{"id":73371,"date":"2025-07-18T18:53:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T18:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/73371\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T18:53:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T18:53:12","slug":"the-guardian-view-on-the-cultural-life-of-trees-we-must-protect-our-natural-heritage-editorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/73371\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian view on the cultural life of trees: we must protect our natural heritage | Editorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

If the mindless felling of the Sycamore Gap tree has taught us anything, it is that there is no such thing as \u201cjust a tree\u201d<\/a>, as one of the perpetrators, Adam Carruthers<\/a>, told the jury. \u201cIt was almost as if someone had been murdered,\u201d he said of the ensuing public outcry. For many it was.<\/p>\n

Animism runs deeply through our relationship with arboreal life. From Macbeth\u2019s prophetic Birnam Wood to the towering Ents in The Lord of the Rings, trees have long been personified in literature. And, from Constable\u2019s bucolic Suffolk<\/a> to David Hockney\u2019s Yorkshire wold<\/a>, they have helped shape Britain\u2019s artistic landscape.<\/p>\n

This cultural heritage is being celebrated by the Woodland Trust UK Tree of the Year 2025<\/a>. The Sycamore Gap tree won in 2016. The shortlist, announced this week, brings together William Wordsworth and the Beatles, Virginia Woolf and Radiohead, all united by the trees they have helped put on the UK\u2019s cultural map. The Tree of Peace and Unity in County Antrim<\/a>, where the Good Friday agreement was signed in 1998, also makes the list of 10 culturally\u00a0remarkable trees.<\/p>\n

British history is written in its trees: the ancient Ankerwycke Yew<\/a> at Runnymede, where Henry VIII is rumoured to have courted Anne Boleyn; the Royal Oak<\/a> in Shropshire, which hid the future Charles II; and the Tolpuddle Martyrs Tree<\/a> in Dorset.<\/p>\n

Like the rings in their trunks, over centuries trees become the keeper of stories. They also, of course, provide paper on which to read them. This is ingeniously encapsulated in The Future Library<\/a> by the Scottish conceptual artist Katie Paterson. Starting with Margaret Atwood in 2014, each year a manuscript by a different novelist is buried in Oslo\u2019s Nordmarka forest. In 2114, 100 books will be published out of the 1,000 specially planted\u00a0pine\u00a0trees.<\/p>\n

In fairytales and crime fiction, forests signal danger, but they are also places of sanctuary and renewal, hence the ancient Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku <\/a>or forest bathing<\/a>. Peter Rabbit finds safety in a burrow at the bottom of a tree. They also promise adventure and character-building, as in Robin Hood and the ethos behind Scandinavian forest schools<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We learn to anthropomorphise arboreal beings from an early age: Enid Blyton\u2019s Magic Faraway Tree and JK Rowling\u2019s Whomping Willow are characters in their own right. Trees have very human qualities<\/a>: they can learn from past traumas, such as droughts, and they make good \u201cparents\u201d, allowing their seedlings just the right amount of sugar through their roots.<\/p>\n

But they cannot protect them from global heating and disease. New research<\/a> has revealed that\u00a0saplings in British woodlands have been dying at an alarming rate since 2000. As much as 70% of ancient woods<\/a> in the UK have been lost or damaged in the last 100 years. After the destruction of the Sycamore Gap tree, and the 500-year old oak in Enfield near a Toby Carvery restaurant<\/a> this year, the government has set out much-needed plans to give legal protection to older and culturally important trees in England.<\/p>\n

Our ancient woodlands are irreplaceable. We must protect them as they protect us. As Woodland Trust patron Judi Dench put it<\/a>, our oldest trees \u201care as much part of our heritage as any literature\u201d. They should be cherished and celebrated. In the words of WH Auden: \u201cA culture is no better than its woods.\u201d<\/p>\n