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UK’s Tree of the Year Shortlist Celebrates Cultural Icons: The Beatles and Virginia Woolf Among the Noms

The Woodland Trust’s annual competition to celebrate and raise awareness of rare, ancient, or endangered trees across the United Kingdom is underway, with nominees chosen based on this year’s theme: “rooted in culture.” The competition seeks also to highlight how trees inspire creative minds and become ingrained in cultural awareness.

Among the ten nominees are a cedar tree climbed by the Beatles, an oak that may have inspired Virginia Woolf, and a lime representing peace in Northern Ireland. Other notable trees include: The Argyle Street Ash in Glasgow, identified in James Cowan’s 1935 book From Glasgow’s Treasure Chest as “quite the most graceful ash I have seen”; The Borrowdale Yews in Cumbria, a group of ancient trees described by William Wordsworth in his 1803 poem Yew Trees; A Beatles’ Cedar Tree in Chiswick, west London, where the band filmed a video for their song Rain in 1966; The King of Limbs in Wiltshire, named after an ancient oak; A Tree of Peace and Unity in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, symbolizing reconciliation with a lime formed of two trees that grew together into a single trunk; The Lollipop Tree on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire star in the final scenes of Sam Mendes’s first World War I film 1917; and The Lonely Tree in Llanberis, Wales.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/11/beatles-virginia-woolf-uk-tree-of-the-year-shortlist-culture

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