The Major Oak is a large

English oak ''Quercus robur'', commonly known as common oak, pedunculate oak, European oak or English oak, is a species of flowering plant in the beech and oak family, Fagaceae. It is a large tree, native plant, native to most of Europe west of the Caucasus ...

(''Quercus robur'') near the village of Edwinstowe in the midst of

Sherwood Forest Sherwood Forest is a royal forest in Nottinghamshire, England, famous because of its historic association with the legend of Robin Hood. The area has been wooded since the end of the Last Glacial Period (as attested by pollen sampling cor ...

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The trad ...

, England. According to local

folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, rangin ...

, it was

Robin Hood Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature and film. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions of the legend, he is dep ...

's shelter where he and his merry men slept. It weighs an estimated 23 tons, has a

girth Girth may refer to: ;Mathematics * Girth (functional analysis), the length of the shortest centrally symmetric simple closed curve on the unit sphere of a Banach space * Girth (geometry), the perimeter of a parallel projection of a shape * Girth ...

of 33 feet (10 metres), a canopy of 92 feet (28 metres), and is about 800–1000 years old. In 2014, it was voted ' England's Tree of the Year' by a public poll by the

Woodland Trust The Woodland Trust is the largest woodland conservation charity in the United Kingdom and is concerned with the creation, protection, and restoration of native woodland heritage. It has planted over 50 million trees since 1972. The Woodland Tr ...

, receiving 18% of the votes. Its name originates from Major Hayman Rooke's description of it in 1790.

Shape

There are several theories as to how it became so huge and oddly shaped. The Major Oak may be several trees that fused together as saplings, or the tree could have been pollarded. (Pollarding is a system of tree management that enabled foresters to grow more than one crop of timber from a single tree, causing the trunk to grow large and thick.) However, there is only limited evidence for this theory as none of the other trees in the surrounding area were pollarded.

History

Support chains were first fitted to the tree in 1908, and its massive limbs have been partially supported by an elaborate system of scaffolding since the 1970s. In 1974, fences were installed around the tree to protect it from root damage, since the number of visitors to the tree was compacting the soil around it. The formation sign of the 46th Infantry Division of the British Army in the Second World War was the Major Oak. Among the units of the division were battalions of the

Sherwood Foresters The Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment) was a line infantry regiment of the British Army in existence for just under 90 years, from 1881 to 1970. In 1970, the regiment was amalgamated with the Worcestershire Regiment to ...

regiment. In a 2002 survey, it was voted "Britain's favourite tree". Also in 2002, a person illegally attempted to sell

acorn The acorn, or oaknut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera '' Quercus'' and '' Lithocarpus'', in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains one seed (occasionally two seeds), enclosed in a tough, leathery shell, and b ...

s claimed to be from the Major Oak on an internet-based auction website. Book Illustration of The Major Oak

In 2003, in

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset. Covering an area of , ...

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Th ...

was started of 260 saplings grown from acorns of the Major Oak. The purpose was to provide publicity for an internet-based study of the Major Oak, its history, photographic record, variation in size and leafing of the saplings, comparison of their DNA, and an eventual public amenity. The Major Oak was featured on the 2005 television programme ''

Seven Natural Wonders ''Seven Natural Wonders'' is a television series that was broadcast on BBC Two from 3 May to 20 June 2005. The programme takes an area of England each week and, from votes by the people living in that area, shows the 'seven natural wonders' of ...

'' as one of the wonders of the

Midlands The Midlands (also referred to as Central England) are a part of England that broadly correspond to the Kingdom of Mercia of the Early Middle Ages, bordered by Wales, Northern England and Southern England. The Midlands were important in the In ...

. It was voted ' England's Tree of the Year' in 2014, and came sixth in the European Tree of the Year finals in 2015. The threat to the Major Oak from

fracking Fracking (also known as hydraulic fracturing, hydrofracturing, or hydrofracking) is a well stimulation technique involving the fracturing of bedrock formations by a pressurized liquid. The process involves the high-pressure injection of "frac ...

is the subject of a song by English musician Beans on Toast on his 2017 album ''Cushty''. In July 2020 the tree was reported as vandalised, with a three-foot section of bark fallen off.

References

External links

Major Oak and Sherwood Forest fan site2018 Survey of Major Oak tree roots by radar
{{Robin Hood, state=collapsed Individual oak trees Individual trees in England Nottinghamshire folklore Tourist attractions in Nottinghamshire Sherwood Forest

Shape

History

See also

References

External links