The Dungeness Oak
3rd November 2007, SaturdayAs you drive to the lighthouses you pass a remarkably discrete forty year old oak tree, a metre or two from the inland side of the road on Dungeness. Its only about 1m high, due to the pressures of growing on the harsh shingle environment. Branches get scorched by salt-laden winds, and leaves devoured by the voracious brown-tailed moth. As a result the multiple stems grow sideways across the shingle rather than upwards, although they do not spread out as far as you would expect for a tree of that age. This is a phenomenon that affects a range of scrub and tree species on this site.
With luck it might end up like the massive prostrate oak tree on the shingle at Kingsdown Beach in Kent that is much older and larger. Sprawling across the shingle it is a magnificant sight. ( read http://kingsdownkent.blogspot.com/2007/11/kingsdowns-stunted-oak.html) We probably don’t have any older oaks on the tip of Dungeness because until the early part of the last century the beach was grazed by 3000 sheep in the winter, and small numbers of goats all year. Dungeness Estate was remarkably clear of vegetation. Changes in management and vegetation at this site can be viewed in a PDF on the Natural England website - English Nature Research Report No 571 - Dungeness before 1960: the landscape and the people, by Brian Ferry and Dorothy Beck. Page 77 of this report particularly shows the remarkable lack of vegetation on Dungeness Estate in the 1930’s.