Clodagh Finn: There are many lessons we can learn during National Tree Week

Wed, 24 Mar, 2021 - 06:30

“When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.”

The words of Edna O’Brien, writer and all-round inspiration, come to mind this week not just because it’s National Tree Week but because there has never been a more urgent need to remind ourselves of that tenacity.

The bough is breaking. There can be little doubt about that. If people laid down concentric rings in the same way that trees do, the year just gone might look stunted and slight; barely visible as the harsh outside conditions of a pandemic take effect.

We don’t need to list the myriad ways Covid-19 has taken its toll on every single aspect of our lives other than to say it is not over yet. It’s hard to even process the news that another surge might be on the way.

Yet, to continue with the tree image, there is room for optimism too. When we look back on these difficult months maybe we will be pleasantly surprised to find that the pandemic has imprinted rings that are wide and expansive, rather than narrow and faint.

That would certainly be a more fitting representation of the ways in which so many ordinary people have reached into the very core of their humanity to steer a course through the plodding days of prolonged lockdown.

Depth of humanity

The ferocious tenacity that Edna O’Brien spoke of is evident all around us as people show resilience, strength and endurance, as well as an unerring willingness to connect at the deepest human level.

That depth of humanity extends to sharing how we get through the days. For some, it’s chocolate and kindness. For others, Netflix and a glass of wine. For me, it can be as simple as realising that buds are growing on the tree outside the kitchen window. New growth on branches that seemed gnarled, wizened and hopeless just weeks ago.

You don’t have to be a naturalist to appreciate the living wisdom of trees but it has extra weight when someone such as David Attenborough takes to the airwaves, as he did last month, to promise listeners that something extraordinary would happen within ten minutes if they sat still and stayed quiet in a woodland.

It’s not the kind of experiment everyone can try at home, given the current restrictions, but the pandemic has, at least, tempted many of us back into the natural world even if it is only to escape the claustrophobia of working from home.

On one such escape, I was enchanted to find that the cherry tree on my daily route was suddenly in bloom. A profusion of tiny, white flowers put on a magnificent show to remind us that the cycle of life is still turning.

I walked through the March muck to touch the trunk and, for a nanosecond, I was in the present moment, that unblemished instant when all is well.

Tree-huggers are definitely on to something. Go on, try it when nobody is looking. If you don’t dare, take time to look at the trees that too often become invisible in the daily hubbub.

Little wonder thousands of them have been unceremoniously cut down in recent years.

Even on the most basic level, there is something utterly life-affirming about seeing a tree withstand so much over a prolonged period of time. Forest bathing might seem like a flaky new-age fad, but research shows reconnecting with trees can lower the heart rate and reduce blood pressure.

If you are short on tall trees, you can take a virtual tour of University College Cork’s impressive arboretum with head gardener Jack Murphy and see a sample of the university’s 2,500 trees and its 120 different species.

How encouraging to hear that the university’s tree collection is to become a “living, breathing classroom”, thanks to Science Foundation Ireland funding for ‘Tree Explorers’, a project designed to promote science and nature.

In that outdoor classroom, people will see, at tree level, why it’s so important to preserve our biodiversity.

“Plants,” as project co-lead Dr Barbara Doyle Prestwich explains, “are critical to the survival of the human species, not just through the oxygen they produce, but also as key sources of medicine, food, shelter, cosmetics and more.”

They also help in pollution control, carbon capture, avoiding run-off and general wellbeing. Some of those are measurable in tons and cubic feet, but there is no single gauge to show the incalculable benefit trees have on our mental and physical wellbeing.

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To start, trees can give us a sense of perspective. Consider the redwood tree planted circa 1850 in front of UCC’s Boole library. When the man after which the library is named — the university’s first maths professor George Boole — was alive to see it grow, Ireland was in turmoil after the Great Famine.

Professor Boole himself described the air of “utter destitution and abandonment” he saw on a train journey from Dublin to Cork in October 1849. In a letter to his sister Maryann, he wrote: “For miles and miles you see nothing but fields overgrown with weeds… scarcely a human being by the way or a herd of cattle in the fields.”

Around the same time, he described being served a lavish dinner of turtle soup and champagne and commented: “Considering the disastrous state of the country a more humble style of entertainment would be in better taste.”

They were certainly not all in it together then, either.

Looking back over the 150 years of history witnessed by the trees at UCC, and elsewhere, reminds us that the world has been beset by countless calamities, many of them much worse than the one we are living through now

If the pandemic feels as if it is a 21st-century version of a global war, an oak tree in the President’s Garden at UCC provides a poignant reminder of the Great War, a conflict that claimed more than 20 million lives.

During the First World War, two young officers stayed with the then president, Bertram Windle, while on leave from the Front. After their return, one was killed in action. When his friend came across his body, which had been lying in the trenches for some time, he discovered a tiny oak tree sprouting from an acorn in his tunic pocket.

The surviving officer brought the seedling back to UCC, where the then head gardener Harry Glavin planted it in his memory. It soon became a memorial to both men as the survivor died in action shortly afterward.

But the story does not end there. The tree went on to inspire the modern-day Quercus (the Latin word for ‘oak’) Talented Students Programme, a scheme that encourages students to grow behind expectation.

Somehow that feels like a fitting anecdote, not just for National Tree Week but for the pandemic. It is a stark, grief-laden time that has left us maimed and misshapen. But hold strong, dig in and remember that regeneration is on the way.