Oak Trees
Oak Trees
An interesting story about the New Forest – home of many of England’s Oak trees that explains clearly the saying ‘from little acorns, oak trees grow’. Each autumn as the oaks drop their acorns in the New Forest a huge clear up operation has to take place.
Pigs are brought into the forest to eat the majority of the acorns as they can be potentially poisonous to the wild ponies that roam the forest area. It is usual for around 100 – 200 pigs to be left to snuffle through the forest in order for the clear up operation to take place.
This year however, the oak trees have dropped record number of acorns and the usual number of pigs would not be able to clear the excess. It is amazing that a phenomenal number of pigs, around 400, are munching their way through the acorn laden forest. This would obviously not happen in the managed forests that produce the timber for solid oak flooring – pigs are banned.
