Here's a dozen fascinating trees you really should visit this year

Most of us care more than we realise about trees. I believe the outpouring of grief for the Sycamore Gap tree has shown this. Its mindless felling was just the most high-profile of many recent cases involving the loss, or threatened loss of trees.

Thousands of healthy, mature street trees were chainsawed in Sheffield before protests reached such a pitch they could no longer be ignored, and tree felling during the dead of night in Plymouth (halted by a hastily imposed court order) led to local politicians losing elections.

In Warwickshire the Cubbington Pear, a 250-year-old tree that found itself in the path of HS2, became a cause célèbre for tree protectors. In London, the Happy Man Tree was voted 2022’s Tree of the Year before it was removed to make way for new flats, and the fate of the Whitewebbs Oak – a veteran oak felled at the behest of a Toby Carvery made headlines in April this year.   

Because the Sycamore Gap tree was named, it helped people know it and value it. I think that by giving names to trees we can celebrate and ultimately help protect them. Over the last five years, I have travelled across the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland seeking out inspiring and storied landmark trees. Some with pre-existing names, others I have named for the first time.

In my book, Tree Hunting, I have recorded 1,000 easily accessible and, with a very few exceptions, free to visit trees growing in our cities, towns, villages and by roadsides. 

Discovering and naming trees – tree hunting – is a hugely rewarding activity, and by way of inspiration here are a dozen fascinating trees you could visit this summer. These are a taster from my book to get you started. Oh, and the names I have given them: think of them as a starting point. Maybe you have better ones? 

Palm House Paperbark, Edinburgh 

To select a representative tree from Edinburgh’s wonderful Royal Botanic Garden is difficult. As well as being one of the finest arboretums in the world, stuffed to the gills with remarkable trees, it is one of Edinburgh’s most cherished green spaces and is freely accessible to all. This beautiful and unusual tree in front of the 19th-century palm houses [main image] is guaranteed to catch your attention: a small but perfectly formed paperbark maple with rufous, cinnamon-coloured bark. 

Royal Botanic Garden, Arboretum Place, Edinburgh EH3 5NY 

Birnam Sycamore, Dunkeld 

Just metres from the much more famous Birnam Oak grows the vast and vigorous Birnam Sycamore. Though it is altogether larger and more sublime than its historic neighbour, being a sycamore it has not
been accorded the status the oak enjoys. A small interpretation board offers defamatory claims that the tree is less than 300 years old (unlikely) and that it is ‘non-native’. 

Birnam, Dunkeld PH8 0BL 

Philosopher’s Ash, York

In the 1830s, the Yorkshire Philosophical Society built York Castle Museum and laid out the Museum Gardens as a botanical garden. While the gardens have since become a less-manicured public park, they still contain several trees that date back to their esoteric heyday. Of these, the splendid narrow-leaved ash with its elegant foliage is an outstanding tree, and represents a species rarely seen in Yorkshire.  

Museum Gardens, Museum Street, York YO1 7FR  

Climbing Tree, Belfast

Most towns and cities have at least one renowned climbing tree, a tree that has nurtured generations of adventurous kids who will pass on knowledge of its clamber-worthy attributes to succeeding generations. Belfast has one of the best in Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park’s western red cedar – a great layering example that will only become even bigger and better for climbing as the years go by. 

Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park, Belfast BT17 9LA 

Princess Victoria’s Zelkova, Bath 

Royal Victoria Park dates back to 1830, when it was opened by an 11-year-old Princess Victoria. It covers a large area south and west of the Royal Crescent with Royal Avenue running through it. As the avenue approaches the grand Marlborough Gate, an excellent caucasian zelkova sets the tone for a park containing many arboreal treasures, some of which the future queen would have known. 

Royal Victoria Park, Marlborough Buildings, Bath BA1 2LZ  

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PZ Palm, Penzance

Welcoming visitors and residents alike for nearly 20 years, the PZ Palm has managed considerable growth since it was planted in the early 2000s. It is the tallest of three palms at the entrance to Penzance station, and is framed by a giant steel ‘P’ and ‘Z’, an earlier attempt to mark the Cornish terminus of the Great Western Railway. 

Penzance Railway Station, Station Road, Penzance TR18 2NF 

Eiffel Tower Tree, Saundersfoot

Dubbed Saundersfoot’s Eiffel Tower, the Monterey cypress growing on a rock above the beach is as iconic to this Pembrokeshire town as the Eiffel Tower is to the French capital. The tree was planted in 1938, and in 2021 it was deemed unsafe and would be felled. A campaign ensued, the tree became a finalist in the Tree of the Year competition, and a reprieve was granted. 

Waters Edge, The Strand, Saundersfoot SA69 9ET 

Masters’ Marvellous Plane, Canterbury

A 19th-century Canterbury horticulturist, William Masters, may have been the supplier of the strange ‘Baobab’ planes dotted around the South-East of England. Canterbury has seven such trees and the finest grows in Westgate Gardens. Intriguingly, when the seven are mapped they form the shape of a cross within the city. Apparently Masters was a very religious man. 

Westgate Gardens, St Peter’s Street, Canterbury CT1 2BQ 

Allerton Oak, Liverpool

Among Liverpool’s many arboreal treasures, the Allerton Oak is the jewel in the crown. Visitors are frequently amazed to find such an impressive tree surviving in a quiet corner of a city park. It is reputedly 1,000 years old and unsurprisingly is now in a state of collapse. A fence protects it and reclining limbs are propped up.  

Calderstones Park, Calderstones Road, Liverpool L18 3JB  

Big Daddy, Cardiff

On the Bute Park side of the Millennium Bridge, on the banks of the Taff, grows a tree of truly gigantic proportions. It is a hybrid wingnut, a rare type that counts the more frequent Caucasian wingnut as one of its parents. It is the largest of its kind anywhere in the world, and must be Cardiff’s largest and greatest tree. 

Millennium Bridge, Bute Park, North Road, Cardiff CF10 3ER 

Ten-Storey Ginkgo, London

St John’s Gardens has a long history. It started life as the disconnected churchyard of St John’s Smith Square, becoming a garden in the 19th century. The ginkgo on the north side dates from this period, making it one of the oldest in London, but what is truly impressive is its great height: it is the tallest I have seen, growing as high as the 10-storey building next to it. 

St John’s Gardens, Horseferry Road, London SW1P 2AF

Loneliest Elm in the World, Brighton

There used to be two ‘Lombartsii’ elms either side of the gothic gateway into Brighton and Preston Cemetery on Hartington Road. One was lost to Dutch elm disease, so the other is now the only Lombarts’ elm left in the world. It is a Dutch cultivar from the early 20th century, and despite its graceful, pendulous branches, it seems never to have been very popular. Cuttings should be taken to save it from extinction. 

Brighton and Preston Cemetery, Hartington Road, Brighton BN2 3PL 

Tree Hunting by Paul Wood: 1,000 Trees to Find in Britain and Ireland’s Towns and Cities is out now (Penguin, £30). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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