57. West Walks Field Maple
A veteran field maple of giant proportions is tucked away in a quiet corner of Dorchester.
Dorchester’s impressive tree-lined Town Walks trace the original Roman walls of this ancient county town. The trees are marked on maps from the eighteenth century, and some of those still growing might date from that time, but the most impressive is older; an enormous field maple that lurks inconspicuously by the old tennis courts off West Walks Road. For a field maple, it really is a giant.
Species details
Field maple
Acer campestre
Where to find it
West Walks Road, Dorchester DT1 1AW
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Field maple notes
Despite their rural, farmland name – another is hedge maple – field maples are a tree of woodlands, although they are frequent in old hedges, and have occasionally been used as boundary marker trees. They live long and attain sizes that can surprise, occasionally reaching the dimensions of an old oak. Field maples might be considered the senior maple in these islands, both sycamore and Norway maples, although prominent in many landscapes and often acting as native trees, are more recent arrivals.
