The Island's Trees through time...
Trees and shrubs colonised Britain naturally as the climate warmed following the last Ice Age around 10,000 years ago. At first, these were scrubby Birches and Willows followed by Hazel and Scot's Pine and then, as conditions became warmer some 5 to 7,000 years ago the full range of native trees we know well today including Oak became established. Around this time the Isle of Wight became severed from the mainland due to rising sea levels.
Although woodland would have at one time covered most of the Island's land surface, from around 5,000 years ago, man's activities soon resulted in large scale clearances of better, more easily cultivated land. Downland and the sandy soils south of the chalk ridge were the first to be cleared. The basics of the landscape we see around us today, with its fields, woods and hedgerows, had become established before the Domesday Book was written during the 11th Century.
Woods which have been in existence for three to four hundred years are described as Ancient Woodlands. They are a precious resource. We have many ancient woods on the Island and they are particularly concentrated on the heavy clay soils on the northern half of the Island.
Some veteran trees, particularly English Oaks can be in excess of three or four hundred years of age. The oldest of these trees are usually field oaks and can reach an impressive size. Good examples can be found around Quarr, to the North of the Island and on the Nunwell Estate in Brading to the East. Old trees like this survived better in the open than they did in woods where they would have been cut down for timber.
Our woods were worked hard for their timber and underwood. Standard trees would be left to grow up for perhaps 8 to 100 years and then felled for timber. Everything else in the wood was cut to the ground every few years and allowed to regrow as young, whippy shoots to be harvested regularly; a process called coppicing. All our native trees respond well to being coppiced and they seem to be able to live indefinitely under this type of management.
The bases of such trees are termed coppice stools, and gradually grow larger and larger. If you find a large coppice stool, perhaps four metres across, the actual tree is likely to be more than five hundred years old.
Dr Colin Pope
Senior Ecology Officer
Isle of Wight Council