Umi invited me. Turned out to be Uggershall Gardening club, and a man called Jim Paine from Attelburgh speaking on Oaks. We were in School house, where on the wall was Alic Palsers idea and manifestation of Uggershall village house by house in blocks of clay. Lovely Alice. How I wish I’d known her more and remembered that African connection. She’d moved from there to Loam Pit Lane and then to Wales and died soon after that last move.
Anyhow, Jim Paine was a good animated speaker (occassionally threatening to kill every grey squirrel) who’d planted his own woodland 17 years ago, of mainly oaks. He took us through English landscape from bc to roman to medieval to tudor to ww1. Thanks to bronze tools, by the times the Romans came the land was only 25% covered in trees. By the Norman invasion, 15%, but helped by the establishment of royal parks. Under Henry, a formal fleet was formed, houses and mansions built timber framed, and wood was processed like never before. 1918, post WW1 was the lowest point, 5% of the UK was with trees. The turning point was the formation of the Forestry Commission, in 1919, initially with plantations of monoculture, but eventually diversification. A government did good – the state took over the organisation and proved an effective way of co-ordinating a re-afforestation plan to meet timber needs for the foreseeable future.
Ketts Oak / Oldest oak in Sherwood forest.
Difference between Quercus robur (leaves no stem) and Quercus Petraea (leaves on stems, acorns not)
Aster Turbinellus
Kaliwood 