While modern cemeteries contain relatively young
trees—none much older than a century or two—older
churchyards and burial grounds harbour ancient
trees. These veterans often exhibit a remarkable
range of microhabitats that attend the aging process,
including rot hollows, bark cavities, dead wood, water
pools, and sap runs (Photo 5). These trees provide
excellent teaching resources and opportunities to
train students in identification of microhabitats and
their significance for biodiversity—for example,
their importance for the conservation of saproxylic
beetles (those requiring decaying or dead wood).
Graveyard trees also provide other biodiversity value,
for instance, as scaffold for climbers such as European
ivy (Hedera helix). Maligned by some because of the
perceived damage it does to trees and buildings, ivy
is an important source of nectar and pollen late in
the year (from September to November in the UK)
and of berries, supporting up to fifty species of wild-
life. Each autumn, students visit the splendid yew
trees of St. Gregory's to survey the huge numbers of
insects (bumble bees, hoverflies, butterflies, wasps,
and hornets) attracted to the ivy growing on them.
The UK's Woodland Trust is an advocate of ivy, noting
that it is not generally harmful to trees, as "growth of
ivy is controlled by the healthy crowns of trees which
limit the amount of sunlight reaching ivy leaves." >>
Figure 1. Histon Road Cemetery, Cambridge (UK)
ground plan and "isometrical view" from J.C. Loudon's
On the Laying Out, Planting, and Management of
Cemeteries (1843).
www.urban-forestry.com 19
