THE LITTLE ACORN

We are all familiar with the saying ‘From little acorns the mighty oak tree grow’.

Last Sunday morning (the Lord’s Day) I walked among some majestic oak trees in the Lords Wood. It was a morning full of promise of spring with the lambs tails on the hazel trees dancing in the light breeze and blackbirds foraging in among the dead leaves of the wood, are they among our first birds to seek a mate for the nesting season ahead? The birds were foraging and so was I, looking for an oak apple in the dead leaves strewn on the forest path, among the tens of thousands of leaves, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I had almost given up when I saw one, a tiny russet one, no bigger than a pea, still clinging to a withered oak leaf.

Oak apple is the name given the gall found on many species of oak, they are caused by the adult female gall wasp which lays a single egg on the developing leaf bud, chemicals secreted by the wasp create the oak apple, which actually does look very like a miniature apple. I picked up my little prize, it will go among my many other tiny souvenirs of my walks, like the little blue pebbles, remains of the iron works on the river Araglen which I often find when fishing that beautiful river.

Galls are green when they are first formed in the spring, but by the end of the summer they take on their russet colours. Oak galls were used for production of ink in the time of the Roman Empire and Oak Apple Day was once celebrated as a public holiday in England on May 29th to commemorate the Restoration of Charles the Second to the English throne. The name refers to an event in the English Civil War between the Roundheads and the Royalist Cavaliers, when Charles evaded his pursuers by hiding in the hollow of an oak tree.

The oak features strongly in English history, it was named as the King of Trees and was much used in ship-building. Oak timbers were used for the ship, the Mary Rose, which was build for King Henry the Eighth. The Mary Rose sank in 1545, it was discovered in 1971 and raised in 1982, when raised from its watery grave a large proportion of the hulk was still complete and numerous oak artefacts from it were still in remarkably good condition.

Near Woburn Abbey there still thrives a tree called the Abbot’s Oak, so called because the abbot was hanged from it in 1537 on the orders of King Henry the Eighth. The Cowthorpe Oak near Wetherby in Yorkshire is believed to be almost two thousand years old and of which it is said ‘When compared to the Cowthorpe Oak all other trees are but children of the forest’.

There are many sayings about the oak, such as ‘Beware the oak, it draws the stroke’, a reference to the fact that they are often struck by lightning. The poet, John Dryden describes it as The Monarch Oak, the patriarch of the trees, shoots rising up and spreads by slow degrees. Three centuries he grows and three he stays supreme in state, and in three more decays.

Perhaps the most descriptive of all is the one from the Shepherds Calendar by the poet of Kilcolman, Edmund Spencer. There grew an aged tree on the greene, A goodly oak sometime had it been, With arms full strong and largely displayed, But of their leaves they were disarrayed. And with his nuts larded many swine, but now the grey moss marred his rine, His bared boughs were beaten with storms, His top was bald and wasted with worms, His honour decaused, his branches sere.

My little oak apple will always be a reminder of a beautiful spring morning walking in the Lords Wood.