Old Sulehay Forest, Northamptonshire: Distant church bells are about all I can hear as I stand below a 500-year-old small-leaved lime – a tree that may be making an unlikely comeback On a bright winter’s day, I stand at the centre of a ring of multi‑stemmed small-leaved limes. Their gnarled bases are furred with moss and feathered with sprays of epicormic growth . Lime trees are notoriously hard to age, but this one is probably more than 500 years old, shaped and reshaped by centuries of coppicing, now with a vast canopy stretching nearly 20 metres. Looking up, I marvel at the intricate fractal lattice of branches and twigs of each tree. Every stem holds its own space, the crowns kept neatly apart from their neighbours – a quiet phenomenon known as crown shyness. This seems somehow appropriate, given how quiet the woodland is. It feels emptied, with only the rush of a chill wind numbing my bare fingertips, a peal of distant church bells, and a robin offering its muted winter song . Continue reading...