WHEN it comes to trees, the rules of celebrity are reversed. We feel no fascination for slender striplings, the arboreal equivalents of Holly Willoughby and Ashlee Simpson that haven't lived long enough to be truly interesting; we don't admire their shallow beauty. No, what we want in a tree is a Victoria Wood, or better yet a Fern Britton, a tree that has lived a bit, weathered a few storms, its years of experience marked in every line, bulge and solid limb.
To find exactly that sort of tree is why I'm climbing North Berwick Law on a chilly morning. Donald Rodger, an arboriculturalist and author of Heritage Trees Of Scotland is leading the way between custard-yellow patches of gorse that dot the lower sl
opes of the huge volcanic plug.
Scotland is thought to have more "heritage trees" than any other country in the world. These are trees of special interest because of their great age, astonishing size or their association with historical and cultural events. Perthshire is well known for famous trees such as the ancient Fortingall Yew, in the shade of which Pontius Pilate is said to have played as a child, but Rodger's home area of Lothian has its fair share of remarkable specimens. He's giving me the tour, starting with the Act Of Union Beeches, a group of skyscraping beech trees planted in 1707 to mark the Act of Union between Scotland and England by a local landowner, Sir Hew Dalrymple, who had signed the treaty. Now, as Scotland creeps towards independence, the beeches are reaching the end of their lives. Only six remain alive from the many that were planted, and there's an air of defiance among the survivors which stand silvery, straight and so tall and prominent on the shoulder of the Law that they can be seen from across the water in Fife.
Rodger, 48, grew up in Gullane, where his office is now, and got to know the local woods as a child. For the last decade he has sought out, measured, researched and photographed Scotland's heritage trees. He tracks them down using a variety of methods, sometimes simply nosing them out through instinct, but more often by consulting Victorian books and maps then setting out to discover whether the referenced trees are still there. He's an arboreal archaeologist, a raider of the lost bark.
"It's very exciting," he says. "There have been occasions when I've found trees that were lost or forgotten over the years. The best example was a big oak tree near Dumbarton. There was a dense conifer plantation surrounding and hiding this tree, but it was the most incredible oak I've ever seen, one of the biggest and oldest in Scotland. It was around 800 years-old with a girth of 29 feet and looked like a pirate ship dredged up from the sea floor.
"It had got lost in the passage of time and there was a real buzz and sense of awe in rediscovering it. But there's a sad postscript to the story because, not long after, it got burned down by vandals who set a fire inside the hollow trunk. That was one of our important trees lost overnight."
Rodger believes the problem is that the public do not realise how special these specimens are. He thinks signs ought to be erected explaining when a tree is ancient or otherwise remarkable and, in the case of particularly vulnerable trees, protective fencing is appropriate. "I don't like the stone prison round the Fortingall Yew though," he says. "It was put up in the early 1800s to stop souvenir hunters ripping bits off the tree. The strange thing is that the wall is a listed building but the tree has no legal protection whatsoever. We take great care of our built heritage but a lot of these trees have no statutory recognition."
He wants the Scottish Government to follow Poland and the Czech Republic in creating a list of trees of special significance. Landowners would receive funding and advice to help look after their trees, and would be fined if they damaged them.
The potential hazard, of course, in making certain trees famous, is that visitor numbers could get out of control. Just look at poor Rosslyn Chapel, still hoaching with tourists six years after The Da Vinci Code was published. Rodger pulls into the busy car park next to the church at around noon, and it's a good bet we're the only ones who haven't come to gawp at the carvings.
Our own holy grail is down a track leading to the glen. Here, a sweet chestnut, reckoned to be around 450 years-old, is hidden within woodland and hard to see from the path. It is portly and contorted. Boles and burrs give the impression of human faces. From one side of the trunk, a huge branch juts and bends to the ground like a strongman's leg. Someone has tried to support this branch with huge iron hoops, but it has burst through these. There is simply no containing this tree.
It stands in what were once the grounds of Rosebank House, a 19th-century villa, but the former impressive home is now nothing more than a pile of mossy stones. This is the thing about trees: they outlive us, put us in our place. In a time of environmental anxiety, there's something reassuring about their longevity.
There's also the idea that trees are witnesses to human history, solemn observers of accomplishments and follies. This seems fanciful until Rodger ushers me into the presence of the Great Yew of Ormiston. Around 1,000 years-old and hidden within its own green canopy like a rich cloak, this is one of only three "layering" yews known in Britain – hundreds of tangled branches radiate from the massive central trunk, plunge into the earth, and emerge again as new growth. It's a one-tree forest.
Within the dim chamber, the atmosphere is secret and still. It's easy to believe the story that John Knox preached his early reforming sermons here. And why not? The yew, after all, is a perfect emblem of resurrection and immortality.
"In theory," says Rodger, a man in his element, "this tree could live forever."
