The New Sylva: A Discourse of Forest and Orchard Trees for the Twenty-First Century

By Gabriel Hemery and Sarah Simblet

"Beautiful, useful, inspirational" BBC Wildlife Book of the Month

"A delight on every page" Evening Standard

In 1664, the horticulturist and diarist John Evelyn wrote Sylva, the first comprehensive study of British trees. It was also the world's earliest forestry book, and the first book ever published by the Royal Society. Evelyn's elegant prose has a lot to tell us today, but the world has changed dramatically since his day. Now authors Gabriel Hemery and Sarah Simblet, taking inspiration from the original work, have masterfully created a contemporary version – The New Sylva. The result is a fabulous resource that describes all of the most important species of tree that populate our landscape.

Silvologist Gabriel Hemery explains what trees really mean to us culturally, environmentally and economically in the first part of the book. These chapters are followed by forty-four detailed tree portrait sections that describe the history and the features of trees such as oak, elm, beech, hornbeam, willow, fir, pine, juniper, plane, apple and pear.

The pages of The New Sylva are brought to life with truly breathtaking artwork from artist and co-author Sarah Simblet, who captures the delicacy, strength and beauty of the trees through the seasons in 200 exquisite drawings.

With an interplay of black and red type on creamy paper, The New Sylva recalls all the charm of traditional bookmaking. And at a moment when it is vitally important for us to rediscover how to treasure our trees, the time for this visionary, beautiful book is now.

This edition comes with illustrated endpapers and a ribbon marker.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Oct 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781526640093

Gabriel Hemery

Gabriel Hemery is a forest scientist and passionate advocate for trees. He co-founded and is currently Chief Executive of Sylva Foundation, a charity caring for forests across Britain. Gabriel has written more than 90 technical articles, cited in 900 articles by other scientists. In 2011–12 he played a lead role in campaigning to save England's public forests. Gabriel regularly contributes to television and radio programmes, and has presented at several literary festivals. His first non-fiction book, The New Sylva, was published to wide acclaim by Bloomsbury in 2014. www.gabrielhemery.com / @gabrielhemery

Book preview

Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) is a majestic tree, which has been used as a focal point in formal landscaping since at least the seventeenth century and is frequently planted as an ornamental in large gardens and country estates. It produces richly scented timber that is valued in furniture making. Cedar oil derived from the leaves, stems and roots of this species and other members of its family has a long history of use in perfumery, providing a spicy base note.

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‘I did not altogether compile this work for the sake of our ordinary rusticks, meer foresters and woodmen, but for the benefit and diversion of Gentlemen and persons of quality . . .’

JOHN EVELYN

A TABLE OF THE CHAPTERS

To the Reader

Introductory Note by Sir Martin Wood FRS

CHAPTER I

OF JOHN EVELYN & SYLVA

Of forestry & the early written word

Of seventeenth-century forests

Of John Evelyn

Of John Evelyn’s Sylva

The legacy of Sylva

CHAPTER II

OF THE EARTH

Of the environment

Of the forest

Of the tree

CHAPTER III

OF THE TREES

Of the true fir

Of the true cedar

Of the larch

Of the spruce

Of the pine

Of the Douglas-fir

Of the hemlock

Of the yew

Of the juniper

Of the redwood

Of the red cedar

Of the plane

Of the box

Of the spindle

Of the poplar

Of the willow

Of the black locust

Of the hawthorn

Of the quince

Of the apple

Of the medlar

Of the cherry

Of the blackthorn& plum

Of the pear

Of the rowan, whitebeam & service-tree

Of the buckthorn

Of the elm

Of the mulberry

Of the sweet chestnut

Of the beech

Of the oak

Of the alder

Of the birch

Of the hornbeam

Of the hazel

Of the walnut

Of the lime

Of the maple

Of the horse chestnut

Of the dogwood

Of the ash

Of the holly

Of the elder

Of the guelder-rose & wayfaring tree

CHAPTER IV

OF SILVICULTURE & FOREST PRODUCE

Of people & forests

Of forest systems

Of new groves

Of working the forest

Of timber & its uses

Of forest produce

CHAPTER V

OF FUTURE FORESTS

Of former futurologists

Of forests & government

Of the green economy

Of climate change

Of future trees

Of a new wood culture

Glossary

Historical Context

Tree Species & Their Authorities

A Note on the Illustrations

Further Reading

Arboriculture, Forestry & Timber Associations

The Authors

Acknowledgements

‘Bramley’s Seedling’ apples were originally grown from seed by a young girl, Mary Ann Brailsford, in the Nottinghamshire town of Southwell, between 1809 and 1813. They were named by a subsequent owner of her home, Matthew Bramley, who permitted local nurseryman Henry Merryweather to propagate the first grafts. The fruits drawn here were growing on old trees in the nearby village of Costock.

TO THE READER

Three hundred and fifty years ago, in 1664, a book titled Sylva, written by the diarist and intellectual John Evelyn, was published by the Royal Society in London. Sylva – from the Latin for ‘forests’ – helped change perceptions of trees and forests and inspired generations of landowners to manage better their woodlands, serving as one of the earliest practical manuals on silviculture.

The New Sylva, published to mark the anniversary of Evelyn’s work, celebrates mankind’s relationship with trees through an integration of history, science and art. This much-needed contemporary and scholarly review is inspired by Evelyn’s words and philosophy, and it honours his poignant plea for change by introducing the true nature of sustainable forestry to a modern audience.

Reflecting much of the content and structure of Evelyn’s original, The New Sylva serves as an instructive companion. It details modern approaches to planting and managing forest and orchard trees, many of which were unknown in seventeenth-century Britain. It is copiously illustrated, unlike Evelyn’s Sylva, with more than two hundred pen and ink drawings, specially commissioned to depict the diversity of British woodlands. They include individual mature trees and small seedlings, detailed studies of botanical parts, such as leaves, flowers and fruits, and a selection of associated animals, insects and woodland flowers. Every drawing has been made with the aim of helping the reader to go beyond merely looking, to fully seeing and understanding the beauty, complexity and wondrous nature of our trees and forests.

Society today is ever more removed from the natural world. Children rarely play unsupervised in our woodlands. People surround themselves with items made from wood, but feel unease at the sound of a chainsaw in a forest. Public perceptions of forestry are often negative, and there is a deep misunderstanding of the working countryside. Many of our forests lie unmanaged, while timber is imported from overseas or substituted with man-made materials. This is our wood culture, and it is moribund.

Yet there is an important, if not unprecedented, role for trees, forests and timber today. As society continues to experience environmental change, trees will become ever more valued and needed, not only as beautiful elements shaping landscapes and city parks, affirming our sense of place and heritage, but also as perhaps our most important natural resource.

Trees are intertwined with humanity. They supported the cradle of civilisation and frame all of our lives. We know there could be no life on Earth without them, but in our actions we often overlook their value. In creating The New Sylva we hope to inspire people to embrace and revitalise our wood culture: to plant a tree; to marvel at the beauty and richness of a woodland; to understand the art and science of forestry; to feel pride in using timber sourced from a well-managed forest. Generations to come will judge our society according to the utility of our forests, and the love and respect we afford our trees.

GABRIEL HEMERY & SARAH SIMBLET

The small, sour fruits of crab apple (Malus sylvestris) grow to four centimetres in diameter, yellowing when mature. Here, they are seen densely clustered along a young shoot. Fruits remain on the tree until winter, becoming brightly visible in roadside hedges.

AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE

from the Sylva Foundation

In the shoes, or rather the roots, of a forest oak tree, little changes during 350 years. This is, after all, just two or three generations in the life of an oak grown for its timber. In human society, however, the seventeenth century seems more than just an age ago. It was a different epoch.

Then, the products and fruits of our trees were firmly in the mind of every man, woman and child as being essential to life. Houses, horse carts, ships, machinery, everyday equipment and food were derived from trees. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that even amid the emerging scientific revolution of the time, it was the subject of trees and forests that came to the fore. Sylva was the Royal Society’s first printed book. Generations of us have John Evelyn to thank for issuing his appeal for something to be done about the state of the nation’s trees, woods and forests.

Today, in the early part of the twenty-first century, we are experiencing a new revolution. Trees and forests are essential to our existence, just as they always have been, but they have the potential to affect our lives in ways that we are only beginning to appreciate. As an engineer by profession, I am always excited by newly emerging technologies. But in my later years, my passion and interest have come back to focus on the natural world. I recognise the need to marry scientific advances with the rekindling of our wood culture.

This is the vision that led me to co-found the Sylva Foundation with Gabriel Hemery in 2008, our purpose being to promote good stewardship of woodlands and encourage sustainable use of forest products. I am delighted that the Sylva Foundation has been able to support The New Sylva, which goes beyond a celebration of Evelyn’s legacy. It is a modern-day clarion call for the creation of a new wood culture that may help to ensure a sustainable and enjoyable future for us all.

SIR MARTIN WOOD FRS CO-FOUNDER AND TRUSTEE, SYLVA FOUNDATION

CHAPTER I

OF JOHN EVELYN & SYLVA

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‘Explore everything; keep the best.’ [J .E.]

John Evelyn was a virtuoso, polymath and luminary in seventeenth-century Britain. As a founding member of the Royal Society, he was at the heart of the unfurling scientific revolution. He had close ties to the royal court and Charles II, and counted among his friends prominent figures in society, including the chemist Robert Boyle, architect Sir Christopher Wren and fellow diarist Samuel Pepys. His diary – started in 1631 when he was eleven years old and written until just weeks before his death – is an extensive and important record of one of Britain’s most tumultuous centuries. He witnessed the executions of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, the Restoration of the monarchy, the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London.

Evelyn’s greatest literary triumph was Sylva, or, A discourse of forest-trees, and the propagation of timber in His Majesties dominions. It was published in 1664, the first book to be imprinted by the Royal Society, and reissued three times in Evelyn’s lifetime, with a further seven editions published after his death. This landmark treatise on the management of trees began life in 1662 as a report written in response to an appeal by the Navy Royal to address a shortage of timber for shipbuilding following the Civil War and the Interregnum. That it was completed by a prominent philosopher, with the personal and direct support of the King, reflects the importance of wood in seventeenth-century society.

¶

Of forestry & the early written word

Evelyn was not the first author to consider trees and forests. The philosopher Francis Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum, a miscellany of writings on natural history, including trees, had been published in 1627 and ran to its eighth edition in the same year as Evelyn’s Sylva. However, the earliest documents in England concerning forests and their management were statutes. The Domesday Book, completed in 1086, stated that forests covered about fifteen per cent of the country. At the sealing of Magna Carta in 1215 under the boughs of the Ankerwycke Yew (see here) at Runnymede, land-ownership rights were recorded, including those relating to forests. From Magna Carta evolved the Charter of the Forest under the rule of Henry III in 1217, giving free men rights of access to Royal Forests, including pannage (pasture for pigs) and estover (collecting firewood). In 1457, an Act was passed in England that encouraged the planting of trees; another in 1483 allowed the enclosure of new woodlands against grazing animals. In Scotland, a 1503 law endorsed tree planting on the basis that Scotland’s woods were ‘utterlie destroyit’.

Under the boughs of the Ankerwycke Yew near Runnymede in Surrey, King John sealed Magna Carta, the foundation of England’s constitution, which led ultimately to the demise of Forest law. The age of this European yew (Taxus baccata) is unknown, but it is certainly older than two thousand years, and its girth measures more than eight and a half metres.

By the sixteenth century, book publishing had come of age. Perhaps the accolade of being the first book to dwell significantly on trees can be given to Fitzherbert’s Book of Husbandry, published in 1523. A manual of agrarian practices ranging from horse management to bee-keeping and the mending of ploughs, it contained practical advice on trees, including their grafting, felling and selling, planting and pruning, and on hedgelaying. Historians disagree as to whether the author was Sir Anthony, a well-known legal scholar and judge, or his brother, John.

In 1577, during the reign of Elizabeth I, Holinshed’s Chronicles observed that ‘plantations of trees began to be made for purpose of utility’. Twenty years later, the English herbalist John Gerard published The Herball, or, Generall Historie of Plantes, one of the most popular books of the following seventeenth century. His accuracy and liveliness endures today, exemplified by his description of walnut: ‘groweth in fields neere common high waies in a fat and fruitful ground’.

¶

Of seventeenth-century forests

Seven years before Evelyn was born, the agricultural writer Arthur Standish published his ‘Commons Complaint’, an essay personally approved by the King, which was preoccupied with halting the destruction of woods. In it, he advocated the planting of trees on waste land, proposing the sowing of 240,000 acres (97,000 hectares) in the hope that ‘there may be as much timber raised as will maintaine the kingdome for all uses for ever’.

Fear of wood scarcity was commonplace in the seventeenth century, unsurprising given its importance for domestic heating and cooking, industrial processes (often requiring charcoal) and shipbuilding. The State’s strategic understanding of the national resource had been developed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Henry VIII maintained a strong interest in the forest resources of Britain, particularly in relation to the provision of timber for the Navy’s shipyards. There was wide-felt pressure on timber reserves and a common belief that trees with valuable timber properties were being felled wastefully for uses that could be met by trees of lesser quality or by coppices. This led to the first Timber Preservation Act in 1543, sometimes known as the Statute of Woods. It was a highly prescriptive law permitting wood to be cut under strict guidelines: twelve timber trees were to be left standing per acre (equivalent to thirty per hectare), and coppices had to be enclosed after cutting to protect them from grazing animals.

During Elizabethan times, in 1588, an Act of Parliament was passed that forbade the ‘wasting’ of wood as a fuel in the forges of the iron industry. It declared that all suitable timber must be harvested exclusively for shipbuilding when growing within fourteen miles of a navigable waterway. Later in the same century, the concept of plantations had reached England from continental Europe. One of the earliest records of an oak plantation is for thirteen acres (five hectares) sown with acorns at Windsor Great Park in 1580. Elizabeth’s successor, James I, encouraged tree planting, but the country’s forests were of no concern to his successor, Charles I. The ravages of the English Civil War that followed, together with the enclosure of agricultural lands, had significant effects on the nation’s forests, so that by the time Charles II was restored to the throne, there was great alarm about their degradation.

Historians disagree as to whether the decline of woodlands and paucity of wood supply was as critical as reported, some suggesting that the situation was exaggerated by courtiers in order to urge Charles II to act. Recent examination of evidence for Britain and its neighbours suggests that there may well have been localised wood shortages, but that a general scarcity was unlikely before the eighteenth century. By the mid seventeenth century, it has been estimated that there were three million hectares of woodland in England, compared with at least four million hectares at the beginning of the sixteenth century. At the time of the Restoration there were sixty-eight Royal Forests, apparently in poor condition but nonetheless containing some fine timber. Just one significant Act was passed in that century, in 1668 for the Increase and Preservation of Timber within the Forest of Dean, leading to the enclosure of eleven thousand acres (4,500 hectares) for new planting. This is considered the first government-led forest plantation. In the New Forest, six thousand acres (2,500 hectares) were enclosed in readiness for planting, but never completed following the impact of the Great Fire of London and the Anglo-Dutch Wars.

Three-year-old seedling of European yew (Taxus baccata). It germinated in deep shade beneath the canopy of its parent.

The Navy’s extraction of timber from forests was physically and politically significant. A single warship, such as the Mary Rose, as we now know from archaeological studies of her remains, consumed some twelve hundred trees in her construction, enough to clear all the trees from seventy-five acres (thirty hectares), the equivalent of around forty modern-day football pitches. The Mary Rose, built between 1509 and 1511, was not a particularly large ship. Most of the trees used to build her, as for all ships at the time, were oaks, although her keel was made from three great pieces of elm. Later and larger ships would have used two thousand oak trees. Between 1730 and 1789, the six main British shipyards were said to have used forty thousand cubic metres of oak, equivalent to about eight thousand trees, every year.

The Navy therefore had a voracious appetite for trees, and any woodland near navigable waters – necessary to transport the timbers to the dockyards – would have been affected greatly. Evelyn wrote: ‘I have heard, that in the great expedition of 1588 [the Spanish Armada], it was expressly enjoined the Spanish commanders of that signal Armada, that if, when landed, they should not be able to subdue our nation, and make good their conquest, they should yet be sure not to leave a tree standing in the Forest of Dean’. Despite the encouragement of contemporary economists and even ship captains, pleas for help were to have little effect. Soon after Sylva was first published, Captain John Smith wrote in 1670: ‘there was a time when England had been overgrown with woods and it had been beneficial to grub them up. But that time was past’.

Cornish elms (Ulmus minor subsp. angustifolia) growing at Sherrington Manor near Selmeston, East Sussex. The trees are both leaning, having become unstable at their bases, possibly due to disturbance from ploughing. In the distance are the Sussex downs, which provide an important barrier to Dutch elm disease.

¶

Of John Evelyn

John Evelyn was born on 31 October 1620 at Wotton in Surrey, about thirty miles south of the centre of London. The Evelyn family were minor gentry and landowners, whose fortunes, built on gunpowder manufacture, had provided for them Wotton House and a significant estate. With his father, Richard Evelyn, acting as sheriff of Sussex and Surrey, and the gunpowder mills being of critical and strategic importance to the Crown, it is no wonder that the house of Evelyn had strong ties with royalty.

John Evelyn was educated at home until an outbreak of the plague prompted his family to move him to his grandmother’s house at Lewes in Sussex. He recorded in his diary: ‘This was the year in which the pestilence was so epidemical, that there died in London five thousand a week, and I well remember the strict watches and examinations upon the ways as we passed; and I was shortly after so dangerously sick of a fever, that (as I have heard) the physicians despaired of me.’

Aged seventeen, he attended the University of Oxford, matriculating at Balliol College in 1637, although evidently he did not take his studies seriously, later admitting that his time at Oxford was ‘of very small benefit to me’. He never graduated, quitting his studies in April 1640 to join his elder brother George at Middle Temple, ostensibly to study for the Bar. Yet his father’s ailing health (he died on Christmas Eve 1640) proved to be a great distraction to studies, as did the looming Civil War. In his diary entry of 2 January 1640, Evelyn aptly described the threat as ‘the greatest and most prodigious hazard that ever the youth of England saw’.

On the death of his father, Wotton House was inherited by his elder brother, George. John Evelyn, now without family in London, was increasingly troubled by civil unrest in England. On 12 May 1641, he witnessed and recorded the execution of Thomas Wentworth. Soon afterwards, on 16 July, to escape the turbulence in England, Evelyn left to travel the United Provinces (today’s Belgium, Luxembourg and Netherlands). He returned in October 1642 to England, where he was involved superficially in military activities, witnessing the royalist victory at the Battle of Brentford. He kept a low profile, mostly at Wotton, until the troubles grew too great a threat. In 1643, after receiving royal permission, he again left for mainland Europe, this time embarking on a nine-year period of travel. After touring widely in Italy and France, he settled in Paris, where in 1647 (aged twenty-seven) he married Mary, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Sir Richard Browne, the King’s ambassador to the French Court, who was at the centre of the exiled royalist community. Evelyn visited Charles I in 1647 at Hampton Court, and afterwards corresponded regularly with his father-in-law on royal matters.

His travels were hugely stimulating. He studied widely, building an impressive private library, visited Europe’s greatest cultural centres and socialised with notables. Evelyn returned to England in 1652 a changed man, having overcome his self-confessed poor education and failures in academia, now being well-read in classical literature and with heightened interests in science and technology. His personal motto, which he hand wrote often in the fronts of books in his library, exemplified this: ‘Omnia explorate; meliora retinete’ (explore everything; keep the best), from I Thessalonians 5, 21.

Evelyn’s new residence in England was near the royal dockyard, at Sayes Court in Deptford, south London, the ancestral home of his wife’s family. Soon after settling there he started work transforming the estate, which consisted of one hundred acres (forty hectares) of rough pasture with ‘a rude orchard and a holly hedge’, into a garden for which he was soon to become well known. There he was influenced by his French and Italian experiences, together with strong moral and religious convictions, and he displayed a prodigious and puritanical talent for garden design.

Work started with an Oval Garden, featuring many cypress trees, soon added to with a Great Orchard of three hundred fruit trees (apples, cherries and pears), shrubs (currants and gooseberries) and roses. He was keen on planting hedges, an important part of formal garden design at the time, particularly using Mediterranean buckthorn. He planted French walnuts in each of fourteen bowers, and initially some five hundred ash, beech, elm, wild service-tree, sweet chestnut and oak trees, with another eight hundred soon added elsewhere in the garden. The completed garden contained wide and lengthy walks, often lined with holly, and various eclectic features, including a moat with an island where asparagus and raspberries were grown for his children, together with a miniature banqueting house.

A pressed stem of field elm (Ulmus minor) from the Du Bois Herbarium, kept at the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford. Labelled ‘The narrow-leav’d Elm, with party-colour’d leaves’, it was ‘Gather’d in the Physick Garden at Chelsea, anno 1715’ by Isaac Rand, first director of Chelsea Physic Garden. Variegated plants were of special interest to botanists of this period. This species was referred to by John Parkinson, apothecary to James I, later botanist to Charles I, in his influential book Theatrum Botanicum (1640), an important source for Evelyn in writing Sylva.

The abundant, creamy white, cup-shaped flowers of common pear (Pyrus communis) are produced on dense fruiting spurs. They have a pungent scent, reminiscent of ammonia. These lichen-covered stems were growing on an old orchard tree beside Dorchester Abbey in Oxfordshire.

Evelyn excelled in ordered planting and designs, accentuating vistas with long lines of manicured evergreen hedges. As his horticultural reputation grew during the 1660s and 1670s, he was called upon to provide advice and design for friends and acquaintances, invariably advocating the judicious yet plentiful planting of trees.

The Restoration of the monarchy, with the crowning of Charles II in 1660, was a life-turning point for the royalist Evelyn. Building on his inherited position in society, as well as his father-in-law’s ties with royalty, he immersed himself in public affairs, being employed increasingly on public commissions and often conversing at length directly with the King. However, he found ‘the fruitless, vicious and empty conversations’ of the royal court frustrating. He was interested more in the rapidly developing natural sciences, and was elected a founding member of the Royal Society.

The large flowers of quince (Cydonia oblonga) are produced after new leaves in spring, usually in May. Large, aromatic, yellow fruits (see here) mature by late autumn and are used for making jellies and jams. This stem was collected from the University of Oxford Botanic Garden.

The inaugural formal meeting of the Royal Society was held at Gresham College in London on 28 November 1660. The memorandum records that a dozen men met to hear a lecture by Christopher Wren on astronomy and afterwards agreed to constitute themselves as the ‘Society’ for the ‘promotion of experimental philosophy’. Forty-one men were named as founding members, John Evelyn being the ninth listed. As the society developed, he had good company, perhaps the greatest ever assembled, including Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton and Christopher Wren. The Society met weekly to debate scientific matters at the college, where lectures were given and experiments conducted. These pushed the boundaries of philosophical knowledge in subjects ranging from the speed of sound to anatomy. Frequent experiments on dogs, cats and mice typically involved subjecting them to gruesome deaths by vacuum, poison and dissection.

Evelyn was a towering intellectual and prolifically productive. Fellow diarist Pepys wrote on 5 November 1665 with slightly barbed praise: ‘so I by water to Deptford, and there made a visit to Mr. Evelyn . . . In fine, a most excellent person he is, and must be allowed a little for a little conceitedness; but he may well be so, being a man so much above others’. A year later, Pepys wrote effusively: ‘he and I walked together in the garden [Sayes Court] with mighty pleasure, he being a very ingenious man; and the more I know him, the more I love him’.

As a prodigious public servant, Evelyn was the author of numerous reports. In 1661, writing on London smog in Fumifugium, he described the ‘hellish and dismal cloude of sea-coale’ that cloaked the city. In 1662, as well as being asked to investigate the state of the nation’s forests, he wrote a paper on London street improvement and joined the commission that cared for prisoners of war, and sick and wounded seamen from the second Anglo-Dutch War. He produced a report on the Royal Mint in 1663 and one concerning the repair of St Paul’s Cathedral in 1666. In 1665, during a particularly bad outbreak of the plague, he is said to have been the only commissioner who remained at his post in London. In 1671, he was appointed to the Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations, and under James II he was made a Commissioner for the Privy Seal. He accepted his last public office in 1695, aged 75, as treasurer to the Greenwich Hospital for Seamen.

As a writer, his topics ranged from architecture and fashion (with his daughter Mary) to numismatics (currency), politics, theology, horticulture and diet. Evelyn’s most ambitious work, started in the 1650s but never completed in his lifetime, was a great gardening encyclopedia, Elysium Britannicum. His Kalendarium Hortense, a gardening almanac, was published first in 1664 as an appendix to Sylva. Also appended in Sylva from the first edition onwards was ‘Pomona; or, an appendix concerning fruit-trees in relation to cider; the making and several ways of ordering it’.

¶

Of John Evelyn’s Sylva

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Since there is nothing which seems more fatally to threaten a weakening, if not a dissolution, of the strength of this famous and flourishing nation, than the sensible and notorious decay of her wooden walls . . . [J .E.]

Evelyn referred always to ‘my Sylva’, and his name alone appears on the title page. His authorship is enforced in historical evidence gleaned from the Royal Society’s proceedings and Evelyn’s diary and archive, and is confirmed prominently in Godfrey Kneller’s portrait, in which Evelyn is seen clasping a copy of Sylva. The work was most likely a collaborative effort, suiting well the spirit of ‘collective inquiry’ that the Royal Society wished to promote. Although Evelyn was clearly at the centre, he did not work alone. Four Fellows of the Royal Society were asked to respond to the Navy Royal’s ‘Quaeries’ (see below): John Evelyn, John Goddard, Christopher Merret and John Winthrop. Evelyn, being a well-known author and horticulturist, was the one who combined their papers. The closest to a hint from Evelyn is his acknowledgement in Sylva of ‘divers Worthy Persons’.

The Quaeries were put before the Royal Society on 17 September 1662, a month before John Evelyn presented Sylva to the Society. They consisted of five recommendations composed by Peter Pett, Commissioner of the Navy (until he lost his job after becoming scapegoat for the disaster that befell the Navy at the Battle of Medway in 1667). Evelyn recalled meeting Pett in March 1663: ‘He is esteemed for the most skilful shipbuilder in the world.’ Pett recommended the replanting of Royal Forests and parks – ‘almost wholly cut down and decayed’ – with oak, elm, ash and beech as suitable species for shipbuilding. He hoped that Charles II could be persuaded that this would strengthen the Navy, which, following recent wars with the Dutch (1652–54) and Spanish (1654–60), and with omnipresent threats from the Dutch and the French, was vital strategically.

Quæries touching the Præserving of Tymber now growing And planting more in His Majesty’s Dominions of England & Wales.

1st. Whether it were not adviseable that his most sacred Majesty might be mooved, now there is so great a scarcity of Tymber for the Supply of his Navie, that all such of his Forests, Chases & Parks, that ly within 20 Miles of the Sea or any Navigable River, and whose soyles shall be found fitt for propagating of Tymber for the service of the Navie, May be planted with Oke, Elme, Ash and Beechen Tymber, in such manner & proportion as may still consist with His Majesty’s benefitt & pleasure in his Gaine, And whether the planting of them may be not a farr greater emprovement of those Lands then is now made. [SIR ROBERT MORAY]

Pett also proposed that land should be found for the establishment of new forests, which ought ‘to be plowed &sett with Acornes, Ash Keys, Beech Mast’ except for elm, where ‘the Transplanting of young Elmes, be not the most probable way of propagating that sort of Tymber’. He also suggested that the King should have first refusal of all suitable timber on private land, at a price agreed between Commissioners and landowners; that using oak for house building within ten miles of London should be forbidden (except for foundation pilings); and that all landowners in England and Wales should plant one acre in every hundred with oaks or elms.

Samuel Pepys, then Clerk of the Acts, mentions meetings with Pett and Sir John Winter, colliery manager in the Forest of Dean, in diary notes of June and August 1662. They ‘talked of . . . the timber there’. It is unclear how Evelyn became involved in the issue of forest trees and timber, but one month following the presentation of the Quaeries to the Royal Society, on 15 October 1662, Evelyn wrote in his diary: ‘I this day delivered my ‘Discourse concerning Forest Trees’ to the Society, upon occasion of certain queries sent to us by the Commissioners of his Majesties Navy’.

Pett wrote a letter to Evelyn on 4 November 1662, on ‘ye great business of ye Forest of Deane which is now on foot’. He wrote that the Society, having answered the Quaeries, had ‘much enlarged upon that subject’ and he begged Evelyn to bring the relevant passages to a meeting the next day at Gresham College. In that meeting, Evelyn followed up his recent paper by suggesting a discourse ‘concerning planting his Majesty’s Forest of Deane with oake, now so much exhausted, of ye choicest ship-timber in the world’.

A little more than one year later, on 16 February 1664, Evelyn noted: ‘I presented my ‘Sylva’ to the Society; and next day to his Majestie, to whom it was dedicated; also to the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Chancellor.’ Printed by the publisher John Martyn for the Royal Society, it was Evelyn’s largest work and included ‘Pomona’ (see here) and Kalendarium. Its publication was supported by more than seven hundred subscribers, whose names were listed at the front of the book. Evelyn’s personal message to Charles II was followed by a lengthy dedication to the reader, in which the author pointed out that he did not seek to instruct the King, but to present advice received from others and derived from his own direct observations.

Sylva’s ‘Introduction’ explained the strategic importance of forests to the country and set out Evelyn’s intention to describe the management of forests and detail the species most likely to be of ‘greatest use, and fittest to be cultivated’. The first chapter of ‘Dendrologia: Book the First’ was titled ‘Of the Earth, Soil, Seed, Air, and Water’, and dealt with the natural environment. The second was ‘Of the seminary; and of transplanting’, a practical manual to the raising of young trees. Next, Evelyn dealt in turn with broadleaved forest tree species, presented in order of their economic importance. Oak was at the heart of the book, filling some fifty pages. The subsequent seventeen chapters, starting with elm and ending with willow, were much shorter. Each described the tree, its propagation and management, its timber and other uses.

Raspberry (Rubus idaeus) grows in the wild across much of Britain, being found in open woodland and hedgerows. It is one of the parent species of hybrids used in gardens for fruit production. This piece was collected in the Brecon Beacons National Park.

‘Dendrologia: Book the Second’ presented the conifer species and ‘subterranean’ (Mediterranean) trees, thus ranging from larch to mulberry and pine to olive. It was followed by ‘Of the infirmities of trees’, a comprehensive manual for the treatment and prevention of tree ailments – modern readers may be amused by curious remedies, such as the application of cow dung to pruning wounds. The third book, ‘Of Coppices’, began with silvicultural guidelines, followed by chapters on pruning methods, ageing trees and their felling, timber seasoning and, finally, laws and statutes. The fourth book, which concerned the ‘sacredness and use of standing groves’, was a single chapter that exalted the cultural significance of trees to societies across the world.

To the second edition, dated 1670 but presented in 1669, various engravings were added, including those of a winch for lifting tree butts with roots, a method of drawing sap from a tree, a sawmill (see here) and boring engine, charcoal burning and a cider press. The 1679 third edition included an essay from Evelyn about soils: ‘Terra, a Philosophical Essay of Earth, being a Lecture in Course’. The 1706 edition, spelt ‘Silva’ for the first time, included a new section: ‘Dendrologia: Or a Treatise of forest trees’. Posthumously, in 1729, another and largely unchanged fifth edition was produced. It was nearly fifty years before it was issued again, in 1776, this time edited devotedly by Alexander Hunter (see here), with illustrations by John Miller. Four further editions were printed in 1786, 1801, 1812 and 1825.

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The legacy of Sylva

Evelyn must have gained great satisfaction from the success of his Sylva. In a diary entry of 27 October 1664 he wrote: ‘Being casually in the privy gallery at Whitehall, his Majesty gave me thanks before divers lords and noblemen for my book of Architecture, and again for my Sylva saying they were the best designed and useful for the matter and subject. . .’.

There is no doubt that it was a powerful propaganda tool. Historians have suggested that Sylva’s dedication and direct presentation to the King was designed to link together the republican politics of the Commonwealth and the disintegration of monarchy with the dilapidation of the Royal Forests. Trees became associated closely with royalty; had not Charles II himself been ‘saved’ by the Boscobel Oak? The Royal Forests had to be protected and so, too, therefore the monarchy. History tells us, however, that while Charles II may have committed his support in writing, often he did not act accordingly. For example, he permitted Sir John Winter, whom Pepys met in 1662 and found to be a ‘very worthy man’, to fell many tens of thousands of oak trees in the Forest of Dean.

In terms of formal protection afforded to productive forests in Britain, this being a principle objective of Sylva, an Act of Parliament was introduced about ninety years after the first edition, in 1756, for the ‘enclosing, by the mutual Consent of the Lord and Tenants, Part of any Common, for the Purpose of planting or preserving Trees fit for Timber or Underwood; and for more effectually preventing the unlawful Destruction of Trees’. The Act reflected an acceptance that previous attempts by monarchs, in particular Henry VIII, Charles II and William III, to encourage the planting of trees and the production of timber had been ineffective.

As a source of silvicultural influence, Evelyn had competition from the German writer Hans Carl von Carlowitz (1645–1714). We will never know whether the ‘grandfathers’ of forestry met in person: Carlowitz’s masterpiece was published in 1713, seven years after Evelyn’s death. It was entitled Sylvicultura Oeconomica, oder hauswirthliche Nachricht und Naturmässige Anweisung zur wilden Baum-Zucht (or ‘Economics of silviculture, instruction for cultivating wild trees’). Carlowitz is credited with introducing the term Nachhaltigkeit, meaning the concept of sustainability. In early eighteenth-century Saxony, there were real concerns about supplies from mining, not because materials were dwindling, but because timber shortages meant that there was insufficient wood for pit props. As a tax accountant and mining administrator, Carlowitz identified the need to manage forest resources sustainably for brewing, building, heating, mining and smelting, especially for the silver mines around his hometown of Freiberg.

More than a century after Sylva was first published, Germany continued to lead the way in forest education and technological development. The world’s first forestry schools were established in Hunden (Hesse) in 1789 and later in Tharandt (Saxony) in 1816, and these assisted in exporting new concepts in forest design and management around the world, including Britain and her Empire. Most significantly these included the theory of plantation forestry, including regimented rows of trees with species mixed together for mutual benefit, designed to support the production of quality timber. In Britain, it was the severe demands of fuelling the effort of the First World War 250 years after Sylva was first published that finally inspired a step change in forest management and afforestation. Wartime demands had reduced Britain’s forest cover to just five per cent and prompted the government to appoint the Acland Committee (1916–18) to coordinate an afforestation plan to create a strategic reserve of timber for the nation. In 1919 the Forestry Act came into force and established the Forestry Commission. Ever since, government policies have been instrumental in shaping forestry activities in Britain, in conjunction with the economics of the global trade in timber and the evolving needs of society (see here).

Newly germinated seedling of pedunculate oak (Quercus robur). It is an example of hypogeal germination, meaning that the root emerges first, and grows downwards, followed by the stem shoot, which rises up above the soil surface to produce the first ‘true’ leaves. Two fleshy ‘seed leaves’ (cotyledons), which formed the body of the acorn, remain below ground as a food source for the young plant.

Evelyn’s Sylva was a tour de force of all things relating to trees and forests in Britain. No other book on trees and forestry is ever likely to have a greater impact or to be so widely quoted. We recognise today the occasional factual errors, often due to lack of scientific knowledge, and modern readers may find onerous the frequent use of quotations from the ancients, which resonated perfectly with Evelyn’s intended aristocratic readership. But Sylva has stood the test of time. Evelyn’s passion and enthusiasm shines from every page. In one of his last diary entries, the eighty-four-year-old Evelyn wrote of his ‘too great affection and application to it [Sylva]’, having laboured over it for forty-four years.

John and Mary Evelyn produced eight children, only one of whom, a daughter, outlived their parents. John Evelyn died on 27 February 1706 at his house in Dover Street, London. Wotton House and the estate were inherited by his grandson John (1682–1763), later Sir John Evelyn, 1st Baronet. Mary died three years after John Evelyn and her Will captures the affection she held for her husband of fifty-eight years: ‘his care of my education was such as might become a father, a lover, a friend and husband for instruction, tenderness, affection and fidelity to the last moment of his life’. Mary lies next to her husband at the Evelyn Chapel at St John’s Church in Wotton.

CHAPTER II

OF THE EARTH

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‘. . . so astonishing and wonderful is the organism, parts, and functions of plants and trees . . .’ [J .E.]

Evelyn addressed the subject of the environment in the first chapter of his Sylva: ‘Dendrologia: Of the Earth, Soil, Seed, Air, and Water’. But in seventeenth-century Britain, the notion of the Earth being a living world arising from evolution, consisting of millions of species affected by ecological extinctions and geological upheavals, was a scientific mystery and religious anathema. Studies by the naturalist John Ray (1627–1705), particularly in relation to fossils, appeared to contradict biblical Creation, but his religious piety shrouded scientific clarity. His development of the concept of species nonetheless became the foundation of natural history studies, ultimately paving the way for the taxonomic classification work of Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) in the next century. The concept of evolution was not defined until the 1850s, when Charles Darwin (1809–1882) published On the Origin of Species and created a seismic shift in our understanding of nature. Fellow Victorian philosophers, such as John Ruskin (1819–1900), advanced thinking on the impact of humans on the natural world, giving rise to the environmental movement.

Today we understand that the world is made of many ecosystems, comprising abiotic (non-living) components – air, soil, water – and biotic (living) communities – animals, plants, fungi, microbes – that interact in complex systems. The Gaia theory, first proposed in the late 1960s by James Lovelock, sees the Earth itself as a living organism (Gaia is Greek for ‘Earth goddess’), a single, self-regulating system comprising a complex series of interacting organic and non-organic components.

Humans are part of this living Earth. We are not merely passengers, nor tenants, nor owners. We are