{"id":741912,"date":"2026-08-18T14:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T14:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/741912\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T14:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T14:12:10","slug":"englands-ancient-oak-trees-dying-in-extreme-hot-and-dry-weather-trees-and-forests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/741912\/","title":{"rendered":"England\u2019s ancient oak trees dying in extreme hot and dry weather | Trees and forests"},"content":{"rendered":"

England\u2019s ancient oak trees are dying in the summer\u2019s extreme heat and dry weather, according to the Woodland Trust, with trees and ecosystems unable to adapt fast enough to the changing climate.<\/p>\n

The heatwaves<\/a> across much of Europe this summer have had a notable impact on crop growth<\/a> and plant health. To cope with the extreme conditions, many trees are undergoing \u201cearly autumn\u201d, wilting and losing their leaves early.<\/p>\n

John Parker, the chief executive of the Arboricultural Association, said: \u201cThe signs of heat stress and dry weather is visible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ed Pyne, a senior conservation adviser at the Woodland Trust, said it was helpful to think of trees like a large pipe constantly transporting water, minerals and nutrients from the soil, through its roots, up its trunk and out to its branches and leaves.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the trees are losing too much water, it stops this process and that\u2019s when we start seeing the leaves wilting and dying, which can give rise to this early autumn phenomenon where the trees are losing their leaves early,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Fallen leaves on a pavement in London in July. Photograph: Vuk Valcic\/Zuma Press\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

While the impact of the extreme weather is widespread across different species, Pyne said England\u2019s ancient and veteran trees were being disproportionately affected. \u201cThese really old trees, they\u2019re survivors, but, like us, when they get old they get a bit less resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was made particularly visible by the death in June of the Major oak<\/a>, one of Europe\u2019s oldest, largest and most celebrated ancient trees. \u201cOne of the main reasons that tree died is because of these extreme weather conditions,\u201d Pyne said.<\/p>\n

Oak trees are classed as chronologically ancient from 400 years old onwards, although many will have ancient characteristics from around 300 years. There are about 3,300 oak trees greater than 6 metres in circumference in England, and about 114 over 9 metres. The rest of Europe combined, including Scotland and Wales, has about 98 recorded oaks over 9 metres.<\/p>\n

Sherwood Forest lost eight ancient oak trees in 2024 and 2025, and Pyne has identified seven in England and Wales that are now in a critical condition:<\/p>\n

Crow Leasow oak, Shropshire.<\/p>\n

Tea Party oak, Suffolk.<\/p>\n

King John oak, Devon.<\/p>\n

Enmore oak, Somerset.<\/p>\n

Lydham Manor oak, Shropshire.<\/p>\n

Old Knobbley, Essex.<\/p>\n

Pwllpriddog oak, Carmarthenshire.<\/p>\n

The Tea Party oak is thought to be in critical condition. Photograph: Jim Woolf\/Woodland Trust<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cWhen you get these incessant droughts year after year, it\u2019s a cumulative effect which compounds across time and gets worse. Almost all of our ancient trees are struggling under these conditions. They\u2019re dying of this drought stress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pyne\u2019s analysis of mortality rates of ancient oaks found that half could be lost over the next 60 years. This analysis did not consider the changing climate, so Pyne believes the figure is likely to be a significant underestimate.<\/p>\n

It is not just oak trees that are affected. Parker said beech trees in particular were also struggling with the heat. \u201cThey are possibly going into decline and may die, which would be disastrous for us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Alexander Held, a senior expert at the European Forest Institute, said in Europe even drought-tolerant trees such as pine trees were dying. \u201cOur trees can\u2019t cope,\u201d he said. The impact is varied, with some trees affected by the heat and others sunburnt from the sunlight.<\/p>\n

An oak tree in a parched park in Bexley, south-east London, last week. Photograph: Yui Mok\/PA<\/p>\n

Angelo Morgan, a director of urban tree management at the company Trees UK of Bromley, said historically their busy period had been the winter, when high winds and rain could cause a whole root system to come up. But now they were receiving an increasing number of calls to deal with \u201climb failure\u201d in periods of hot and dry weather.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tree\u2019s vascular system isn\u2019t taking up as much moisture as it would normally do and so a lot of the limbs become very brittle and a lot of larger limbs are failing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

While forests are in a state of permanent adaptation, Held said the problem was the speed of change. \u201cOur trees and ecosystems aren\u2019t fast enough to cope with the speed of change. These changes will likely be a big disruption to our ecosystems,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England\u2019s ancient oak trees are dying in the summer\u2019s extreme heat and dry weather, according to the Woodland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-741912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}