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
