand axes mined at Grimes Graves were doubtless used to fell oaks to
clear land for farming and for timber for building huts. Flint hand-axes have
been shown to be surprisingly effective at felling small oak trees.
The Bronze
Age timber circle found on the tidal sands at NWT Holme Dunes was constructed
of oak posts with a central upturned large oak stump. Amazingly, through
dendrochronology, which uses the annular rings of trees to date timber, the
central stump of Sea Henge has been dated to the year: it was felled in 2049BC.
What would
Norfolk look like today without Norwich Cathedral, great timber barns like
Waxham, stately houses like Blickling, Felbrigg and Holkham? But of course none
of these would exist without huge quantities of oak. Oak timber was crucial in
the past for house building, firewood, iron working, glass making,
blacksmithing, lime kilns, ship building, salt production, leather tanning,
barrel making .... The list goes on. From the Romans onwards early industry
demanded huge quantities of wood for brick making and metal smelting, and the
best available wood was oak. A single ship, HMS Victory, of our great Norfolk
Admiral, Lord Nelson, used 6,000 trees in its construction of which 90% were
oak.
At the time
of the Norman Conquest the value of woods was measured in pannage for pigs –
the number of pigs that the wood’s acorn crop would support. Woods were managed
deliberately to favour the valuable oak. The timber ( for building ) would be
valued and sold separately from the wood ( for firewood or uses such as tool
handles and hurdles). Ancient woodlands were managed by coppice (rotational
cutting of trees) for wood at the same time allowing other trees to grow tall
and straight ( as standards ). You can still see this system of woodland
management practised at NWT Foxley Wood, Norfolk‘s largest remaining ancient
wood, which has been woodland for at least a 1,000 years and perhaps far, far
longer. Norfolk’s great oak woodlands would have supported lost industries like
charcoal burning. And at NWT Foxley Wood stripping the bark of oaks to supply
the leather tanning industry in Norwich was one major use.
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| Acorns, David North |
It’s not
surprising that the oak is our national tree, that acorns and oak leaves have
appeared on £1 coins in recent times, and that we still venerate our ancient
veteran oaks in the landscape, even giving some of them names. Ancient Norfolk
oaks include the King and Queen oaks at Fairhaven, said to be 900 years old,
and Kett’s oak near Hethersett where rebels gathered before marching on Norwich
in July 1549. There is even a Hitler oak in the Broads. This was given to Chris
Boardman by Adolf Hitler who, at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, presented all the
medal winners with small oak saplings. The maturing oak now grows behind How
Hill house.
The Druids are said to have worshipped in sacred
groves of oaks and to have cut mistletoe with golden sickles in their
ceremonies. Do we still venerate the oak? Well its said that every Cathedral in
England has a carved image of oak leaves and acorns. In Norwich Cathedral it
won’t take you long to find a green man peering mischievously from his garland
of oak leaves.
There are
many well known saying about the oak. ‘Three centuries growing, three centuries
standing and three centuries dying’ is one that attests to the longevity of
this tree. Some oaks must be among the longest living inhabitants of Norfolk.
In both
wildlife and landscape terms even today the oak is of prime importance. Oaks
are said to support more than 500 species of invertebrates, more than any other
native tree. A veteran oak is an ecosystem in its own right, its cracks, crannies
and crevices providing homes for bats, owls, woodpeckers, fungi, lichens and
countless small insects. Its acorns will support squirrels, once red now grey,
badgers, mice, voles and of course jays, nature’s way of transporting acorns to
distant places where the jay conveniently buries them!
In a recent
survey by Norfolk County Council all the living trees in Norfolk thought to
predate AD1450 were oaks. The largest oak having a girth of 9.7 metres. If you
wish to see veteran oaks then visit NWT Thursford Wood. There are many
wonderful, ancient oak pollards there.
In the
Norfolk landscape oaks still dominate, both as roadside trees, sometimes stag-headed,
and often ivy covered, and in woodland where they frequently form the largest
part of the canopy.
For the
future, long may Norfolk oaks continue to lock away carbon from the atmosphere
in their timber, moderating our human folly in changing the climate. Oaks give
us shade, shelter us from winter winds, clean our air, release oxygen from their
leaves in spring and summer and pump water into the atmosphere freshening it.
They provide branches for birds to sing on and for children to climb. Long live
the oak!
For in the true nature of things, if we
rightly consider, every full grown tree is far more glorious than if it were
made of gold and silver.
(Martin Luther)
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