Nature

Veteran

Arrow
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What have you seen? Whom did you shade?
How many winters have battered your boughs?
How many seeds did you sow in this glade?
How many beetles and birds did you house?

Where is your crown?  Shattered and flayed?
Fear no usurper to topple your throne!
Here you shall stand in your royal glade,
And the day of your falling shall be your own.

The value of veteran trees to nature conservation is immense. Not only does the sight of a battered old veteran conjure up the landscape of past ages in a way no other living things can, such trees provide habitat and food for a vast range of wildlife. Indeed, there are species of lichen and fungi that can live nowhere else. The mania for felling anything and everything in the name of ‘Health & Safety’, combined with a strange desire lurking in far too many human hearts to ‘tidy things up’, has wrought huge damage to veteran trees in Britain. Ideally, veteran trees should be cared for and nurtured. At the very least, wherever possible, they should be left to their own devices. If a veteran tree on private land should shed a limb and kill anyone foolish enough to to shelter under it during a storm— then so much the better: there are far too many people in the world in any case. Naturally, a responsible body like The Tree Council could not possibly endorse that last sentiment; but then I am not a responsible body: I am a poet. And poets are ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’. Just like veteran trees!