My favourite tree is the Scots Pine. These beautiful coniferous trees make up some of the ancient woodlands in the Highlands of Scotland. They tend to form dispersed rather than dense forests but look so utterly right amongst the rugged mountain topography. They enhance the landscape with their long, dark green needles, which emulate the style of a Cedar of Lebanon in profile and yet retain a distinctive Caledonian Pine silhouette. The trunk is often divided and the upper branches a warm reddish brown, whilst the lower branches are often broken by the turbulent winds in the Highlands and become silvery in colour. There is a group of Scots Pines near my home and one of them is my ‘thank you’ tree; it has a palm-shaped piece of bark on its trunk at shoulder height. Whenever anything good happens in my life I put the palm of my hand over the bark and say thank you. I am not quite sure where this message goes but the tree provides the medium for communication. I always love looking up the trunk into the high soaring branches. Sue Heard
My favourite tree is the horse chestnut. Particularly the one outside my mother's house, whose leaves used to blow about in the wind and make scary shapes on my bedroom wall when I was a child. The conkers were highly prized by local children who used to irritate my mother by coming into our garden to collect them off the lawn or swing on the fence to get them off lower branches. I worry that the disease killing these majestic trees around the country will affect my favourite tree. I am going to dig up a conker that has taken in my mother's garden and replant it, so I will have a continual reminder of that beautiful tree for the future. Lesley Reith
My favourite tree is the wishing tree in Argyll. It is amazing that it has survived in such a wild and remote place, especially since the copper (wishing) coins cannot help. Alison McLure
I particularly loved the oak because in the autumn when the acorns appeared I could remove the nut and 'smoke' the case with its stalk held in my mouth like a pipe! Fifty years on, I still love watching the seasons change through the delicacies of spring, with the unfurling of the tender young leaves, through to the fresh greens of summer and then the enjoyment of the mature autumn colours, the leaves falling to the ground, leading us into the different delights of winter, the splendid bare branches sometimes decorated with frost or snow!
I still walk through the fallen crisp leaves of the autumn, kicking up as I did as a child, all those years ago, when I walked hand-in-hand with my Mother who sang a song about a 'little grey squirrel high up in the tree'. I now have a splendid oak tree fairly near me and have found great pleasure when a grey squirrel or two has rushed down to take food from my hand. Anita Richards
It provides shade in the summer for the after-work gin and tonic; autumn is heralded by its drifts of yellow leaves that float slowly down and cover the pond; it gives us interesting and ever-changing shadows and patterns on the lawn in winter; in spring it's been a nesting site for generations of blue tits and great tits; and year-round it screens us from our neighbours.
It's like a reliable friend - always there, always contributing something distinctive to the display but never taking over completely for all its size and spread. Colin Hyde
It thrives on the dirt of London and helps to clean the air thatLondoners breathe. It provides homes and roost for a multitude ofwildlife in the capital. It is a symbol of life in the city to me.
It provides colour through the year with big green leaves in springand great brown flags underfoot in autumn. Even the bark gets in onthe act with its ever-changing camouflage.
As a child I loved the 'itchy balls' that fell from the tree - ifyou were not careful a friend or brother would shove some of themdown your back - but it was good to get revenge.
I always stop and stare at these magnificent giants along theroadside whenever I go back to London. David Reeves
Later in the year there is beech mast to collect from the woodland floor and in the Autumn the leaves turn glorious tints of gold and copper before falling where they carpet the woodland in glorious drifts of russet. On younger trees and hedges the leaves cling on throughout the winter until the new buds burst through in the Spring and the old dry leaves are sent hurtling away by the spring winds.
Then of course there are the copper beeches, can there be a colour more elusive than the sun shining through the newly opened leaves of a copper beech? Glynis Wilkinson
Oak What a difficult question you have posed! Which is my favourite tree - where do I start?
The broad and majestic Beech casting a deep shade in Summer, before turning to copper in the Autumn? The Alder with its distinctive Winter silhouette? The Field Maple with its butter yellow Autumn leaves? The Whitebeam with its soft green clusters of opening leaves? Apples and Plums with their blossom and fruit? The Lime with its vibrant new leaves in Spring - stunning against a thundery sky? And buzzing with drunken bees when in flower? The smooth grey bark of the Hornbeam? The twisting aged stem and beautiful leaves of the Sweet Chestnut? The ever-willing coppiced Hazel? The last few statuesque Elms? The rough skinned fruit of the Medlar? The ancient Yews with their glamorous red fruit? Or the prickly defensiveness of a woodland Holly?
All of these have their charms, but for me, my favourite is the Oak. From its odd colour combination of catkins and new leaves bursting from a cluster of buds, to its broad shouldered silhouette and crop of acorns, it is a truly lovely tree. To stand with your back against an ancient Oak and to look at the ferns growing on its branches or the fungi on its stem, is to feel wonder and a sense of true calm.
My favourite specimen of an Oak is without doubt the Cathedral Oak in Savernake Forest, Wiltshire. At over 1,000 years old it is reputed to be the oldest tree in the forest. It radiates a sense of history and solidity. We are but a speck in its long life. Hilary Degnan
This is for many reasons; because it is a mighty and ancient symbol of our country that was once a wild forest; because of their happy autumn gift of conkers, which are so shiny, beautiful and full of the promise of life; because of the ancient connection with the druids and the Oaks meaning of wisdom, and its ability and acceptance to support mistletoe, once used as an all-heal herb held sacred; and because being in the presence of an Oak tree is to know of it's renewing, calming, ancient character and soul of warmth. Kathie Bishop
How can it be anything but the oak...it signifies to me strength and resilience, history and continuity, diversity and beauty, Britain and why I love its wildlife! Peter McSweeney
No wonder it is called Fraxinus excelsior! Moira Kitchen
I have recently ventured into becoming a pagan and have studied many Green Men the majority of which have been made up of leaves from the oak tree. Also having holidayed in the New Forest in Hampshire for the last 20+ years I have developed a real love of the oak tree and have some wonderful favourites which I sit under and just gaze into and instantly feel at peace with the world. They are very calming. Beth
I am a great believer of the spirit of the place. In the back garden stood a grand old walnut tree. It had a hollow trunk and may have been classed as an ancient tree. We wondered who or what it had witnessed in its youth. We climbed its branches, the first, after living on a modern estate. We tied a rope with a knot in it, which graduated to a rope with a tyre swing and then a rope ladder. We practised being Tarzan.
The tree even bore fruit, big black walnuts, which we gathered in several sackfuls. Not knowing what to do with them, the fruits being bitter, they were left to rot. Eventually, the tree lost a few boughs in the great storms of the 90's. As an older teenager, the tree surgeon came around to have a look at the tree, sadly saying that it was dead. A grand old tree, with fond childhood memories. Every child should have a tree on her doorstep to climb up and hide under. Samantha
Londone plane It is hard to have a favourite tree when one loves and appreciates all species. Though living in a semi-rural setting I work full time in an inner city area, where there is more concrete than trees. This makes me really appreciate the London Plane Tree because of its important role in, what has become its habitat.
It produces a wonderful canopy of wide green leaves, heavily veined, yet delicate in shape. In the autumn it is adorned with hard round and fascinating seeds, like little rolled up hedgehogs, that hang like nature's own bauble decorations as they swing in the heavy urban breezes. It provides the wonderful delights of autumn shades for town dwellers and the fun of kicking through piles of crispy brown leaves for children that might not ever experience the delights of an ancient woodland. The smell is gloriously nutty at this time, so that as you walk the pavements amid the fallen leaves you could be forgiven for thinking you were in the countryside.
The wildlife of the towns benefit from it's bole, bark and canopy, as would any species in woodlands, but it is here where house sparrows frolic alongside starlings and pigeons and some of the more resilient bird species such as wagtails.
The winter outline can vary greatly as urban authorities tend to keep this beauty in check for safety reasons, thus it sometimes has a somewhat stubby appearance, but it's beautiful filigree helps to break up the monotony of the concrete and brick and is just as beautiful with a frosty sunset backdrop. It's fascinating bark which it sheds regularly in patched creates a wonderful; patchwork of colours in its bark.
Children play around them, they give welcome shade to hot city people, dogs use them and they, like all trees are restful to gaze at and wonderful to hear whispering in a wind.
It's my link to the natural world when I am at work and that's why it is my favourite tree.Jean Selmes
When we got home, we would spend many happy hours playing with our beech treasures - sometimes we would stick several together to make creatures, or use them as hats for tiny dolls,or simply stick them on card to make a picture. Mum would always spray some with gold & silver paint, & save them until Christmas, when she would display them in baskets. Beech leaves always have a special 'crunchy' sound when you walk through them, & even though I recently reached my half century, I still enjoy crunching through the leaves.
I am fortunate to live near a huge wood, filled with native trees, many of them beech, & I enjoy observing them throughout the year, watching the leaves appear & change colour with the seasons. I also have many reminders of the beech tree inside my home, as my bed is made from beech, which has gently mellowed over the years, also a chair, and my father, who does wood turning, has made me many bowls & other objects from this beautiful wood.
One of my regrets is that, when we moved to our house 22 years ago, we didn't have a beech hedge between our garden & our neighbour's. We thought it would take to long to grow. So we had wooden fence panels, which over the years got broken in the wind, rotten, or simple fell over. How we wish we'd had more patience & planted a hedge. Karen Jane Hudson
Year after year after year it returns, larger and larger, with a grandness the eyes cannot be averted from. And the best part of all, it lives long, long after the seed is sown through high winds, torrents of rain, scorching hot sun and numerous generations of people.Stephen Chapman
The oak quite simply because I have a stunning 100 year old specimen at the foot of my garden which enthralls me every season with the new delights it brings, not to mention the squirrels and jays that frolic daily at this time of year helping me to scoop up the zillions(!) of acorns from the lawn. As I have two school age children, it also symbolises the saying that great oaks from little acorns grow - and I watch my "acorns" grow with love and pleasure.
In a similar vein, a fond childhood memory of mine is "conker hunting" with my pals after school in the nearby park, hence my love of the horse chestnut. We would spend hours seeking out as many as we could and comparing sizes and blemishes. I can even remember the park keeper telling us off for trying to "shake" the tree to make more fall! Park keepers may be long gone but conkers come and go with regularity and I have now passed this great pastime onto my own children at nearby Hanningfield Reservoir in Essex.
This year, in fact, I intend to plant a small tree in my back garden in memory of my late father and look forward to watching that grow over the years too!
Power to the trees! Mrs. S. Jeffery
It brightens up the whole of my garden, as the tree is very large now. Sue Hughes