visit, record and vote<\/a> for their favourite ancient trees.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/RG-00711148.jpg\")
This is mine\u2014a Common Oak which I like for its photographic potential. Partially straddling an old stone wall, it is a pollarded hedgerow oak and lies at the edge of a wood pasture on the Carngafallt RSPB reserve. Pollarding was widely abandoned over 200 years ago and, as can happen with neglected pollards, the tree is starting to split under its own weight.<\/p>\n
The ancient natural forests that once covered Britain had long disappeared by the time of the Domesday Book, but these woods and the nearby Cnwch woods have existed far beyond historical records. It doesn’t seem too much of a stretch to suppose that they may been wooded since the ice retreated in around 12,000 BC.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/RG-20110528-013.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
In the Western cultural imagination, woods have long been associated with wilderness. For centuries they existed as a forbidding boundary beyond the towns and villages\u2014a place of magic and mischief. The Merrie Greenwood of medieval mythology, with its links to Robin Hood, Jack-in-the-Green and the Green Man carvings in churches and cathedrals reflects this uneasiness: a culture that feared the woods yet depended on them for its survival. The Anglo Saxon word weald<\/em> or wold<\/em> means a ‘wooded place’ and it is easy to see the common etymology with ‘wild’.<\/p>\nThere is no wildwood left in Britain but it is encouraging to see a place where wildness still lives on in some form.\u00a0The oak tree is a survivor, for the Cambrian Mountains can be a harsh environment. The recent winter was too much for the eucalyptus in my parents’ garden, which now stands as a stark reminder of nature re-asserting itself; a climate induced natural order of things.<\/p>\n
At the edge of the wood, not far from my tree, I found the mysterious oak apple: the large round gall produced by the larva of the gall wasp.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/RG-20110528-002.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Old folk customs have a surprising tenacity in post-industrial Britain. It sometimes seems that rural traditions, like nature itself, have a latent irrepressibility, springing up incongruously through the fabric of modern society. A few years back I read an account of a largely forgotten custom in which children wore a sprig of oak to school… Continue reading Oak Apple Day<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,6],"tags":[38,37],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1239,"url":"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/2015\/08\/coed-gwernafon\/","url_meta":{"origin":756,"position":0},"title":"Coed Gwernafon","date":"Saturday 22 August 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"A culture is no better than its woods. \u2014W. H. Auden It\u2019s mid afternoon and I\u2019m sat in one of my favourite seats, looking west over the valley of Nant Cwmcidyn, the view towards Plynlimon framed with sessile oaks. The heather is in full flower and the bilberries hang heavy,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "places"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/RG-20150822-521.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":16,"url":"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/2009\/01\/source-of-the-severn\/","url_meta":{"origin":756,"position":1},"title":"Source of the Severn","date":"Saturday 10 January 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I must admit, I\u2019ve been quite enjoying what the media seem to have termed the \u201cBig Freeze\u201d, and this afternoon I decided to take a trip up the Severn Way to the source of the Severn. From this small peaty pool, marked with a single wooden post, the river Severn\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "places"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/RG-20090110-014.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1364,"href":"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions\/1364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edgeofthewild.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}