The Treebeard Oak, Sher Brook Valley

Brocton Coppice has two oaks named after trees that walk in films. One is the Groot Tree. This is the other, said to look like Treebeard from The Lord of the Rings, and it hides further from the main tracks. When Staffordshire Live wrote it up in February 2022, the chairman of a local ramblers' group called it off the beaten track. The paper's directions are the best map there is. From the Punchbowl car park just outside Milford, walk down to the stepping stones over the Sher Brook and turn right up the next main path. After about 100 yards, turn right onto a narrow path, bear right where it splits, and climb a steep slope veering slightly left. The oak is on your right, about five minutes from the stones. Our pin sits on the stepping stones, not the tree, because nobody has published a position for the trunk itself. The article's pictures show its hollow belly. Nobody has dated it. The same article says trees in Brocton Coppice go back two or three centuries, some to the time of Henry VIII, but that is a statement about the wood, not this trunk. Even the species is unconfirmed beyond oak, so if you can tell sessile from pedunculate, tell us which. The last dated account we have is that 2022 article. Brocton Coppice is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, free and open, so keep to the paths on the way in.