Which Tree...Or Witch Tree?

VENETIA HAWKES joins bushcraft guide David Willis on a magical journey of discovery in our local woodlands.

- Venetia Hawkes

“FRAXINUS excelsior!” David Willis flourishes a stick in an impressive display of wand-craft. His Harry Potter-like incantation is the Latin name for the ash wand he’s waving. The Guardian recently selected David as one of the top woodland walk guides in the country. He runs bush craft courses and free guided family walks in Bucks. The ‘spell’ is just one of the ways he bewitches groups of children, and adults, into learning some of the magic of trees.

David grins broadly as he stands up from his campfire, where a kettle over the flames is coming to the boil. “’If I was going to have a wand what would it be? That’s easy, oak,” he says, walking over to a nearby tree, lovingly patting the bark. “I love their strength. And the sense of history. Imagine the stories it could tell from the hundreds of years it’s been here.” It’s easy to see why oaks were called the King of Trees, sacred to Zeus, Jupiter and Thor, groves of them chosen by Druids as a place of worship.

David silhouettes an oak leaf against the sky: “It’s shaped a bit like a cloud. So you can remember the bark is knobbly like the leaf. Oak bark is full of cracks and fissures, mostly vertical, with a few horizontal ones breaking across to make the texture cracked like a dry river bed.” He has taught tree ID at night, with children joyfully discovering they can distinguish trees purely from feeling the bark.

To demonstrate, he crosses to a tree the other side of the glade, “On an ash the fissures in the bark are like waves running up and down the trunk”. He points out the ash’s distinctive black leaf buds as a further clue for nature detectives. Ash’s charms, according to British folklore, are to provide protection and healing. Placing the leaves under your pillow was said to inspire prophetic dreams.