A TREE overlooking the River Wye is in the running to be named the best tree in Wales.

The pollarded lime with a large crown producing many flowers for bees stands on a steep slope in ancient woodland on the Welsh side of the river near Redbrook.

The Gwent Wildlife Trust’s Prisk Wood contains a mass of mosses, liverworts and ferns which carpet boulders, tree stumps and fallen tree trunks.

Today the reserve consists of derelict coppice with some large trees, but in the past, the quartz conglomerate in the upper reaches of the wood was quarried for pudding stone to make millstones for cider making and grinding corn.

Pollarded lime trees like the one that has been shortlisted for the The Woodland Trust’s Tree of the Year award appear to have been used historically as boundary markers.

It is also said limes were favoured in the Wye Valley as there was a rope making factory next to the river.

Seven trees are on the shortlist for this year’s Wales Tree of the Year, including two street trees in Cardiff, a rare Ginkgo tree planted by Russo-Japanese war hero Admiral Togo Heihachiro in Pembroke Dock, and a black poplar in Newtown which has the distinction of having moved from one side of the River Severn to the other.

The winning tree will be eligible for a Tree Care award of £1,000, which can be used to arrange a health check from an arboriculturalist, provide interpretation or educational materials or simply just hold a community celebratory event in honour of the tree.

For more information and to cast your vote for Tree of the Year, go to www.woodlandtrust.org.uk