Thursday, February 19, 2009

A Bog Oak - Wicken Fen

This wonderful piece of wood, is about 4200 years old. It is slowly disintegrating since coming up out of the preserving peat fen in 1991 (from Adventurer's Fen) in the open air.
I saw a bog oak standing in a field near here about thirty years ago, near where I grew up, and painted a picture of a heron and the bog oak a year or two after that in school. That 'oak' had been stuck upright in the ground (no longer there but it stood for some years near Upware) by a farmer on his land.
Apparently bog oak is as 'hard as iron', so a man who once carved some told me. I can't think of any sculpture from bog oak but I have seen a beautiful wooden bowl made from it.
This 'oak' outside the visitor centre of Wicken Fen is from a forest that was once here which contained a variety of tree species, some of which were oak, ie 'bog oaks' are not necessarily the remains of ancient oak trees.
Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange
blog comments powered by Disqus