Old apple trees
Croxteth Walled garden has some very old looking apple trees - but just how old are they?
Most people know that you can tell the age of a tree by counting the number of rings when they are cut (a tree adds one annual ring for each year of its life), but how can we tell how old they are whilst still alive?
Dendrochronologists are specialists who carefully take out a small 'core' from the trunk of living trees and match the pattern of rings to existing records held on file. This allows them to work out the age of the tree.
Work has been done on several of the old fruit trees in Croxteth's Walled Garden. Apple trees in the Walled Garden and also in a smaller 'Physic Garden' area have been shown to be among the oldest Apple trees in the Merseyside and Cheshire area, coming in at 120 years old!!!
There was a problem with the core taken from one of the oldest looking trees in the garden - the centre section (from the middle of the trunk) had rotted, so the rings could not be used properly. Early this year a specialist came to take another core sample to see if we could find the age of this tree.
What appeared to be an intact core was removed and this has now been taken to the laboratory for dating. As soon as we receive information regarding the age of the tree we will add it to this page - could we have the oldest apple tree in the area? Watch this space.
Follow the links for larger images of the process: Annual rings in an Oak tree, Screwing the augur into our Apple tree, Removing the core, Packing the core for transport to the lab
Please be patient while the larger images load.
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