This wood was last clear-felled in 1799, then replanted with beech and oak. Silver birch, horse chestnut, sycamore and holly have since found their own way in. On the southern slopes the oldest trees, straight-trunked with lofty crowns, tower above the understorey like the pillars and vaulted roof of a cathedral, inspiring a sense of reverence.
The raised voice of a distant dog-walker seemed almost like sacrilege, breaking the stillness of a tranquil afternoon. I sat on a fallen branch under an oak, to listen to the sounds of the woodland.
A breeze, stirring the canopy, sent a gentle rain of leaves spinning down. I could hear the “clonk” of falling acorns bouncing off branches on their way to a soft landing in the deep layer of leaf litter. When I brushed aside the decaying foliage, releasing its humic aroma of autumn, I found some that had already germinated. A stout root pierced the end of each nut, then turned sharply downwards into the soil; once they reach the ground acorns waste little time in anchoring themselves.
A mature oak can produce tens of thousands of acorns in a season, millions during a half-millennium lifespan. It seems profligate, but their chances of survival make lottery odds look attractive. Nut-feeding insects can destroy 40% of them; of the rest, most will be consumed by birds and small mammals such as wood mice and voles.
Those that germinate in autumn and are overlooked by grazing deer when they resume leafy growth in spring must wait for their parent tree to fall before inheriting its place in the sun.
I could not find any regenerated oak saplings around me. Settling down to listen again I could hear the rustling of a grey squirrel digging among the leaf litter, and, in the distance, the clattering wings of a flock of wood pigeons settling to feed. Both are major consumers of acorns; a pigeon can accommodate more than a dozen in its crop.
From above came the nerve-jangling screech of a jay, most likely collecting its own acorns to bury as a winter larder in a field somewhere. A lucky few will be forgotten, germinate and might survive to become trees.
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