The Black Poplar Project Launch
We are delighted to join with the National Trust, BBOWT, the Cotswold River’s Trust and Lower Windrush Valley Project to continue our pursuit of Oxfordshire’s last native black poplars. See our article: https://nature-recovery-network.org/articles/mapping-our-local-black-poplars-saving-one-of-britains-rarest-trees/
The Black Poplar Project has been selected by the County as one of the 15 strategic projects for Oxfordshire’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy (as has our Thames Valley Wildflower Meadow Restoration Project)
NRN-LMF’s wonderful ecologist, Anna Rowlands, has been doing the searching, surveying and sending samples for genetic finger-printing for the project, assisted by a number of NRN-LMF members.
Only 50 surviving native Black poplars have been recorded in Oxfordshire. However, our search has already revealed some more remarkable trees, including 15 hiding in plain sight at Swinford Toll Bridge, and 6 hiding in the Angel and Greyhound Meadow in the centre of Oxford. We have spent amazing days surveying poplars along the Shill Brook in Carterton with Martyn Lane (OCC’s Nature Recovery Manager and Project Officer of the Lower Windrush Valley Project) and with the National Trust’s, Richard Watson, along the River Thames at Kelmscott.
We have fallen quite in love with these magnificent trees, which hold whole worlds within them, both real and imaginary. Supporting an array lichens and fungi and saproxylic invertebrates within their branches and trunks, many of these ancient trees are hollow and thriving. They provide nesting holes for birds and mammals. As river bank trees, they offer commodious resting places for otters within their hollow trunks.
Our 5m tape ran out when measuring the girth of the tree that stands on the towpath below Kelmscott Village. With massive furrows in its trunk and covered in gnarly bosses, you see where writers and artists such as JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and Arthur Rackham drew their inspiration. JK Rowling probably would have had Harry Potter hiding in one, if the trees hadn’t become so rare by the time she began writing.
When left alone, our native Black poplars seem to reach for immortality. At the Toll Bridge, we found a fragment of bark, less than 1 meter tall with a tiny amount of rotten heart wood, growing a fresh and healthy trunk. Outside Buscot Church, near Kelmscott, an ancient poplar had grown two more substantial trees from a branch that probably fell around 30 years ago. In the Angel and Greyhound Meadow in the centre of Oxford, we found a tree that had spawned 4 new trees. The process is called layering – a branch falls on damp ground, develops roots and puts up a new trunk. The furthest ‘child’ of the Angel and Greyhound Meadow poplar was more than 10 meters away from its parent.
We found dead trees, too, but mostly where they had been cut down or removed. This follows in the Victorians’ tradition, who felled females because the snow-like seed fluff they produced annoyed them. You might remember the remarkable tree that stood by the bridge over the Evenlode River on the A40, at Cassington. It blew over in the freak tornado that rushed through Eynsham and Cassington, eight years ago and lay, still thriving, on its side with its vast root plate facing the traffic. We took samples last summer and discovered that it was a rare female that had only been recorded in four other places in the UK. We took a few cuttings, which are growing well, just in time as it has now been removed as part of the A40 works.
As part of the new Black Poplar Project, we are creating a Black poplar tree nursery to grow new trees with as much genetic diversity as possible for planting out on riverside and wetland sites across Oxfordshire, including on BBOWT’s National Nature Reserve at Chimney and on the farms of the Upper Thames Farmer Cluster, facilitated by BBOWT’s Lisa Lane.
Due to the Victorians’ felling of female trees, in the 20th century the Black poplar has been reproduced by cloning males. This means that the gene pool has been depleted, with adverse consequences for its resilience. By finding as many trees with different genomes as possible and creating the conditions for natural reproduction, the project hopes to build up the resilience of the Black poplar. The National Trust has been propagating Black poplar at a nursery in Devon (link) for some time. And now, at their Coleshill Estate, they are planning to grow trees with different genetic fingerprints as a mother-stock for further propagation as part of The Black Poplar Project.
We (NRN-LMF) are also creating what we are calling a Living Library of local Oxfordshire Black poplars, with different genetic fingerprints. It will be part of our Wet Woodland, which we are developing in the four-hectare Willow Coppice down by Eynsham Lock. This will enable propagation to continue over time and will also enable other communities across Oxfordshire to start their own Black Poplar nurseries.
Huge thanks go to West Oxfordshire District Council, the Vale of the White Horse District Council and Oxfordshire County Council for funding the project and to Jack Knott of the Cotswold Rivers Trust who has been co-ordinating, writing grant applications, comms copy and organising us!
Today, the Black Poplar Project has launched a crowdfunder to pay for more DNA testing, more surveying and the creation of tree nurseries. Here is the link if you can contribute. (Please save a few pennies, though, for our land purchase crowdfunder which might be coming to you in the new year, if we can’t get funding elsewhere 🙃).