The elegance of dead standing trees

When I’m out and about in the countryside, I’m often struck by the elegance of dead, standing trees.

I’ve been enjoying reading Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell’s new Book of Wilding where they talk of the old master paintings and how they frequently depict dead, standing trees. They have always been an integral part of the wooded landscape. Yet we don’t see them as often as we used to. Perhaps a symptom of our fervent approach to tidiness which seems to extend ever more from our gardens to the wider countryside. Perhaps we’re primed to think of dead trees as useless or unnecessary, even ugly. Our modern vision of a healthy woodland seems to be one of uniformly green trees with a clear forest floor.

Dependant on the dead and decaying

But recent research is showing that actually this is quite the opposite. Dead trees and fallen branches hugely increase the ecological diversity of a woodland. And they are an essential habitat for many of our native wildlife. There are countless species of birds, mammals, invertebrates, fungi and lichen who depend on dead and decaying wood for their survival. The root systems and fungal networks in operation, out of sight below the ground, are helping to enrich and stabilise the soil, retaining water and nutrients in the ground and preventing floods and river pollution further downstream.

Local to the ITF office in Oxfordshire there are some lovely examples of dead and decaying wood left to stand for nature.

Blenheim Palace is home to some of the world’s oldest veteran oak trees. In and amongst these majestic trees, numerous dead trees have been left to stand, enriching as they always have done, the complex habitat of this ancient woodland landscape.

In and amongst the local hedgerows we see occasional examples of elm trees left to stand, having succumbed to Dutch elm disease but with their suckers regenerating growth and developing in the hedgerow below, providing food and habitats to those creatures that depend on it.

In the current epoch of ash dieback, where we’re taking down so many of our old ash trees, we need to be questioning our actions. If these trees are not going to cause a danger to public safety, are they not best left to stand and fall in their own time?