Edna, the Crab Apple of Howe Park Wood
Tattenhoe
Approximate location.
The local naturalists call her Edna. The Milton Keynes Natural History Society names this crab apple the finest tree in Howe Park Wood and says it is thought to be the oldest specimen in the county, a claim it makes without saying who did the thinking. Other figures go further and are harder to pin down. A Parks Trust factsheet calls it believed to be the second oldest crab apple in the country and well over 100 years old, and a Parks Trust post calls it one of the oldest crab apples in the UK. Nobody has published a measured age or a girth, so we cannot rank it. The Parks Trust also notes two old crab apples in the wood and does not say which one is Edna. What is certain is that she was alive in February 2025, when the society's plant group visited what their report calls the ancient broad trunk of the named tree. Some of the group saw it from the outside path. Others walked the muddy route in. Howe Park Wood itself is old, recorded in the 13th century and possibly earlier. Edna grows in its north-west corner. Our pin marks the middle of the wood, not the tree. Come in spring, when crab apples flower.
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Getting there
Howe Park Wood, north-west corner, Tattenhoe, Milton Keynes (between Chaffron Way and Tattenhoe Street)
You can recognise it by its broad, ancient trunk. It stands in the north-west corner of Howe Park Wood, off the woodland path and visible from the outside path; there may be a second old crab apple in the wood.
Several bus routes serve Westcroft District Centre, on the northern side of the wood.
In bloom
late April into May, when the crab apple is in blossom
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
