Josh Wedderkopp, teacher at Crowcombe Primary School, on the Friends of the Quantocks Elm & Hairstreak School visit and tree planting on 14th February 2025
When to plant a tree?
One of my favourite proverbs is that “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago; the second best time is today!” We had such a wonderful example of that today as Robin Stamp, chair of the Friends of the Quantocks, asked for our help with planting elm trees.
Robin and Trudi (FotQ Company Secretary) came into school and spent some time telling us about how elm trees had once covered the length and breadth of England and how their majestic figure-eight habit had dominated the landscape alongside oaks. Robin explained how the watertight timber of elm has been used in so many ways, from ship building to civic plumbing (Bristol’s water system was once served by mile upon mile of bored elm piping!). He told us about the coming of the elm bark beetle some fifty years ago and of the Dutch Elm fungus that it carried with it, infesting adult trees and eventually killing over 20 million of them! Now most elms are restricted to their juvenile stage, growing in hedges and woods only to be discovered by the beetles and killed off just as they reach reproductive age. Lost with our nation’s elms were so many associated insects and other organisms.
Seeking the Survivors
Some elms have survived though, and the Friends of the Quantocks are mapping mature trees in our area. Sussex has, through herculean effort and the magic of genetic variation, managed to not only protect but to increase its elm population and the Friends have sourced a small woodland’s worth of resistant saplings that they are planting strategically around the foothills of the Quantocks in the hope that they survive to maturity and support the regeneration of their interdependent animal species.
Robin told us all about the White-letter hairstreak butterflies, as small as our thumb-tips, whose habitat is the tree tops! Their caterpillars have colour changing camouflage, moulting their skin at each stage of their growth to match the environment. They glow under ultraviolet light and they love munching on elm leaves! The tiny creatures’ population has plummeted horrifically in the past fifty years and Robin is hoping that if the elms that the Friends’ plant can flourish then so will these butterflies!
Life is complicated!
Robin and Trudi invited us to help plant their saplings on the edge of Crowcombe Deer Park. Jim Laver, the park manager, met us there and gave us the most incredible explanation of how Crowcombe Combe had once been landscaped and managed as a huge ‘garden’ for the posh people of the past – how picturesque archways, chapels, rides and bridges had been part of the design. He explained how spring water from deep underground had once flowed through the park to serve the whole village and how the meadow ants, aphids, orchards and woodpeckers were all interrelated – there was such a lot for the children to take in and I was astounded by how they kept their attention on Robin and Jim.
I honestly believe that these kind of encounters are essential to our development as global citizens and as active participants in our communities’ futures. In an increasingly polarised world where we are so often promised simplistic panaceas for our problems, it is of great value to have even the beginnings of an understanding of our part within the wonderful web of relationships of the natural world. It’s ok not to know it all. In fact, recognising that life is complicated and that you haven’t all the answers is a great place to begin; it should never prevent you getting started. A lesson for us all!
So, without knowing if these trees will ever reach maturity, and without knowing if the hairstreaks will ever return, we planted elms on Valentine’s Day 2025 with optimism, friendship and with love.
I look forward to a day, perhaps twenty years from now, when a young man or woman comes upon me and, with a smile, tells me of the elms.
Josh Wedderkopp, Forest School and LOTC Teacher, Crowcombe CofE Primary School
The Elm & Hairstreak Project is funded by Farming in Protected Landscapes Programme
You can help us to do more of these kinds of projects by becoming a Friend of the Quantocks
