Seedlings have sprouted from the rescued seeds and cuttings of the world-famous Sycamore Gap tree which was unlawfully felled last year.
A National Trust conservation team was able to cultivate about 45 seedlings from the seeds and twigs salvaged from the site by Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, Andy Jasper, the trust’s director of gardens and parklands, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Saturday.
The sycamore tree had stood for an estimated several hundred years in a picturesque dip in Northumberland national park before it was deliberately felled in September. Photographs of the aftermath appeared to show the tree had been sawn at the base of the trunk with a chainsaw. A number of arrests have been made with investigations continuing.
The National Trust sprang into action the day of the felling, Jasper said, working with the national park to collect seeds and cuttings from the site. Though autumn is not the season for seed collection, the teams were able to gather enough material to send to the secret location of the National Trust’s conservation centre in the south-west of England.
The conservation centre is home to the genetic copies of some of the UK’s most well-known plants and trees, including the apple tree that Sir Isaac Newton said had inspired his theories on gravity and the 2,500-year-old Ankerwycke yew, where King Henry VIII courted Anne Boleyn in the 16th century.
The National Trust keeps the centre’s location a secret to prevent visitors from potentially contaminating the plants. “Unlike most of the National Trust, which is open to everyone, this is one place where we can’t have lots and lots people coming in with potential pathogens on their boots,” Jasper said. “There’s so much material there that is really significant.”
The Sycamore Gap tree – voted English tree of the year in a Woodland Trust competition in 2016 and featured in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves – now joins its ranks.
The first seedling emerged at the start of the year, Jasper said. Should the remaining stump not regrow, the National Trust has the option to replant the tree in its original location, but it is unclear what will happen to the remaining seedlings once they are strong enough to leave the centre.
Jasper said in the aftermath of the felling, the trust heard from “thousands, literally thousands” of people mourning the loss of the historic tree.
“The story of this tree when it was felled, it shocked the nation,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve ever had anything in the National Trust that has evoked such a reaction.”
The largest section of the tree is due to go on public display at the Sill, a tourist attraction in Hexham, not far from where it once stood.
“It’s just like a lot of the heritage we look after in the National Trust,” Jasper said. “It doesn’t really belong to us. It belongs to everyone.”
