In the Company of Oaks
- Green Fingers
- 2 days ago
- 19 min read
A Lone Fellside Oak
Normally, I notice the oak only when I peer through the bracken. Now, towards the end of the year, it is simpler, as the bracken is rapidly dying back. In some places, it has almost disappeared. Until next year, that is.
Halfway up a Lake District fell, on a slope where sheep paths score the grass and the wind has a clear run, one young oak stands on its own. No sister trunks, no sheltering canopy, just a spindly stem, a tuft of leaves and a sea of dead and dying Pteridium aquilinum (bracken) all around. It is growing, but not quickly. I can almost feel the effort.
I have been visiting that oak for a while now. It has become a question mark on the landscape. Do oaks really grow best like this, alone on a rough hillside? Or are we watching a tree deprived of the one thing oaks may need most - company? Are trees social beings, just like we humans?
In recent weeks, I have slithered on mast-year acorns, tripped over tree roots, and disappeared into damp oakwoods elsewhere in Cumbria. I have thought, I have pondered, I have perused. My question is simple. What happens, ecologically, culturally, even medically, when oaks are invited back into our lives and landscapes? What happens if we do nothing?
Do Oaks Need Company?
If I judge oaks by this solitary fellside specimen, one might think the tree prefers the lonely life. It was placed there by someone different, thanks to a charitable grant some years ago. The science, however, says otherwise.
The oak is, biologically speaking, a super-host. A classic analysis of British trees in 1984 found that native oaks support 423 species of plant-eating insects. This was more than any other tree in the country and compared with 334 for birch and 307 for willow.[i] A later, 1993 review by a different author estimated that over 2300 fungal species were associated with British oak woodlands.[ii] Ancient oaks can each carry thirty or more lichen species and over a hundred bryophytes on their bark and branches.[iii] It seems that an oak is an environmental treasure trove.
Birds and mammals crowd in. More than 40 bird species routinely nest in oak woods, among them nuthatches, pied flycatchers, wood warblers and tawny owls.[iv] Bats such as soprano pipistrelles and brown long-eared bats forage along oak edges, where the insect supply is abundant.[v] Jays, squirrels, and deer make use of acorns. So would wild boar if I had them.
A single Eurasian jay may cache as many as 7500 acorns in an autumn, inadvertently replanting the forest.[vi] Jays play a major part in the replanting and subsequent growth of new oak trees. I have seen it happen, almost at my feet, although at the time I was in Germany.
Oaks and Carbon Storage
When oaks grow together, the effect is astonishing. Mixed-age sessile-oak (Quercus petraea) woods in Britain are said to store around 220 tonnes of carbon per hectare, if one considers the trunks, branches, roots and soil organic matter.[vii] Two hundred and twenty tonnes of carbon is about 807.4 tonnes of CO₂. The odd spelling of “tonne” rather than “ton” is a metric measure of mass. One “tonne” equals 1000kg (2204.6lbs). In the USA, a “ton” is a so-called short ton and is the equivalent of 2000lbs. Meanwhile, the British have the Imperial long ton, equivalent to 2240 pounds. Confused? I was for a very long time, although now I understand it. Here, I will stick with “tonne”. It is simpler.
A person in the UK emits an average of 9.3-12.7 tonnes of CO2e/year. These figures vary depending on the source and year of data and include emissions from all aspects of life, such as housing, transport, and consumption. The use of the term CO2e mystified me for a long time. However, the explanation is simple. CO2is a specific greenhouse gas, while CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) is a metric that represents the impact of all greenhouse gases, including CO2, by converting their emissions into the equivalent amount of CO2. This conversion is based on each gas's global warming potential (GWP) over a specific timeframe and allows for a standardised comparison of their climate impact. To convert another gas to CO2e is a simple matter of looking up the gas’s GWP and multiplying it by the mass of the gas.
Mature individual trees can sequester approximately 10kg of carbon/yr during their main growth phase.[viii]Meanwhile, a long-lived oak might lock away several tonnes over a lifetime that can span more than five centuries. Under their crowns, the climate softens slightly. Deep leaf litter and shade hold moisture, and transpiration cools the air on hot days.[ix] These microclimates are crucial in the Lake District’s remaining temperate rainforest, where mosses, liverworts and lichens need humid air and stable conditions to thrive.[x] In an era of rapid warming, the oak is not just a carbon store, it is a tiny ecosystem of its own.
Inside the Oakwood
When I step into a sessile oakwood above Ambleside or in Borrowdale, I feel the difference immediately. The sound shifts. The air thickens. I am walking through a community, not just a stand of timber. I may be odd, but I feel that oak trees are friendly and even appear to know each other.
Company does matter if you are an oak tree. Oak trees, just like humans, enjoy the tree equivalent of a chat. No, I have not flipped. Oaks can truly communicate with each other, primarily through an underground network of mycorrhizal fungi that connects their root systems. These are filamentous partners that wrap around the tree’s roots and extend far into the soil. These fungal networks increase the tree’s access to water and nutrients, but they also connect trees to each other. In a classic 1997 research study, it was found that carbon could move from one tree to another through shared mycorrhizal networks.¹⁵ Later research by different authors, in 2011 and 2015, found that signals, in the form of chemicals or even electrical impulses, travel along these pathways, and warn neighbours of insect attack or drought stress.[xi],[xii]
This is generally called the wood wide web, which allows trees to share resources such as water and carbon, and sends warning signals about pests or drought. Oaks can also communicate through the air by releasing chemicals called phytoncides. These are airborne organic plant-exterminating compounds that trees emit to protect themselves from pests and diseases. When leaves are grazed or attacked by caterpillars, they release the phytoncides, which are detected by neighbouring plants. These plants respond by priming their own defences.[xiii] The result is not a chatty forest, but something more austere and compelling. A community that senses, adjusts and, to a limited extent, remembers.
This phenomenon is also found in other trees and plants and phytoncides have been shown to provide significant health benefits to humans when inhaled. For example, they can boost the human immune system and lower stress hormones.
Thanks to the ongoing chit-chat that takes place before our eyes, there is a simple question. Does an oak grow better with neighbours or when it is alone? Ecologists have a useful idea called the stress-gradient hypothesis. In harsh environments, competition between plants softens and so-called facilitation begins to dominate. This is when each organism tries to make life a little easier for the others.[xiv] One study, in a frequently burned oak landscape, found that trees with immediate neighbours, especially other oaks, were more likely to survive and grew better over time.[xv] Company mattered.
Strength in Oak Clusters
Where oaks are planted in small clusters rather than as isolated individuals, or in rigid rows, foresters in Central Europe have found straighter stems and better crown formation. In one series of trials, clustered oaks showed an approximately 45% improvement in timber form compared with trees planted singly, or in lines.[xvi],[xvii] Close spacing early on encourages oaks to grow upward rather than sprawling outward, while the shared canopy and intertwined roots reduce physical stress.
A solitary oak on a bracken-dominated slope may thus be missing two forms of companionship at once. First, the physical shelter of nearby trunks, and second, the invisible scaffolding of fungal and chemical communication that comes when trees are sufficiently close to interconnect.
The Oak Medicine Chest
The relationship between humans and oaks has always gone beyond timber and shade. For over 4000 years, people have turned to oak bark, galls, acorns and leaves for medicine.
Hippocratic texts from ancient Greece listed oak as a key astringent for diarrhoea and bleeding, while the Greek physician Dioscorides (circa 430-90 A.D.), in De Materia Medica, recommended oak bark decoctions for ulcers, burns and sore throats.[xviii],[xix] A decoction is a method of making a concentrated herbal tea by boiling tough plant parts such as roots, barks, and seeds in water to extract any beneficial compounds.
Egyptian papyri described oak galls given for intestinal complaints,[xx] and Avicenna (circa 980-1037 A.D.) a Persian polymath who wrote The Canon of Medicine, praised them as a haemostatic (stops bleeding), and promoted their use for gum disease and discharging ears.[xxi]
Across medieval Europe, monastic physicians and subsequent herbalists used oak preparations for so-called fluxes of the bowels, as well as for skin diseases, mouth ulcers, and heavy menstrual bleeding.[xxii] Native American healers independently arrived at similar uses. For example, Cherokee practitioners applied oak bark poultices to cuts and haemorrhage. Iroquois healers prescribed decoctions for sore throats and cholera, and California’s Miwok used gall pastes on wounds.[xxiii],[xxiv] The Miwok were members of four linguistically related Native American groups indigenous to what is now Northern California, albeit extending into Central California.
What unites all these practices is chemistry. Oak bark can contain up to 20% tannins by dry weight and galls up to an extraordinary 70%.[xxv] These tannins bind to proteins, tighten tissues, reduce secretions, and create an environment that is hostile to many microorganisms. Laboratory work has confirmed strong antimicrobial effects of oak tannins against bacteria and fungi, as well as anti-inflammatory and antioxidant actions.[xxvi],[xxvii]
Modern regulators have cautiously caught up. The European Medicines Agency and the German Commission E both recognise oak bark preparations for the short-term treatment of acute diarrhoea, inflammation of the mouth and throat, and mild skin conditions such as weeping eczema or haemorrhoids. Clinical studies in animals and small human trials support these uses, especially for diarrhoea and oral inflammation.[xxviii],[xxix]
The oak has therefore been part of the pharmacopoeia of multiple civilisations for millennia and remains so today. The same tannins that deter caterpillars and slow leaf decomposition end up in decoctions, ointments, and gargles in clinics and kitchens.
Myths Beneath the Branches
Long before carbon budgets and clinical trials, people noticed that oaks were hard to ignore. Their size, longevity, and tendency to attract lightning made them natural candidates for myth.
In The Golden Bough, originally published in 1890, the author James George Frazer argued that Jupiter was originally a god of the oak, and that many Indo-European thunder gods were closely tied to oak groves.[xxx]Modern work largely agrees with this. A global review for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization pointed out how often oaks and thunder deities appear together in the traditions of Greece, Rome, the Celtic world, Germanic Europe and the Slavic and Baltic lands.
In ancient Greece, the oracle of Zeus at Dodona centred on a sacred oak whose rustling leaves and ringing bronze cauldrons were read as divine speech.[xxxi] In Rome, civic crowns made of oak leaves, the corona civica, were awarded to citizens who saved the lives of others in battle. This turned the oak into a living emblem of courage and public virtue.
In the Celtic world, Pliny the Elder described Druids climbing oaks to cut mistletoe with golden sickles, sacrificing white bulls, and brewing elixirs thought to cure infertility and poisoning.[xxxii] The very word for Druid in Welsh, derwydd, combines derw (oak) with ydd. The latter is a common Welsh suffix used to form nouns, especially for occupations, inanimate objects, and plurals.
Oak groves doubled as meeting places, law courts and boundary markers. Later English gospel oaks kept that function but with Christian readings instead of Druidic rites. A gospel oak is a name for a historic oak tree where parishioners once gathered to hear readings from the gospels. It can also be an area named after such a tree. The practice of parish boundary walks often included stopping at notable trees to read scriptures and led to the name "Gospel Oak" for these specific locations. The best-known example is in the London area of Camden, which was named after an oak that stood on what is now the corner of Mansfield and Southampton Roads. The oak vanished sometime in the 1800s and was last recorded in a map of the area in 1801.
Thor’s oak groves once formed focal points of Germanic religion. Thor was a central god in Germanic paganism, and was worshipped both by the Anglo-Saxons as Thunor and the continental Germanic peoples as Donar. He was the god of thunder, storms, strength, and protection, and was a protector of both common people and warriors. His popularity is evident in the naming of "Thursday" after him, a tradition that extended into Christian times.
Donar's Oak (also Thor's Oak) was a sacred tree of the Germanic pagans located in an unclear location, but likely around what is now Hesse in Germany.[xxxiii] According to the 8th-century Vita Bonifatii auctore Willibaldo, Saint Boniface, an Anglo-Saxon missionary, and his retinue cut down the tree sometime in the same century. Wood from the oak was then reportedly used to build a church at the site, which was then dedicated to Saint Peter.
Many civilisations have worshipped the oak tree. It has almost been a global phenomenon. Among Slavic peoples, Perun, who was a thunder god with shrines that often stood in oak groves, was honoured with perpetual fires of oak wood. In Lithuania, the god Perkūnas gave his name to both thunder and sacred oak trees.
In England, the story of Charles II hiding in an oak after the Battle of Worcester in 1651 spawned the legend of the Royal Oak. This left a trail of pubs and ships bearing the name, as well as a lingering sense that some oaks stand a little closer to providence than others.[xxxiv]
All this mythology does not float free of ecology. Thunder gods favour oaks partly because oaks attract lightning. Interestingly, oaks are frequently struck by lightning because they are often tall, have a high moisture content, and may be located in open areas. These features make them excellent lightning conductors. Their moisture, high starch content, and large diameter trunks make them particularly susceptible to being a target during a thunderstorm. Trees of kings and heroes tend to be those that grow large, live long and hold their ground through storms. Sacred boundaries need something that looks as if it might outlast the humans who draw them.
Oaks in a Changing Climate
If any tree is built for the long view, it is the sessile oak. It shrugs off wind, tolerates poor soils and has outlived empires. But even oaks are feeling the squeeze of the 21st-century climate.
Drought is the most obvious challenge. Sessile oak is more drought-tolerant than some British broadleaves, but prolonged summer dry spells impair its hydraulic system, and can compromise water transport, photosynthesis and growth.[xxxv] Long-term studies show that even moderate drought can depress oak growth rates, especially on thin upland soils. These are the very conditions of many Cumbrian oakwoods.[xxxvi] Drought-stressed trees are more vulnerable to pathogens and insects.
Among these threats is acute oak decline (AOD), a complex syndrome involving bacterial infection and often linked to stressed, mature trees. It is a serious disease of oak trees that causes dark fluid to weep from bark fissures, leading to a rapid dieback and potential death within a few years. The disease is caused by a complex of bacteria, primarily Brenneria goodwinii, Gibbsiella quercinecans, and Rahnella victoriana, and is exacerbated by environmental stressors such as drought.
Many thousands of oaks in England have been affected since the early 2000s. The oak processionary moth (Thaumetopoea processionea) (OPM), is an invasive defoliator with irritating hairs, and has moved slowly northwards in step with milder winters. The OPM does not directly cause AOD, but it can contribute to a tree becoming more vulnerable to the condition. OPM defoliation acts as a stress factor, which can predispose an oak to AOD and other issues. The bacteria associated with AOD are believed to enter the oak tree through wounds or cracks in the bark, a process often linked to the activity of the two-spotted oak borer beetle (Agrilus biguttatus).
Climate warming is, sadly, expanding the pest and pathogen toolkit deployed against the Quercus genus. The caterpillars (larvae) of OPM are pests of oak trees, and a hazard to both human and animal health. OPM was first accidentally introduced to England in 2005 and is subject to a government-led programme of survey and control to minimise its population, spread and impacts.
The first introduction of the OPM was identified in West London in 2006, from trees that had been imported the previous year, in 2005. Since then, subsequent separate introductions have occurred in other areas of England, also linked to imported oak trees. The movement of these live trees, which may have had OPM eggs or caterpillars present in their canopies, is considered the primary pathway for the moth's arrival and spread in the UK. Humankind does not escape. Contact with the hairs (setae) of OPM caterpillars is associated with a range of symptoms, from urticarial rash and dermatitis to anaphylaxis. Believe me, you do not want any of these, but especially anaphylaxis.
Timing is shifting, too. Oaks flush their leaves earlier in warm springs. A tree flushing its leaves is the process where a tree produces a large, simultaneous growth of new leaves on all its branches, often in the spring. This is also commonly called leafing out and marks a distinct phenological event. The new leaves can initially appear white or red because of a lack of chlorophyll and the presence of pigments such as anthocyanins.
At first glance, this seems benign, but many caterpillars time their emergence to coincide with the brief period when oak leaves are most nutritious. If the tree moves its schedule but the insects and the birds that feed on them do not, breeding success can suffer. Such phenological mismatches are now documented in multiple European woodland systems.[xxxvii]
Storms, Soils and Survival
Storms are also becoming more intense. As I write these very words, the Lake District’s Windermere appears full to bursting, with flooding just around the corner. The UK Met Office reports an increase in high-impact rainfall and wind events in recent decades, particularly in western uplands.[xxxviii] Even well-rooted oaks can succumb when soils are saturated, and slopes give way. Storm Desmond in 2015 and Storm Arwen in 2021 toppled thousands of trees across northern Britain, including many old oaks that had stood for centuries. On a steep Lake District hillside, the erosion scars are still visible. Right now, it is Storm Claudia. Believe me, it is bucketing.
Then there is regeneration, or rather the lack of it. Many Cumbrian oakwoods, especially those historically grazed hard by sheep or deer, contain very few young oaks. Acorn crops (mast years) are irregular, and even when acorns are plentiful, they rarely make it past the browsing mouths of red and roe deer, or the trampling of livestock. Without young trees, the impressive veterans that define the nation’s favourite woods almost become a museum collection. They may be beautiful, but there is no succession plan.[xxxix],[xl]
Planting for the Future
None of this makes the oak a victim only. Where grazing is reduced and natural processes are permitted to do some of the work, these woods bounce back. The Wild Ennerdale project, which has gradually removed sheep and embraced a more hands-off approach since 2003, has seen native woodland, including sessile oak, recolonise former pasture and valley sides.[xli],[xlii] Cumbria Woodlands, Rusland Horizons and other partnerships are working with landowners to restore connectivity between fragments, manage deer and experiment with new planting and regeneration techniques.[xliii],[xliv]
Mixed-species stands that combine sessile oak with birch, rowan, holly, hazel and occasional Scots pine or alder, are increasingly favoured. This is because they are more resilient to pests, disease and climate extremes than monocultures.[xlv] Where planting is necessary, foresters are beginning to think about provenance. They use local genetic stock where possible but are also testing if trees from slightly warmer, drier regions might fare better under future conditions.[xlvi],[xlvii]
Initiatives such the Nature Recovery Network and the new Environmental Land Management schemes in England aim, at least on paper, to make it easier for landowners to allow woodlands to expand and connect. Oak plays a central role in many of these visions.[xlviii],[xlix] I love politicians - says he - but whether the funding and political will match the rhetoric remains to be seen.
What is clear is that the oak’s legendary resilience will not be enough on its own. Climate change, grazing pressure, disease and fragmentation amount to a combined stress that even a 500-year-old tree cannot simply weather without help.
Nothing one might do with an oak is speedy. An oak’s idea of time does not match an electoral cycle or a funding stream. Yet plant one, establish it and, in time, a tree will feature and start the slow work of taking carbon from the air and placing it into wood and soil, of softening local microclimates and holding thin fellside soils more firmly in position. On the steep fells I own, this is important.
It is time for me to walk back up to that lone tree in the bracken and plant a small cluster of oaks around it, say four metres apart. I must clear the bracken for a metre or so each way, and erect guards against deer, rabbits, and so much more. Then I must wait.
If the science and field experience are right, the young trees will establish more reliably, grow straighter, with stronger stems and better crowns, share fungal networks in the soil that improve nutrient uptake and buffer stress, create shade that slowly pushes back the bracken, and begin to host the insects, fungi, birds and bats that need them.
Keep your eye on the oak. Quiet, powerful, massive, and resilient. It will not disappoint. It just takes time.
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Hashtags
#OakTrees #LakeDistrictNature #WoodlandRestoration #ClimateChangeUK #TreeEcology #BritishWoodlands #NatureMythology #ForestMedicine #TemperateRainforest #RewildingBritain
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