„There Is Hope for a Tree“: Pollarding in Hungary

„There Is Hope for a Tree“: Pollarding in Hungary
Peter Szab6 (Budapest)
and that e tender branch thereof will not ceaseo“
Job 14:7
“ o en so happens that beauty or ne encourages the farmer to pollard the oakwoodo Here experience has it that moisture always serves the wounds better than other places: intheplaceofonebranchthatiscut,inayeartherewillspringtwelveother0 0 0 The oaks must be thick, at least as big as a man’s thi , ifwe want to pollard them for rewood or some other household dutyo“
Jänos Nagyväthy, Hungarian Practical Cultivator (1 821)1
Introduction
A tree may be oftwo types, as far as its origin and shape are concemed: a maiden or a coppice stool with shootso Maiden trees grow om seed (thus they are also called seedlings when young) and are tall with a clearly disce ible trunk that divides into branches only at a considerable height. As opposed to this, coppice shoots grow from a stool (either above or underground), and never appear aloneo The stool itself is what remains in the ground when a ee is cut, and it produces new shoots every time the old ones are removed, or in other words when the shoots are coppicedo2 These two types of ees are used for di erent purposes: shoots would hardly make a good lamp post, and a twenty­ metre-tall maiden can only be tumed into rewood by wasting much energy, which, ironically enough, is exactly what happens nowadayso lt may appear that
1 Jänos Nagyväthy, Ma ar Practicus Termesztö (Hungarian Practical Cultivator) (Pest: Trat er Jänos Tamäs, 1821; reprint, Szeged: Allami Könyvte esztö Vällalat, 1884), 285- 286* [hencefo h, the asterisk (*) indicates that the translation is mine]o
2 This only holds ue for broad-leav eeso Conifers do not coppiceo The word „coppice“ comes om French „couper“ meaning „to cut.“
„For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again,
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se lings are a „natural“ way of reproduction, whereas stools are merely „artificial,“ but the matter is not that simple. There are, for ex ple, elm trees that do not use seeds but clone themselves with the help of their root system.3 A well-known example is hazel, which, when overshadowed by taller trees, does not flower, but sends up young shoots. Or moving away om trees: perennial flowers also keep their bulbs underground, from which they grow every year. Coppice stools and shoots are, however, essentially the results of human activity based on the simple fact that when a tree t, it does not die but grows again om the stool. This is a principle of the highest importance, practically forgotten now when it is widely believed that every tree has to be replaced by planting another one in its place. Foresters, naturally, are aware of coppicing, however, they consider it a primitive form of forestry, and also think that the stools „wear out“ a er a few cycles of coppicing, in other words they will not grow new shoots any more. This is untrue: the oldest – and still living – stool, with a diameter of six metres, is approximately one thousand years old.4 If we suppose a twenty-year coppice cycle, which is rather long, then this stool has produced new shoots some fi y times.
This is all of signi cance, because it belps in understanding that mode forestry is only one, and not necessarily the best, method to deal with ees. Woods today are rather monotonous: many even-aged, preferably maiden trees, o en of the same species,5 not to mention tree-plantations that foresters mis­ takenly call woods. Prior to the bi h ofmode forestry, that is approximately the eighteenth century, woods and single tr s used to display much more variety in their appearance and composition. Without the help of heavy machinery, it was very di cult to cut and transport trees, thus people aimed at producing optimum size trees for eve purpose.
Today rewood is cheap, at least in comparison with the trunks of maiden trees.6 Earlier, when energy did not come through wires and a switch but bad to be produced by every bousebold, rewood was the more important of the two types. Firewood, then, is far easier and more economical to make with the help ofstools than om maidens. I have s n it argued several times that stools lower
3 This is not call coppicing but suc ring. It produces individual e of the s e gene c make-up.
4 Oliver Rackh , Trees and Woodland in the Brilsi h Landscape (London: Phoenix, 1996), 15: Brad eld Woods, Su olk.
5 A few S aightforward words about the Vise di mountains (Co. Komärom-Esztergom and Co. Pest) by a botanist: „In the cutting areas ofturkey oak – sessile oak it is not the mixed woods ofthe above species that ow, but mostly sessile oak monocultures, while the shrub layer is also subj t to heavy ‚unnatural selection.‘ In practice is means that om time to time oups of foresters visit the ven territory and cut down every shrub and other than the sessile oak.“ Peter Csontos, “ aljnövenyzet vältozäsai cseres-tölgyes erdök regeneräci6s szukcesszi6jäban“ (Regeneration succession of sessile oak – turkey oak woods: Processes in the shrub layer), Synbiologia Hungarica, 2, no. 2 ( 1 996), 1 1 – 1 2 .•
6 Aladär Haläsz, A ma ar erdeszet 70 eve szamokban (Seventy years of Hungarian fores y in numbers) (Budapest: FM Erdörendezesi Szolgälat, 1994).
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„biodiversity“ and thus, the resistance of a wood to disease.7 However, I have yet to see a wood that perished because it was not su ciently biodiverse due to the amount of stools. Seeds are not necessarily a better solution either, because it is customary not to use local seed but rather that from a care lly cultivated „Überbaum“: as a rule, foresters aim towards homogeneity.
Pollarding
This essay concems a special form of coppicing, which has been almost completely forgotten by now. There is a case when coppice stools cannot be used to produce shoots, because the territory where the trees are located is accessible to grazing animals: youog shoots are the nest possible part in the diet of cows or goats. Stools are resistant, but they do not live forever. If the shoots are eaten in July, they will reappear next spring, however, a er three or four times the stool will give up and rot away. The solution, then, is to cut the tree not close to the ground, but at a height of about two or three metres, so that animals cannot reach the new growth. As far as the shoots are concemed – for the tree, ifyou like – the height at which shoots grow is of no significance. This is quite the contrary for the person who has to work them, since it is not easy to use a saw or an axe while balancing on top of a ladder. A er all, we are facing a method bom out of an uncomfortable need. lt combines the height of maidens with the firewood productioo of stools: all this is called po arding. lt also follows from the nature of the subject that most pollard trees are not found in woods but in wood-pastures and around Settlements.
The history of pollards has been most care lly studied in England, notably in the works of Oliver Rackham.8 These trees grab our attention mostly by their appearance. An ancient pollard, of which there are tens of thousands in England, usually has a fantastic, grotesque shape. Pollarding became unfashion­ able in England about two hundred years ago; surviving aocient pollards, uncut for a long time, have a huge bo ing (the pe anent trunk), two to three metres
7 Rezsö Solymos, ed., Termeszetközeli erdö- va azdasag, kö y etbarat fagazdasag (Nature- endly economy of woodland and game) (Budapest: MTA Erdeszeti Bizottsäg, 1998), 32.* „ls it necessary to di erentiale … between se lings and stools, or the woods be consider ually natural in both instances? Usually there is no di tiation _
In a gene c sense, however, a wood coppiced four of ve tim is certainly not na “
8 Oliver Rackham, Hayley Wood: I History and Ecology (Cambridge: Cambs & !sie of Ely Naturalists‘ Trust, 1975); idem, Trees and Wood/and in the British Landscape ( ndon: Dent, 1976); idem, Ancient Woodland: I History, Vegetation and Uses in England ( ndon: Edward old, 1 980); idem, The History ofthe Countryside (London: Dent, 1986); idem, The Last Forest: The Story ofHa ie/d Forest (London: Dent, 1 989); idem, Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape (London: Phoenix, 1 996) (The second and last en ies are not the same. The rst version of the book was, in theory, revised in 1990, but actually it was almost entirely rewritten, and thus be consider a separate piece. I work from the rst, 1 996 paperhack ition ofthis new text.) These few thousand pages are compulsory readings for woodland historians.
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tall and frequently six to eight metres around, the top of which is ll of humps and bumps due to the numerous times the branches were cut and the wounds properly overgrown. Nowadays the branches themselves are many and huge, and often touch the ground whereby they root and start new trees. This new growth is spontaneous, and when people do the same to ees that otherwise would not grow this way, it is called /ayering. In sum, if one has a little practice and pays due attention, an ancient pollard is rather di cult to miss. The word ancient is not used here by accident. Pollarding prolongs the life ofa tree on the one hand, and the fact that it is at a place where pollarding seems to pay back the e ort ensures its survival on the other. Its life is prolonged by pollarding because every time the shoots are cut, growth is slowed down. The tree reaches old age, when the energy coming from the Jeaves is no Ionger su icient to provide for the amount needed to grow a new ring over the whole surface of the trunk, much later.9 Pollards are not usually found in woods, unless the wood itself used to be a wood-pasture or a eld previously. Woodland trees rarely smvive long: when they are considered to be „mature“ (in other words when foresters think they do not grow fast enough and straight enough to be marketable, which i s around one hundred years nowadays), they are cut. Consequently, a high proportion of ancient trees are pollards. Pollarding, similarly to coppicing, is not entirely arti cial. The best-known examples to demonstrate this are the so-called stag-headed oaks. The topmost branches of these trees start to dry, which is usually taken as the rst si of ultimate decay. The oaks then, more o en than not, in fact die, because they are considered dangerous and are cut down. It was the above-mentioned Oliver Rackham who discovered that stag-headed trees are actually not dying. There are specimens which have been in that condition for more than y years and the lower part of their foliage is still in excellent health.10 (This also means that the human life­
span is a serious limiting factor in this research. These oaks will certainly Iook the same when the Iandscape historian investigating their history is reme bered only by a tombstone in a nearby cemetery.) Stag-headed trees thus „pollard themselves“: they get rid of a nurober of branches, so that the amount of wood they have to produce in the form of annual rings is reduced and the leaves may still provide enough energy, thus proionging the life ofthe tr .
Trees can be pollarded for a nurober of reasons. Firewood, mentioned above, is only one of these, though certainly the most important. In northe countries, where winter is severely cold, their main purpose is the production of leaf-fodder, but this does not hold true in the British Isles, where winters are much milder. In Hungary, as in most of Europe, many riverside willows are pollarded in order to grow withes for basket making. These tr s are treated in such a way not because animals would eat the shoots – although that is also
9 Rac am, Trees and Woodland, 1 1 – 1 2 . (Henceforth this reference is to the 1996 ition.) 10 id., 12.

possible – but because the head of the bolling has to be above water even when oods occur, so that the tree does not „drown“.
A later tradition is the pollarding of mulberries, especially the white mulberry (Mo s alba). The leaves of this tree were the most important fodder for silkworms om the seventeenth century onwards in Hungary. 1 1 It is in the primary interest of the farmer to have as many branches as possible with pollarding again presenting the best solution. Mulberries do not live particularly long, nonetheless, one can nd considerable specimens. Close to Veresegyhaza (Co. Pest), on the bank of Szödligeti stream there stands a pollard mulberry with a girth of300 cm, it is hollow inside but the foliage is in fine condition.
Finally, it is worth mentioning „beauty“, as understood by Nagyväthy in the paragraph quoted above. It is very o en aesthetic reasons that dominate pollarding, especially in the case of alleys. The only Hungarian deer-park that survives intact (Gyarmatpuszta, Co. Komärom) has a row of pollard horse­ chestnuts along its redbrick wall. One of the largest of these trees is 430 cm around, also hollow inside where a grown-up person can easily hide.
Pollard ees can be found all over the world. In Norway, several techniques are used to gain winter fodder with the trees sometimes shredded – an alte ative version of pollarding with a Ionger trunk and shoots growing all along – up to a height of fteen metres. In Sweden, wood pasture with pollards is called lövängar, in the eastem Alps Lärchenwiesen, in Creteph gana.12
The Hungarian Case
In England, the tradition of pollarding goes back at least to the Middle Ages. Hungary also has many pollards, yet the initial question I had to pose was how ancient the practice of pollarding actually was. This question was ultimately answered by the trees themselves. In the catalogue of ancient trees there are a nurober ofpollards,13 among which probably the most spectacular is tbe lime at Szabolcsbaka (Co. Szabolcs-Szatmär-Bereg), which is approximately 500 years old. Then, in the Seclar – that is entirely Hungarian – area of
11 See for ex ple: Endre Kunoss, A selymeszet kezi nyve va is m!psze utmutat s a szede ak ltetese, apo sa es selyemhe yok tenyesztese ii eben (A handbook of silk production, or popular guide to the planting and management of mulberries, and the bre ing ofsilkwo s) (Pest: n.p., 1853).
12 lngvild Austad, „Tree Pollarding in West Notway,“ in The Cultural Landscape. Past, Present and Future, s. Hilary H. Birks, H.J.B. Birks, Peter Emil Kaland, and Da nn Moe (Cambridge: C bridge University Press, 1988), 1 1 -29. Oliver Rackh , „Trees and Woodland in a Crowded Landscape – The Cultural Landscape ofthe B tish Isles,“ in ibid.,
1 72.
3 A Iist of several thousand ancient ees is found Denes Bartha, Ma ararszagfaoriasai
esfamatuzsalemei (Large and ancient trees in Hungary), Erdeszettörteneti közlemenyek, 15 (Budapest and Sopran: Orszägos Erdeszeti Egyesület, Erdeszettörteneti Szakosztäly, 1994). �?llarding, alas, is not r ord . Pic of ancient ees are accessible in Emö Vajda, Oregfak (Ancient tr s) (Budapest: Natura, 1969).
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Transylvania (today Romania), near Farkaslaka (Lupeni), I have found a wood­ pasture that has dozens of very ancient pollard be hes, a Iandscape of outstanding beauty, rarely paralleled in continental Europe.
Thus, it seemed reasonable to argue, based on living trees alone, that the tradition of pollarding can be traced back to the Middle Ages in the Carpathian Basin. Geographical names also preserved a memory of the pollards that once stood in the area: the Hungarian name for a pollard: cson fa, and the adjective derived om it: cson s, are to be found by the hundreds all over the country. To strengthen the argument, the same words appear in written sources om the fourteenth century onwards.
Hungarian research has thus neglected the subject almost completely. The only writer to dedicate a few pages to pollarding was the ethnographer Lajos Takacs. What historians and archaeologists know about pollards is taken from his books.14 Sadly enough, he misinterpreted the phenomenon and took it to be a form of grubhing out ofwoodland. He was right in the sense that some eighteenth-century sources call pollarding (cson las) when the branches of trees to be destroyed later by other methods are cut down. He did not point out, nonetheless, that if the branches of a living tree are cut, that, in se , will very rarely result in the destruction of the tree. Janos Nagyvathy, quoted at the beginning of this essay, describ the events with much more accuracy. In fact, all sources cited by Takacs speak about pollarding and not the grubhing out of woods,15 and they are a11 m the eighteenth century. As we have already seen, both living trees and written sources prove that the tradition is actually much older, dating at least to medieval times. Here I shall trace the remains of pollarding in several Hungarian source types, trying to signi directions of further research rather than attempting an analysis of all available data, which would be too soon at this point.
The history o f trees can be studied using three major source types. Firstly, there is written evidence, which in this essay means medieval (pre-1526) charter material. This is a rather arbi ary choice govemed by the assumption that early mode sources would be too numerous to deal with such a short essay. Secondly, pictorial sources are also relevant. One has to Iook for paintings, engravings, miniatures, etc. that depict pollard trees or the process of pollarding. Thirdly, archaeological data should be considered. Archaeology here is inter-
14 Lajos Takäcs, lr dalkodasunk emte i (Remnants of our clearance-bas economy) udapest: Akademiai Kiad6, 1980), 160-166; idem, E irtasfalu jöldmuvelese (Agriculture in a clear village) (Budapest: Akademiai Kiad6, 1 9 76), 46; idem, Hatarjelek, hatarjaras a feudalis kor vegen Ma arorszagon (Boundary marks, perambulations at the end of the feudal period in Hungary) (Budapest: Akademiai Kiad6, 1987), 46-47.
15 He admits at one point, although with reluctance, that “T without branches, thus, may not have been only the result of clearances, but may also have been created to produce the once so important winter fodder, and are general the result ofthe woodland management techniques available before the in oduction of mode forestry.“ Takäcs, Irtasgazdal­ dasunk emlekei, 165.*
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preted very broadly, including everything that was preserved in the Iandscape or in topon s. Stauding trees also belong here, since they are of interest not only as botanical units but also as the results of human activity. lt should already be noted at this early stage, however, that there is no Straightforward relation between place-names and surviving pollards. Next to Veresegyhäza (Co. Pest) there is a Csonkas-dülö, yet one does not find pollard trees there but rather south oftbis place, in Mogyorodi-csücskö.
Wri en Sources
Vocabulary
„{The boundary} starts at the big public road, thence it goes towards the meadow of the priest, then passing by under Sumug mountain it is at the meadow of Luthardus. Thence it goes to the spring of a river, which is commonly called Egrug, and here is a willow tree. A er this it goes through the big road to the land of Bocon, thence through Egrug s eam to the oak with a sign. Then it tu s back towards the east through a rubetum until a ditch, where there is a pollard oak (detroncata quercus). From this, descending through a valley it proceeds to the big road, and at the edge of this road there is a great ditch, whence it retums to the said place.“ [The perambulation of Ganna (Co. Veszprem), dated to 1 1 7 1 , but most probably written around 1234.16] A rubetum is a common wood-pasture with thoms.
Of all medieval written sources, perambulations are the most important for the historian of the Hungarian landscape. As shown by tbe above quotation, a perambulation entail walking along the boundary of a settlement in a literary sense, during which process the most conspicuous Iandscape features were recorded. Until the eighteenth century, these perambulations replaced maps, and similarly, they contain much infonnation about the landscape. Trees, for example, are recorded in their thousands – most o en by genus (oak, lime, etc.) but sometimes down to the species Ievel (beech, ho beam etc). How to interpret these data is a more complicated question,17 nonetheless we are not conce ed
16 A pannonhalmi Szent-Benedek-rend törtenete (History of the Pannonhalma order of St. Benedict), vol. 8, A ba be apatsag törtenete: öna 6sag kora 1023-1548 (The history of the abbey of Bakonybel: The age of independence 1023 – 1 548), by Pon äc Sörös (Budapest: Pannonhalmi Szent Benedek rend, 1903), 256-260.
1 7 Rackham, Histo of the Count side, 209-2 1 1 . Rackham found 7 8 7 ees e Anglo­ Saxon (pre-1 066) perambulations. Almost forty percent of these are thoms. Pilis ( . Komärom-Esztergom and Co. Pest,) I collect 17 m ieval perambulations; the most uentl y mentioned ees in these – however surprisingly – were walnut and pear. Peter Szab6, „Pilis: A Hungarian Forest in the Middle Ages“ (MA thesis, Cen at European University, Budapest, 1998), 8. Fl6ris R6mer argued that in the Codex Diplomaticus (a
mid-nineteenth-century multivolume work, copying thousands ofmedieval charters without iting) oak was mentioned most equently, but he did not provide any sta stical data to
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with statistics here, but with the individual trees. In other words, supposing that pollarding existed in the Middle Ages, pollard trees should appear in perambulations as weil. I do not claim that pollards were recorded as such in charter bounds, since sometimes the compiler does not even speci what type of tree he is writing about. However, a pollard, especially if the bolling is old and the shoots are young, Iooks so characteristically di erent om a maiden that this feature may have easily made it to the charter itself. Perambulations are usually rather schematic, but sometimes we read about young or old trees, trees with a double or a broken trunk, or even a certain branch leaning in one direction or another.18
Cson fa
Cson , as already mentioned, is mode Hungarian for a pollard. This term appears in very low numbers in the sources, always in the form cson fa a means tree) or cson + type of tree. The Dictionary of Hungarian Charters lists nine cases, I have found only one rther ex ple. 19 Out of these ten trees three are willows, three pears, two poplars, one oak, and one is not specified. Pear may seem surprising: why would a fruit tree be pollarded? I do not know the answer, but a s nding tree once again demonstrates that the practice of pollarding pears once existed. On Nagy-Villam mountain, right next to the royal castle of Visegrad, there is a biggish wild pear, pollarded and surrounded by stones. Because of the pollarding the canopy is so dense that the trunk is practically invisible even in winter. This tree is what a medieval perambulation would describe as „meta pervenit ad arborem Chuncakerthwel lapidibus circumdatam.“
prove this. Fl6ris R6mer, „Magyarorszäg ldirati es termenyi ällapotär61 a közepkorban“
(On the geographical and agricultural status of Hungary the Middle Ages), Ma ar 18 A demiai Ertesitö, 1860, 226-385.
For example: igmondkori Okleveltar (Ch ters of the age of Sigismund) (hencefo h igmOkl), eds. Elemer Mälyusz and Ivän Borsa, vol. 5 (Budapest: Akadenuai Kiad6, 1997), 82. 1 4 1 5 : „ad quandam arborem zyl curvatam“; Ma ar ok/evelszotar (A dictionary of Hungarian charters) (henceforth Oklsz), eds. Istvän Szamota and Gyula Zolnai (Buda­ pest: Ho yänszky Viktor, 1902-1906), 245. 1302: „venit ad arborem ! otol dictam“ (“ !“ means „oak“, “ otol“ is „young“); Codex Diplomaticus Patrius (henceforth HO), eds. Imre Nagy, Ivän Paur, Käroly Räth, and Dezsö Veghely (Budapest and Györ: n. p., 1865-1891), vol. 8, 4 1 1 . 1300: “ es arbores nucum, ubi quarta per ventum percussa fracta
esse dicitur.“
19 A na k rolyi grof Karolyi-csa/Qd ok/eveltara (The charters of e Kärolyi f ily of Nagykäroly) (henceforth Karolyi), ed. Kälmän Geresi (Budapest: n.p., 1882-1 1897), vol. 2, 135. 1431:“pervenitadquandamarboremchunkafadictam“Theremustbemoreexamples, however, a statistical analysis of the several thousand Hungarian m ieval perambulations
is yet to be conduct .
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Troncus, Take, Tö sök
If this were all there was, one could argue that pollards might have been a characteristic feature of the medieval landscape, but they rarely held the attention of the compilers of charters to such a degree that they recorded them. Tbere is, · however, another word that appears far more frequently in perambulations and seemingly denotes something comparable: troncus (and its spelling variant truncus)?0 It is only logical, by the way, to Iook for a Latin word, since perambulations were written in Latin, with the vemacular version of Iandscape features only occasionally included. Nevertheless, the case here is not merely that troncus would be Latin for cson fa. These two words are never connected. Furthermore, troncus had a different Hungarian equivalent. We shall see later on that in the Middle Ages two, by now forgotten words used to exist to denote pollards.
Troncus i s a formulaic part of many perambulations; if a ee is mentioned, basically three types are differentiated: dumus (shrub), arbor (tree), and troncus.21 Undoubtedly, the most general ofthese is arbor, but a shrub is not necessarily what one would imagine today. Vlhat sense does „oak-shrub,“ o en mentioned in documents, make, for example? In mode languages a ligneous plant is either a (one trunk) or a shrub (multiple trunk). At the moment, nonetheless, we have to nd the medieval meaning of troncus. The first question is whether or not it was simply the remaining dead part of a dead tree, which appeared too di cult to remove and thus was le standing to decay. Several things contradict t s. Firstly, the Middle Ages were an age when, for example, in the purchase of a plot the seller had it includ in the contract that the newly planted willows were not for sale22 (planting a willow is the easiest thing in the world: one cuts a esh shoot, sticks it in the ground, and that is it, providing there is enough water), or when the Forest-guards of Bakony (Co. Veszprem) would not come to an agreement with the people of the abbot of Pannonhalma until they promised not to touch any living tree in the said forest.23 In 1464, the villagers of Rackeve (Co. Pest) obtained the right to gather dead-wood on the island ofCsepel from no lesser personage than king Matthias.24 The Iist could go on endlessly, and every item indicates that medieval people did not waste wood,
20 In this essay, my database comprises approximately thirty- ve charters. Enlarging it is 21 simple, but time-consuming.
See for example igmOkl, vol. 5, 247. 1415: „prope unum be vulgariter thelbokor vocatum … ad duas arbores vulgariter thulfa et nyrfa“; z. 1343: „ad alium dumum
22 transeundo qui wlgariter egerbokur“;
A lozsmonostori nvent je zo nyvei (Protocols of the convent of Kolozsmonostor),
23 ., Zsi ond Jak6, vol. I (Budapest: Akad6niai K.iad6, 1990), 20I .
Codex Diplomaticus Arpadianus co tinuatus (henceforth AUO), ed. Gusztäv Wenzel (Pest, Budap t: n.p., 1 860-1874), vol. 2, 314-315 (1258).
24 Ivän Magdics, Diplomatarium Raczkeviense (Szekesfehervär: n.p. 1888), 21. 49

or at least that there were areas where rewood (or the access to it) was by far not abundant enough to Iet a whole trunk rot away standing instead of chopping and bu ing it. Troncus, on the other band, appears as a terminus technicus all over the kingdom. Secondly, in almost all cases, we also lea what type of tree the troncus was.25 With a dying, lea ess trunk this would hardly have been possible. �et me illustrate this with an example: Not far om the village of Szada (Co. Pest) there stands a dead trunk, the branches of which were cut down. Its circumference is 240 cm, which puts it to the h place in size among the wild-cherries (Cerasus avium) known to me in present-day Hungary.26 When I saw it in the su er of 1 999, parts of the bark were clearly visible. Thus the characteristic circles all around made identi cation easy. In a few years, however, the remaining bark will disapp r and then it will be rather di cult to identi what t e of tree it was. A botanist or a carpenter will have no problems, but it is hard to believe that among medieval perambulators there was always someone capable of such identification. If a troncus had been a dead tree, it would have been much more e icient to r ord it as such, instead of bothering with identi ing it – a er all the aim of recording Iandscape features in a perambulation was to make it easy to recognise them later. Thirdly, I know several cases where charters mention the dry trunks of dead trees, yet the word troncus never appears in connection with these.27 In 1 337, the boundary of a settlement in Co. Ung touches upon „some dry trees, which were still standing in their roots.“28 This description could have easily been substituted by troncus, had that meant anything like this. 29
25 For example Karolyi, vol. I, 304 (1368): “ verticem cuiusdam montis, cuui s latere pervenissent ad unum uncum arboris vulgo nyar vocate meta terrea circum sum“ („nyar“ is „poplar“); ZsigmOkl, vol. 3, 641 ( 1 4 1 2 ) : „penes quandam si1vam glandinosam iuxta uncum arboris ilicis“
26 By counting the rings of the largest branch cut, I estimate it was around one hundr years old when it died. The biggest living wild-cherry I know of stands in Faizäsi wood, near Nagykoväcsi (Co. Pest) with a girth of380 cm. In third place, there is a recently broken tree on Jelenc mountain, near Hont (Co. N6 äd) with a girth of 330 . For the rest, see Bartha, Ma arorszagfa6riasai, 173.
27 For example in Uzsa (Co. Zala): Za/a varme e törtenete. Okleveltar (A history of Co. Zala. Charters), s. lmre Nagy, Dezsö Veghely, and Gyula Nagy (Budapest: Franklin,
1886-1890), vol. I, 473-475.
28 A na miha/yi es sztarai gr6fSztaray csaldd ok/eve/tara (Charters of the Sztäray family of
Na ihälyandSztära),ed.GyulaNagy(Budapest:n.p., 1887-1889),vol. I,126*(1337):
„venit ad quasdam arbores exsiccatas, t en in radice stantes.“
29 This is sometimes emphasiz : ZsigmOkl, vol. 3, 217-218 (141 1): „sub quodam onco vivo
In sum, troncus denoted a living tree.
Thus, as a restriction of the meaning ofarbor, it must have had something to do with shape or management. In the charters, unfo unately, there is no explanation of what a troncus might have looked like or how it was created. Furthermore, no agricultural treatises survive from the Middle Ages in Hungary, while different ways of cutting trees
ma o .“
50
certainly did not interest those few who knew how to write. The only way to find out more is through the medieval Hungarian equivalent of the word. Glossaries and dictionaries from the fourt nth-sixt nth centuries anslate troncus as either or törzsök.30 I also managed to nd both words as ve a­ cular forms in cha ers, the former once, the latter twice.31 Tö sök has by now almost disappeared om the Hungarian language. The only living, though outdated usage is tö sö s nemes, which means a nobleman om an ancient family. Ta , on the other band, is very much alive today, and has three basic meanings:
1 ) what remains of a tree above ground when it is cut, and the same when taken out and used for example for chopping wood;
2) vine-stock; 32
3) capital, as described by Kar! Marx.
We are in a lucky position, because the 1533 Lexicon of Murmellius also
de nes to : „Die Ienge ader stam des boms von der wurtzel bis an die este“, that is „The length or trunk ofthe tree from the roots until the branches.“33 This is a perfect definition: if a charter speaks about a toke, then the perambulators saw a standing tree with a big trunk but small or no branches, which is exactly what a pollard tree Iooks like when in use.34 This, by the way, also explains why cson fa and troncus are never consider equivalent to each other. Namely, these are two different approaches towards the same subject: cson fa (English
30 Regi ma ar glosszarium (Old Hungarian Glossary), eds. Jolän Berrär and Sändor Karoly (Budapest: Akadenuai Kiad6, 1 984). „Törzsök“ appears in the form “ultra silvam Tursoc“ in the Gesta Hungaromm Hungarian chronicle writer commonly known as Anonymus (c.
1200) [Scriptores Rerom Hungaricarum, ed. Imre Szentpetery, vol. I (Budapest: MTA,
1937), 76, 80].
31 Karolyi, vol. I , 272. 1366: „post odum venissent ad unu tronc in latere unius silve ad usum ulmi (!) vulgariter zyltursuk“ („zyl“ means „elm“) I have not seen the original, but “us “ makes absolutely no sense here, thus we certainly read a mistake in the tran­ scription and/or edition. The meaning ofthe sentense, nonethel s, is clear without “ .“
Documenta Res Hungaricas Tempore Regum Andegavensium lustrantia, ed. Gyula Krist6, vol. I , 1 8 3 ( 1 302): “ quodam loco ubi est quidam truncus Byktuke vocatus.“ („byk“ is „beech“). HO, vol. 7, 233 (1293): „iungit quendam truncum qui Egurthuke vocatur“ („egur“ means „alder“).
32 Ma ar ertelmezo zisz6tar (A dictiona of the Hungarian language) (Budapest: Akad ai ad6, 1982). It should be noted that the rst meaning is annotat as „folkish.“ 33 Regi ma ar glosszarium, 710. Murmellius was a German humanist, whose La n-German
dictionary was publish with Hungarian glosses in 1533, in Cracow.
We should not forget that every word of a perambulation was anslat om the v acular into Latin. There was no arti cial terminology, esp ially in the be g , for the actual Iandscape to be describ . Latin, or the Latin of those who had this task, was very o en reluctant to perform what was expected. Early perambulations, such as the 1055 charter om Tihany (historically Co. Zala, today Co. Veszprem), demonstrate the kind of di culties scribes had to face. As time pass , “vulgo dicitur“ appears less and less uently, and later perambulations are much more formulaic. Troncus, thus, is by no means a Latin word whose ve acular meaning has to be found, but rather a anslation which may reveal or hide a meaning l ori nal.
51
pollard) refers to the speci c management form, whereas toke (English bolling) to the plant itself. Perambulations, primarily intended as depictions of whatever there was to notice in the landscape, tended to record the appearance not the management. 35
The only connection between the words troncus and cson is the verb­ form. According to the 1 595 dictionary of Verancsics, „truncare: chonketanni“, cson t is the verb derived from the adjective csonka, and -ni the su x that forms the in nitive.36 At the beginning ofthis chapter I quoted a perambulation, where a certain „pollard oak“ was mentioned. In the Latin original this was „detruncata quercus“. Somewhat more is revealed in a 1364 perambulation from Co. Zala, where the boundary is in „an oak pollarded from above“ („in arbore ilicis desuper truncata“).37 All in all, the activity was called cson tas or
cson las (English pollarding), whereas the result was a töke or tö sök. When translating the latter two, the scribes started out from the Hungarian verb, and used its Latin nominal form. This di culty was not faced by Hungarian clerics alone: in England, for example, the Latin name of pollards was „robur,“ which in mode botanical language refers to the pedunculate oak (Quercus robur).38
The second meaning of toke, vine-stock, is also worthy of attention. This is also at least medieval in origin, although I do not know whether this was the rst term or that connected to bollings. The obvious connection between the two is that a grapevine works very similarly to coppice stools or pollards. Every year it is cut back – lower or higher depending on the method – and the grapes themselves appear on the young shoots. We do not plant grapevines eve spring, and we do not have to plant trees either. In just the same way that stools and bollings produce young shoots for rewood, vine-stocks grow branches for us to have wine next year. The third meaning of toke, capital, is undoubt ly a semantic continuation of this image. Capital in a bank produces interest in the same way as vine-stocks produce grapes. Tuming back to trees, with coppice stools or pollards it is not the fruit, but the shoots themselves that are valuable. According to Murmellius: „Ramus, quod de ipso trunco arboris: to aga“ („A branch om that truncus: a shoot“). This is another proof that troncus does not refer to a dead stump but to a living tree.
Toke and tö sök: their Latin translation was the same, but the Hungarian . originals may have di ered. One solution may be that tö meant a stool, while törzsök was a bolling, but, unfortunately there is no evidence to support this
35 It is also possible that cson has only recently acquir i present meaning. m ieval sources it may simply mean a broken or otherwise damag ee, arborfracta.
36 Regi ma ar glosszarium, 1 5 1 . Verancsics was Dalmatian by origin, and published a ve­ language dictionary very much in the form of mode dictionaries: words in alphabetical order with short anslations.
37 A pannonhalmi Szent-Benedek-rend törtenete (History of the Pannonhalma order of St. Ben ict), vol. 7, A zalavari apatsag törtenete (A history of the abbey of Zalavär), by Tamäs Füssy (Budapest: Pannonhalmi Szent Benedek rend, 1908), 530-5 3 1 .
38 Rackham, Ancient Wood/and, 182.
52
otherwise appealing idea. It is to be noted that although the two words sound similar, it is most probably by accident. The stem of töke is tö (meaning stem itsel , which is ofFinno-Ugric origin. In the case oftö sök, however, linguists do not even know ifit is a derivate ofthe mode word tö s ( unk) or the other way round. In either case, the origin is unknown. In theo , then, we face two absolutely separate words.39 The main problem, nonetheless, is that the sources almost always write troncus, therefore there is not enough material to di erentiate between the Hungarian originals. This difference had either disappeared by the Middle Ages, or never made it to the Latin of the period. Fieldwork in places with the names tö sö s or tö (both adjectives form the nouns) may cast light on the problem, but I fear by themselves will not su ce. From another point of view, I cannot teil whether a particular troncus in a perambulation referred to a stool or to a pollard. Examples suggest that both were possible. In Felsöhalasz (Co. Zemplen) a troncus was mentioned in the middle of a coppice wood, and here this could only refer to a stool unless the territory bad been a wood-pasture before.40 Most tronci, nonetheless, appear as individual trees (such as the one in the G perambulation), which makes it most probable that they were pollards. If we accept that troncus was the translation of both töke and tö sök because there was no di erence in the meaning of the two words, which is the best we can do at present, then we can assume that the medieval Hungarian peasant was not much interested in the height at which he cut trees. He rather concentrated on the similarities, so that tö or tö sök both meant a tree whose branches were cut off in order to maintain a steady supply of rewood.
Pollard trees pictures
Pietorlai sources are usually rather disappointing for the woodland historian. Pollard trees present one ofthe few exceptions, most probabl y because their appearance is so characteristic. The most famous picture with pollards – although certainly not because of them – is the one from the Ve Rich Book of Hours of Duke Berry (fi eenth century) with six follard willows on the bank of a river in ont of a magni cent white castle.4 The best known Hungarian
.examples – again not because of the trees – are the early mode engravings of Wilhelm Dilich depicting towns and castles. Pollard willows are visible for example on Szentendrei island in sight ofVäc (Co. Pest) om 1 600. Little does it matter whether Dilich actually saw these trees or not, what is important is that the whole scene was „realistic“. The most magni cent pollard ever depicted by Dilich is the one standing in the foreground ofthe view ofFehervar (Co. Fejer).
39 A ma ar nyelv törteneti-etimo/6giai szot ra (An historical-etymological dictionary of the Hungarian Language), vol. 3 (Budapest: Akademiai Kiad6, 1976).
igmOkl, vol. 3, 217-218.
41 J Lon on and Raymond Cazelles, The Tr Riches Heures ofJean, ofBerry
(New York: Braziller, 1989).
53
To the best of my knowledge, the earliest depiction of a pollard is to be found, rather surprisingly, on a Hungarian wall painting. This esco was made around the mid-fourteenth century in Vit lva (today Vitkovce, Slova a) and represents scenes om the legend of St. Ladislaus.42 (fig. I ) The trees in ques­ tion are very unusual. Wall paintings – together with codex illuminations – in most cases depict the tree, the par exce ence plant with no individual features. Species occasionally might be guessed at, but „it is curious how few artists ever
portray a recognisable oak or ash tree.‘ 3 In sharp contrast to all this, the Vitfalva wall-paintings contain three trees that were cut at around two metres, as may be judged in comparison to the people, and some young shoots have already appeared on top of the bollings. The trees themselves not ve elaborate, partly because of the simplicity of the style. However, because of the clea ess of expression, it may not entirely unjusti able to assert that the trees were indeed intended to represent pollards.
Far less ambiguous is the 1 5 7 9 calendar from Nagyszombat (today Tmava, Slovakia), where February is represented by two activities: sowing and pollarding. ( g. 2) The type of ee, once again, is unrecognisable, but the scene itself is rich in authentic detail. The man is holding a typical medieval axe; the tree stands where pollards ve o en appear, in the middle of a eld. These territories, when cultivated in a two or three- eld system, were from time to time available to grazing animals, thus rewood could only be obtain through pollarding.
Archaeology
Topony
There are hundreds of place names all over the Carpathian Basin that preserve the memory of pollarding. These include cson s, tö sö s, or tus s. Naturally, not each toponym is equally ancient, nor do they all refer to similar landscapes. The minimum age of the place name has to be established in each case, and eldwork is needed to discover extant pollards, if any, identi ing their role in the given environment. This is a rather exhausting occupation and, more o en than not, yields no results, since in tbe vast majority of the cases nothing but the place name remains to remind the researcher of what trees once grew there. Here I shall present one example of the methodology put into practice.
42 Gyula Läszl6, A Szent Lasz/6-legenda közepko falikepei (Wall-paintings ofthe m ieval St Ladistaus legend) (Budapest: Täjak, korok, m zeumok egyesület, 1993), 121-126. The picture reproduced h is a tint-drawing based on copies by J6zsef Hanula. (The original
43 wall-paintings are in very poor condition.) Rackham, Ancient Woodland, 15.
I should like t o D6ra Sallay for drawing m y attention t o this picture. 54

Pusztaszentist n
Pusztaszentistvän lies thirty kilometres east of Budapest, next to a !arger village called Mende, both located along the Tapi6 stream. It is not an independent settlement, since administratively it belongs to the above­ mentioned Mende. The neighbourhood is eb in medieval – and earlier – archaeological sites. Mende itself is most probably late medieval (fourteenth­ fi eenth centuries), but to the west there us to exist the village ofBille, and to the east those of Oszlar, Sap, and Süly, all established in the Arpad period (eleventh-thirteenth centuries).45 Szentistvän is somewhat more problematic. The archaeological finds suggest an Arpad period settlement that was deserted in the fourteenth century. Even an earthwork castle was located on a nearby hill, which, so the archaeologists argue, disappeared together with the settlement. The problem, then, is the total Iack ofwritten evidence. This, in itself, would not be entirely unusual in this part of the country, however, it is at least suspicious that all bigger and smaller settlements in the immediate surroundings are recorded, except for Szentistvän.46 The name (St. Stephen in English), as the only non-material source, tells us that the terminus post quem for the foundation of the settlement is 1083, the date for the canonisation of King Stephen.47 Then, finally, the name appears in Turkish sources of the sixteenth century. In 1 559, it is reported as deserted and used by the villagers of Csaba as meadow land.48 Szentistvän must have been its medieval name, to which was add tbe word
puszta, the common late medieval and early mode denominator for deserted villages. All in all, we can argue that Szentistvän was an early medieval settlement, inbabited until the thirteenth century. By 1600, a er the Ottoman conquest in the middle of the sixteenth century, all villages in the neighbourhood were deserted. Süly was resettled in 1653, and its new in­ habitants rented the Iands of Mende, Szentistvän, and Bille.49 People did not retum to Mende until as late as 1727. Szentistvän remairred deserted until
45 Zsuzsa Mikl6s, “ ad-kori ldvär Mende-Leänyväron“ ( ad period work castle in Mende-Leänyvär), Archaeologiai Ert ito, 108 (1981), 233-250.
46 Zsuzsa Mikl6s did not nd anything, and neither did Istvän Tringli, who elaborat the fourteenth- fteenth-century history of the whole of Co. Pest, although the other deserted settle ents close to Szentistvän are o en entioned. Istvän Tringli, „Pest egye törtenete. 1301-1526″(AhistoryofCo. Pest. 1301-1526)(Ph.D.diss.,ELTE,Budapest, 1999).
47 It has recently been suggested that St. Stephen in the dedication of churches may refer to the rst-century proto artyr Stephen weil, although this would probably not be ue in the case of settl ent names. Andräs Mezö, A templomcim a ma ar he/ysegnevekben (The d ication of churches in Hungarian place names) (Budapest: METEM, 1996), 92-93.
48 Gyula Käldy-Nagy, A bu i szan sak 1546-1590.evi összeirasai (The 1546-1590 con­ scriptions of the sandsak of Buda) (Budapest: Pest Megyei Leveltär, 1985), 168, 564. Csaba is today Räkoscsaba, part of Budapest.
49 Gyula Kocsis, „A Täpi6 mente fa1vainak nepe, gazdälkodäsa, települ e a I- II. szäzadban“ (The people, economy, and settlement of the villages around the Täpi6 s in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries), Ethnographia, 90 (1979), 15-41.
55
around 1800. This can be deduced from the Ordinance Survey maps, where the first series (1782-84) show the territory without houses, while in the second series (1860-61), Pusztaszentistvän is already visible,50 though it is to be not that it has changed considerably during its two-hundred-years‘ mode histo . Presently it is restrict in location to the northe side of Täpi6 stre , but earlier maps testifY1 that it used to lie on the southem banks as weil. People retu ed, but not independence. Szentistvän was never again a separate village.52
North-west of the settlement, there is a place with the name Cson s, obviously a reference to pollards. Here, on a long terrace along a stream that flows into Tapi6, there stand several pollard ash-trees (Hungarian ash, Fraxinus an stifolia ssp. pannonica). The girth of the largest is 360 cm, and there are several of around 280 cm in circumference, altogether at least seven ees.53 They are conspicuously evenly spaced, therefore it is possible that they were planted. However, this being their natural enviro ent, they may weil be remains ofthe original vegetation. More important than this is their age, but that question is rather di icult to answer. There is no simple X cm in girth = X years fo ula, not even within the same species. A tree standing in a favourable position may grow twice as fast as another in less a favourable place, not to mention that favourable and non-favourable are not necessarily meaning l categories here.54 These ashes are free-standing, close to water, thus they should be growing quicker than others. Pollarding, on the other band, slows down the speed of growth, since a er every pollarding it takes several years for the tree to „recover“ and reach its original growth rate. I would estimate that the oldest trees are a und 120-130 years old. The Ordinance Survey maps seem to support this estimate. The rst one shows a treeless territory near the stream, the second has some trees but certainly not a whole row, whereas the third one again depicts a treeless landscape. This signi es that the ashes began to grow some
time a er the third Survey. The trouble is, however, that no one has ever ventured to test how reliable the Ordinance Survey maps are in depicting ancient tr s.55 Perhaps also, the ashes, especially when young, may not have been noted on the maps. It is worthwhile mentioning that the trees, although quite sizeable
50 Second Ordinance Surv Map XXXIV – 5 I .
51 irdOrdinanceSurveyMap5063/1.
52 Pest-Pilis-Soft-Kiskun vanne e aftafanos ismertetöje cimtara (The general description
of Co. Pest-Pilis-So1t-Kiskun), vol. 5, . Geza Szab6 (Budapest: Vännegyei Tisztviselök
Orszägos Egyesülete, 1931), 19-20.
53 I should like to thank Peter Bany6 for helping me with the measurements, which, since the
ash were surround by thoms, was not at all an easy task.
54 A er all, why should fast growth be favourab1e for a ee? This is a typical anthropo­ mo hic prejudice based on the notion that if a child develops quickly, we take it is a posit­ ive si that he or she may live long. On the contrary, if a tree ows quickly, it is most li ely to die early. Bristlecone pines (Pinus aristata), the oldest stan ing ees, live in the worst possible conditions in the westem USA, and produce microscopic annual rings.
55 Hungary has a su cient number of tre which are at least three h years old, on which this test could be carried out.
56
nowadays, do not appear on the mode tourist maps, either. Anything more certain about their age could only be established by a ring-count.
Most of the ashes are pollarded, but not in the usual way. Seen from the direction of the stream (from ahead) and especially from the sides, signs of pollarding are clearly visible. From the back, though ( om the direction of what was once the village ofOsz ir, then Oszlärpuszta), not much meets the eye. This may certainly be an accident if this bad not been the case with at least four ofthe ashes. The method ofpollarding see to be as follows: one branch was le to grow on the side of Oszlärpuszta, but the branches facing the stream were cut in the usual manner. The result is a series of rather strange half maidens – half pollards.
I have described above the many possible reasons to pollard a tree. Here, it was obviously the appearance of the trees that mattered the aim being to ab the attention of whoever saw the ashes. English parallels help with finding an explanation for this. All over the British Isles, many pollards signi the
boundaries of different settlements and estates. An eighteenth century division map demonstrates that in the case of Szentistvän we witness something similar.56 ( g. 3)
Although it is di cult to say for cenain, it seems that the pollard ashes stand on the former boundary of Pusztaszentistvän and Pusztaoszlär. Whether this follows the medieval boundary we cannot say, as no medieval per bulation of the area survives. Experience shows, nonetheless, that the boundaries of Settlements, precisely because people are constantly occupied with them, are some of the most stable elements in any landscape. The ashes in Cso as most probably preserve a boundary that was set up 800-900 years ago, and although Szentistvän was deserted for half a llennium, these trees present a living link with the people that once inhabited the place.
Conclusion
In this essay I tried to demoastrate that in Hungary the adition of pollarding goes back at least to the Middle Ages. The set of problems was interpreted from three independent perspectives: written sources, pictorial evidence, and archaeological material including living tr s. Signs of pollarding were discovered in all of these, so that one may safely argue that pollard trees were indeed parts of the medieval and post-medieval landscape. Research can, thus, proceed in the direction of eld-work, an example of which was also presented above. I hope that one day all ancient pollards will be understood and appreciated for what they are: remnants of the once harmonious relationship between people and nature.
56 Ma ar Orszagos Leveltar (Hunga an National chives), S 87/30. 57

58
8oit elo haua.
—

Fig. 2: The calendar ofNa szombat, 1579. „Böjt elö hava“ is February.

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Fig. 3: An eighteenth-century estate division map of sztaszentistvän. The pollard ashes stand on the northem edge (note the meanders ofriver Täpi6, now vanished).
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MEDIUM AEVUM QUOTIDIANUM
44
MS 2001
HE USGEGEBEN VON GE JA TZ
GEDRUCKT MIT UNTERSTÜTZUNG DERKULTURABTEILUNG DES AMTES DER NIEDERÖSTERREICHISC HEN LANDESREGIERUNG
Titelgraphik: Stephan J. Tramer
Herausgeber: Medium Aevum Quotidianum. Gesellscha zur Erfor­ schung der materiellen Kultur des Mittelalters, Kö ermarkt 13, A-3500 Krems, Österreich. Für den Inhalt verantwortlich zeichnen die Autoren, ohne deren aus ückliche Zustimmung jeglicher Nachdruck, auch in Auszügen, nicht gestattet ist. – Druck: KOPITU Ges. m. b. H., Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10, A-1050 Wien.
niederästerreich kultur
Inhalt
From the Latrine, through the Woods, and into the Lake:
Ecologica/Sampi from MedievalEast-CentralEurope
An Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………… 5 ÜJie Sillasoo, Ecology and Food Consumption ofLate M ieval Tartu,
Estonia (14th-15th Centuries) ……………………………………………………………. 6
Peter Szab6, “There Is Hope for a Tree“: Pollarding in Hungary ………………… 41
Andrea Kiss, Hydrology and Environment in the Southe Basin
ofLake Fertö eusiedler Lake in the Late Middle Ages …………………… 61
Andräs Grynaeus and Tamäs Grynaeus, The Geobotany of Medieval Hungary:
a Preliminary Report ……………………………………………………………………. 78 Buchbesprechungen ………………………………………………………………………………. 94

From the Latrine, through the Woods, and into the Lake:
Ecological Sampiesfrom Medieval East-Central Europe
An Introduction
Recycling is nowadays a decisive issue in ecology. This holds true for historical ecology inEast-CentralEurope as weil, albeit in a very different sense. Whereas reusing old material is doubtlessly valuable in environmental protection, the same is rather questionable, if the old material comprises historical sources. The reason to put tagether and present the following four essays was to help, as far as the authors could, recycling be back where it truly belongs.
Historical ecology is a well-established discipline in Weste Europe. East-Central Europe, much progress has been made recently, and now many scholarly publications appear on the subject. In other words, the methodolo is understood and applied. However, it is only in exceptional cases, such as the climatology research in B o, Czech Republic, or the excavations of the medieval royal garden at Visegrad, Hungary that the methods are applied on sources, be them written or archaeological that are eshly gather for the topic. Historical ecology is an essentially quantitative field of research. Before the writing process com­ mences, a !arge amount of data must be collected. Furthennore, the type of data we use is atypical for fonner research. A chance mention of heavy rains in a charter, or pieces of seeds in a Iatrine did not use to be considered signi cant. This may weil be true if they stand alone; but a occurrences of heavy rains for a hundred years, or a/1 plant remains in a Iatrine carry otherwise unreachable information. The task, then, is twofold: we have to collect as much data as we can, and we have to Iook
for the type of data that has not yet been searched for.
Many leamed a icles on the historical ecology ofEast-Central Europe fail to per rm this task. They take what was published before and examine it from a different angle, which, although an inevitable step, does not su ce alone.
Tbe connection between the otherwise rather diverse essays presented here is that they all try to analyse sources hitherto unexplored. We hope that we live up to the requirement of introducing essentially new data to the common knowledge. Whether our analyses may also stand the test of time is for the reader to decide.
Feter Szabo (Budapest)
5