Roots and Branches at St Andrews

As autumn arrives in Scotland, with the beginning of September tomorrow, so the University’s leafy estate transforms and we crunch, kick and squelch through the deciduous fall.

For the University, September also marks new beginnings. The latest cohort of students start their academic life and energies everywhere are focussed on what’s ahead. And from projects focussed on creating green corridors to investment in biomass-fuelled district heating, trees are set to play an important role in the University’s future.

But trees can also tell us about our past – and St Andrews has a unique arboreal heritage, with roots and branches in all sorts of places.

Heading way back to the Carboniferous period, this blog previously introduced the Stigmaria, a fossilised tree root specimen dating from around 340 million year ago. Originally found by an academic on St Andrews East Sands beach, the specimen will be exhibited in the Wardlaw Museum’s “Enquiring Minds” gallery. Carboniferous plant fossils and Stigmaria in particular are common in the coastal area surround St Andrews, indicating a period of history defined by dense forest coverage and tropical climate. The specimen will give visitors to the museum insight as to the long evolution of plant life in our environment, shaping the local coastline (and less tropical conditions) that we experience today.

Elsewhere in our collections we see examples of how trees and forests provide inspiration – and indeed raw materials – to the arts. The Museum recently shared a snapshot of Fife-based visual artist Katie Paterson’s work, including this piece held in our Boswell Collection which playfully captures this dynamic. The certificate artwork is part of Paterson’s “Future Library” project, which she describes below:

“A forest has been planted in Norway, which will supply paper for a special anthology of books to be printed in 100 years time. Between now and then, one writer every year will contribute a text, with the writings held in trust, unread and unpublished, until the year 2114.”

The limited-edition certificate artwork – featuring concentric tree-like rings to mark the time passing from tree sprout to book – entitles the holder to a complete set of the printed anthology when it is set to be produced in 2114.

Also marking the passing of time in a very visual way, the University estate is itself home to two of Scotland’s most notable “Heritage Trees”. Just across from the Bell Pettigrew Museum is the ancient St Mary’s Quadrangle, a site well-known for its old and imposing perennials. The Quad is home to a hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) which is said to have been planted in 1563 by Mary, Queen of Scots during one of her visits to St Andrews.This year, Queen Mary’s Thorn is up for Scottish Tree of the Year 2020 run by the Woodland Trust, which is a great honour. Please take a moment to have a look and place a vote!

Nearby is the Holm oak (Quercus ilex), planted around 1740. Pictured below, this imposing Holm oak is the largest in Scotland with a tree girth measurement of some 12ft.

In 2004 the University was honoured for its custodianship of these two trees by Forestry Commission Scotland (now Forestry and Land Scotland). At the ceremony, Professor Thomas Christopher Smout CBE, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of St Andrews and Scotland’s Historiographer Royal, described the trees as ‘a special link to the past’.

Professor Smout is particularly well-qualified to mark such an occasion, as the foremost expert on the history of Scottish woodlands. His defining contributions include Scottish Woodland History (1997) and People and Woods in Scotland: A History (2002); as well as 2007’s A History of the Native Woodlands of Scotland, 1500-1920, co-authored with Alan R. MacDonald and Fiona Watson. For historian Watson, herself a graduate of St Andrews, woodlands represented ‘an astute choice of subject with which to kickstart environmental history’. It is here that Smout ‘led the way’, establishing in 1992 the University of St Andrews’ Institute of Environmental History – which today offers a postgraduate MLitt in Environmental History alongside research opportunities within the School of History.

The Institute positioned the University at the forefront of developing Environmental History within the UK and Europe and – later working in partnership with the University of Stirling’s Centre for Environment, Heritage and Policy (CEHP), launched in 1999 – meant that Environmental History firmly took root in Scotland. With an interest in environment-society relations, Environmental History invites us to consider what is natural about our “natural environment”. As Fiona Watson puts it, it’s about ‘seeing the wood and the trees’. This critical approach is reflected in the title of Smout’s environmental history of Scotland/ northern England: Nature Contested (2000). With analysis covering everything from the supposed ‘Great Wood of Caledon’ to conflicts over contemporary deforestation, afforestation and woodland management, Smout (2002: 63) summarises: ‘if the woods of imagination were the stuff of patriotism and Romantic contemplation, the woods of reality have been contested ground’.

This contested history of the environment remains the focus of many “Enquiring Minds” throughout the University of St Andrews. The Centre for Landscape Studies, for example, is based in the School of Classics but works in partnership across disciplines with an interest in the ‘the importance of the past in understanding present human-environment interactions’. In the multidisciplinary Centre for Archaeology, Technology and Cultural Heritage (CATCH), researchers collaborate on work such as the The Scottish Pine Project, which recently attracted media coverage for new research on semi-natural woodland decline based on tree-ring data – or dendrochronology – collected from submerged pine trees preserved in Scottish peatbogs. As well as modelling future woodland responses to climate change, the team has undertaken innovative cultural heritage research using dendrochronology to date native pine timbers from old buildings and archaeological sites, as discussed by Dr Coralie Mills in the video below

So with trees having something to say about everything from environmental pasts to climate futures, what might they tell us about the present? One former rector (1865 to 1865) – the philosopher John Stuart Mill – invoked the imagery of ‘a tree’ when in his landmark text On Liberty he described human nature as ‘[requiring] to grow and develop itself on all sides’. But to turn tables on a metaphor: we know now that trees function within wider ecosystems (e.g. the mycorrhizal network where fungi link the roots of different plants providing nutrients to those unable to reach sunlight for photosynthesis).

This community plant ecology has even been characterised in relation to the human tradition of mutual aid – under whose auspices emerged support groups like Community Aid St Andrews (CASA) during the COVID-19 crisis. Another active network was an offshoot of the University’s Transition group – aptly-named student-run food cooperative The Tree – which has been supporting the move to more sustainable lifestyles during the crisis by supplying the town’s community with affordable locally-sourced produce. By working together during a difficult spring and summer – even as the trees shed their leaves and the nights draw in, there’s sunnier days ahead.

The closing date for voting for Scottish Tree of the Year is noon on 24^th September 2020. The annual Scottish Tree Festival organised by Discover Scottish Gardens runs soon after from 28th September to 1st December 2020. The UK Tree Council’s National Tree Week follows, from 28th November to 6th December 2020.