Ancient Trees
The Woodland Trust's Ancient Tree Inventory records notable, veteran and ancient trees. Their map identifies the location and girth. The latter measurement can be used to give an approximate age through use of tables. The fall of a Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) in the Italian Garden in 2019 gave us a chance to count the tree rings and compare to its estimated year of planting of 1862, which if correct, was when the 2nd Earl Brownlow owned Belton.
The Cedar looking north towards the Orangery, left, after its fall right, below a cross-section through the main trunk.
There are Lebanon cedars on the slopes of Mount Lebanon said to be 2,500 years old. The largest specimens have girths in excess of 12 metres. Belton's main trunk was ~4m in circumference. It was chain sawn into sections. Two sections with the clearest rings were photographed and the rings counted in two directions using QGIS. The rings were marked with a point coordinate to measure the thickness of the rings.
The maximum number of rings countable was 217 giving an approximate age of around 1802, or a few years earlier due to difficulty of identifying the initial rings.
The chart shows the moving average-smoothed tree ring thickness. Cedars are said to grow rapidly for the first 50 to 70 years then only slowly after that. This is seen here. There was no correlation between ring thickness and either temperature or rainfall for that 200-year period.
If planted around 1800, the Cedar may have commemorated the age of majority (coming of age 21) of the Honourable John Cust in 1800, later 1st Earl Brownlow, born August 1779.
The estimated age of 1862 was 28% less than the true age. The conclusion is that at least in this example, using tree girth has underestimated the true age. Consequently, this tree was associated with the wrong owner of Belton House. The correct owner was, Brownlow Cust the 1st Baron Brownlow. Two other Lebanon cedars in the garden with girths of 4.5 and 4.74 meter, may be even older.
Some of the oldest documented cedar ages in England were the 220-year examples that grew in Chelsea Physic Garden. Two trees, planted at Wilton, cut down in 1874, had 236 rings, suggesting a planting date c.1638. The Rectory garden at Childry, near Wantage, Oxfordshire, is said to have a tree grown from seed brought back from Lebanon by the Rev. Edward Pococke. Planted in 1658, the tree allegedly still lives and in 2002 was selected as one of the 50 Great British Trees. But there is a paucity of information to back this up. It is not listed in the Ancient Tree Inventory. The difficulties of age estimation relates to the presence of multiple trunks.
Although a sad event, the resultant vista towards the north elevation of the 1680s house is now as intended by the architect William Wynde. Again the view from the Mansion to the 1820 Orangery is how Jeffrey Wyatville designed it.
Banner, the fallen Cedar (IanRoss).
