Great oaks from little acorns grow

On another blustery morning, a sprig of acorns lying with the oakleaves on the lawn stirred a certain grandfatherly pride. Just 16 years ago, I planted their parent as a sprouted acorn and now, at almost twice my height, it has begun to bear its own seed.

I offer this small western blessing on the success of the Peoples Millennium Forests Project as it gets under way this autumn. Some 900,000 trees, many oaks among them, will be planted, with a further 300,000 next autumn, in a 4 million partnership programme managed by Coillte. Scattered across the country are eight native woodlands to be restored to to their old diversity, and eight new woods to be created with a full mix of native trees. The diversity is important. One of the most exciting woodlands in the restoration programme is at Rosturra in Co Galway, west of Portumna. Here, a degraded woodland still has rare plants that speak of links to an ancient forest, and the yew, ash and rowan scattered among the oaks make this an ecosystem of international importance. It is one of several such forgotten remnants among Coillte's holdings that are now in process of salvage and ecological repair.

There are six Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) in the project, all to be restored using acorns collected at or near the site. At Rosturra, for example, the target is 1,000 kg to be gathered in the Woodford area this autumn. Collectors have reached two-thirds of that, with the modest recompense of £1.50 per kilo (the seed contractor is Derek Felton at 087-6997077).

Most of the oak seedlings to be planted at non-SAC woodlands were grown in Coillte's nursery in Co Carlow from acorns gathered last October - which was, as it happens, an excellent mast year in the midlands. More than half a million of the acorns were gathered beneath the oaks at the Charleville Estate in Co Offaly, home of the venerable Great Oak of Charleville, a massive candelabra of Quercus robur or pedunculate oak, that may be as much as 900 years old.

The Charleville oaks are almost certainly wild. Many of them have been aged by tree coring to between 350 and 450 years old, which makes it historically most improbable that they were imported for planting. Their acorns, in that case, may well link them to the original ecosystem of Irelands primal forest.

So Charleville is to be prized, not only as balm to the soul for the people of Tullamore, but as a unique source of seed for the restoration of oak woods on the rich limestone soils of the midlands. It is protected by Duchas as a SAC under the EU's Habitats Directive, which makes the Offaly County Council's current plans to drive a by-pass through part of it seem all the more offensive and bizarre.

An arresting perspective on the forestry potential of native Irish oaks is emerging from Coillte's research into the performance of trees grown from acorns gathered at some 30 natural or semi-natural woods around the country. The company accepts that native oaks ought to do better than imported stock, having had 9,000 years or so to adapt to Irish conditions. But hybrids between our two native species - Quercus robur and Q. petraea (or sessile oak) - are common, and oaks from different localities have different habits and characters. This is the first attempt to evaluate them, with an eye to developing good provenances of native stock.

Commercial foresters want vigorous growth and the right form of stem and branches. On such criteria, after only eight summers, the saplings grown from acorns gathered at Killarney were clearly not the right stuff - this from Ireland's biggest tract of ancient, native woodland.

Even the oaks from Charleville, while fast-growing, don't promise the best stem forms. It will be 40 years or so before superior individuals emerge from the trials, but meanwhile, the most promising stock has come from Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, Corrakyle and Woodford in Clare, and Mulroy in Donegal.

Given the vagaries of the Irish acorn crop, and the 12-month limit to its viability, imports of British and Dutch acorns will continue to be high. Some 30 tonnes came in last year, two-thirds of them to Coillte - an astronomical number of acorns, but an initial planting of up to 10,000 plants per hectare in commercial stands is quick to absorb them.

No one who knows the mossy, fern-entwined sessile oaks of Killarney's woods will be all that surprised at the poor commercial performance of their acorns: what a shock to be whisked away from the dripping humidity of Tomies Wood or Derrycunihy to trial sites in Cavan, Laois and Kildare! This autumn, Crann was happy to collect 700kg of acorns from Killarney and will put their seedlings to good ecological use, even if not for top timber.

Most of the oaks in Killarney's valleys were planted for timber 200 years ago, and their pure-oak canopies now bear little resemblance to the native forest that stood there originally. What matters is the continuity of the woodland and its rainforest ecosystem, so rich in rare communities of ferns, mosses and liverworts, together with the insects and birds that thrive in such special habitats. The 16 sites in the Millennium Forests project are effectively demonstration areas for how native woods should be managed and restored. A new grant-aided scheme for the conservation of native woodlands, to be introduced shortly by the Forest Service, will bring neglected fragments of old woods back into care (especially along our rivers) and encourage creation of new woods with native trees.

All this does much to fulfil the dream of the late Freda Rountree, a chairperson of Crann and later of the Heritage Council, who was among the first to propose a millennium woodlands project. These restored woods, she urged in her submission to the National Millennium Committee, will become a doorway back to wholeness.

Crann's website is www.mde.ie/crann, and the website of the Native Woodland Trust (http://www.nativewoodtrust.ie/) also gives an excellent feel for the character, importance and fragility of Ireland's surviving pockets of ancient woodland.

Edited by Michael Viney, who welcomes observations sent to him at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo.

E-mail: viney@anu.ie Observations sent by e-mail should be accompanied by postal address.