The fall of an ancient tree is a sad occasion. It marks the death of a living monument

Irish Times

05-05-2025

It is the first Saturday in grey-grim January 1993 and the end of a tempestuous wind-filled week. All evening the enigmatic
Montalto
Roarer, as we have labelled it, has been whipping up, realising our fears. (These were the days before most
storms
were imbued with names which somehow belittle their devastating nature.)
The Roarer has a character of its own. The fifth consecutive stormy night is under way, gathering more whirling energy each evening. The forecast on the radio warns that it will reach gale force or beyond, and tonight it hurtles into overdrive. By 11pm it is barrelling headlong across the countryside into the estate.
Throughout the night the merciless wind, with barely any respite, roars, whistles and howls in all directions around the cottage doors, moaning down the chimney, testing the foundations. Windows rattle with an alarming intensity. The accompanying eerie howls and groans are unnerving, yet at the same time exhilarating, if disquieting, and make it hard to sleep.
Around 3am, after considerable tossing and turning, I rise and peer out at younger trees thrashing and swishing around, as though trying to make good their escape from the ground, and I ponder the fate of the bigger ones.
READ MORE
On Sunday morning the extent of the devastating tantrum is apparent. One of the noblest beeches in the estate, a tree of enormous dimensions, has come crashing down on the main circular drive near the front of the big house. The tree had lorded it over the lawn and lake, and frequently on my way past I had admired its changing colour patterns, moving from brilliant yellow to rich, reddish-brown mahogany.
Young, newly planted trees have been uprooted and ripped from their shallow grip, now sagging limply, while hefty branches have come off others. But they do not have the pedigree and powerful sense of longevity of their venerable neighbour, and their loss is less profound.
The fall of an ancient tree is a sad occasion. It marks the death of a living monument, a touchstone that has been a shared source of happiness to a vast universe of organisms linked to a multicellular life of interconnectivity. I reflect on the food chains the tree hosted and the fact that over the decades it gave nourishment, sheltering thousands of nesting birds, while mosses and lichen clothed its bark.
Paul Clements: 'Visited by many, loved by all, the beech tree was an ecological megalopolis'. Photograph: Trevor Ferris
The beech tree, over 80 feet tall and more than two centuries old, was wrenched out of the ground with prodigious force, leaving a gaping and disturbing hole. It had been weak for several years and its immense root network had rotted. Holes in the trunk were attacked by algae and opportunistic fungi, as well as a multitude of leaf-guzzling insects.
A chainsaw, like an electric guitar, struggles through some chords and performs the last rites, cutting parts of the contorted trunk into manageable logs for firewood in local hearths
Now lying spread-eagled, smelling of resin, birds descend on it for a Sunday morning breakfast, scampering round its bulbous trunk, gorging on its girth, fluttering and leaping about in the branches splintered across its exposed remains. They are all atwitter with the loss of a tree that had been both a hospitable host and stalwart friend, but is now lifeless, a grotesque sight, its innards, roots and filaments on display.
A blackbird fossicks through thick dark-green foliage and brown leaf litter, hoping to find insects and spiders, before turning its attention to scratching noisily at leaves on branches. Gnats emerge dancing across the doomed carcass, joined by scuttling bark beetles inspecting the wreckage with forensic diligence before enjoying a buffet.
On one thick branch a column of wood ants is on the march. Nervously, a jittery magpie circles down, hunkering on the lawn while a second one joins in and, living up to their nickname 'chatter-pies', they gossip in conspiratorial conversation about the veteran tree's demise, their long black tails wagging 19-to-the-dozen. The fall of the beech has left a gap in the tree-wall like a missing tooth, but the other trees around the lake are strangely reposeful.
[
Ireland is waging a war on trees at a time when we need more of them
Opens in new window
]
The jagged edge of the remaining stump is reminiscent of a sharp rocky outcrop in the mountains. The groundsman appears, along with two local men, and I help sweep up leaves. A chainsaw, like an electric guitar, struggles through some chords and performs the last rites, cutting parts of the contorted trunk into manageable logs for firewood in local hearths.
It might surprise many that the beech arrived in Ireland relatively recently, approximately 500 years ago. Beech has since naturalised itself, becoming, as in the case of Montalto, a mainstay of many Irish forests, woodlands and hedges. It keeps its lower branches clad in skirts of leaves that fan down to the ground while other trees concentrate their leaves only on their canopy. In the arboreal hierarchy, the beech is one of the groundsman's favourite trees.
Light flecks of snow start to fall. Crows cross the lawn quietly. Two buzzards spool out of the woods. Word comes through of spectacularly destructive damage in other parts of the grounds, with further tree mortality. In some areas huge branches have fallen to the ground, snapped by the storm. Roofs have been damaged in stone buildings and wooden fences felled. All around, the debris created by the cruel hand of nature in the dead of a winter's night is a depressing spectacle. There is a palpable sense of bereavement in the January stillness.
I reflect on the longevity of Fagus sylvatica, about the numerous seen and unseen dramas enacted inside it, the vast and complex whirl of life which revolved around it, the animals under its protection and about its spirit. Nobody could start to imagine what the tree had witnessed during its lifetime.
The power of the storm has shaken birdlife. Its violent beauty may have wreaked havoc, but it has also released a mysterious energy
Planted as a status symbol around the late 18th century, it has shed millions of leaves and leaf buds, been visited for fodder by hundreds of thousands of termites, ants, bees, moths, micromoths and butterflies, and lived through tens of thousands of moons and sunsets. It withstood the Night of the Big Wind on January 6th, 1839, and has competed for water, light and space, survived freezing nights and hot days, as well as countless storms.
For centuries the tree was a feed-station of infinite beauty and complexity, while up to 100 species could have benefited from it. Generations of centipedes and millipedes, worms, aphids, leaf beetles and weevils, ladybirds, snails, spiders, woodlice, slugs and bugs, and an army of other insects derived comfort and shelter from it, gnawing its roots.
[
Storm Éowyn's €500m toll on Irish forestry revealed by satellite imagery
Opens in new window
]
Mice and squirrels gobbled up its beechmast, the edible nuts of the beech lying on the ground. It provided protein and enriched the lives of a litany of varied species, who flirted with it and perched on its branches for social gatherings. How many crevices, nesting holes and roosts it harboured is anyone's guess; its bole has been sniffed, its resin tasted, its bark hugged, branches climbed and leaves kissed.
The power of the storm has shaken birdlife. Its violent beauty may have wreaked havoc, but it has also released a mysterious energy. Around the grounds multiple wounds to trees are visible, with fractured or bent trunks spanning the width of the driveway. It resembles a silent battlefield. Hefty limbs have snapped, hanging limply with dazzlingly light wood interiors. A towering thin pine tilts at a more dangerous-looking angle than the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The tree may be dead but it is still providing fodder for nutrients, and I feel a warm glow about knowing its secrets. From the skirl of the mistle thrush to the fluting notes of the blackbird, it played host to the calls of countless songbirds, while its branches were a perch for dynasties of wood pigeons. Visited by many, loved by all, it was an ecological megalopolis. How the mighty city has fallen.
A Year in the Woods: Montalto through the Seasons by Paul Clements is published by Merrion Press.