Trees and Woodlands (British Wildlife Collection) 9781472987013, 9781472986993, 1472987012

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Trees and Woodlands

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12

Trees and Woodlands George Peterken

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Dedicated to the memory of the freedom we were given at Monks Wood Experimental Station to develop our specialisms as we thought best

BLOOMSBURY WILDLIFE Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY WILDLIFE and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in the United Kingdom 2023 This electronic edition published in 2023 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Copyright © George Peterken, 2023 George Peterken asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work For legal purposes the Illustration credits on page 408 constitute an extension of this copyright page All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any thirdparty websites referred to in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: HB: 978-1-4729-8701-3; ePDF: 978-1-4729-8699-3; ePub: 978-1-4729-8700-6

Design by Susan McIntyre Jacket artwork by Carry Akroyd

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters half title: Small-leaved Lime flowers and foliage. frontispiece: Canopy gaps in mixed deciduous woodland.

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Contents

Preface

7

1 A gate into the woods

15

2 The forms of trees and shrubs

43

3 Forest dominants

69

4 Pioneers, small trees, shrubs and climbers

101

5 Natural woodland

133

6 History: how people have used woodland

171

7 Woodland types and their distribution

213

8 Trees and woodland as habitats

257

9 Utility and wellbeing

293

10 Cultural appreciation of trees and woodland

325

11 Looking forward 365 References 395 Species names

405

Illustration credits

408

Acknowledgements 409 Index 410

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Preface

T

rees create distinctive habitats for a vast array of plants, animals and fungi, but they are also wild species themselves, combining in multifarious ways to create woodlands as contrasting as the pine, birch and Juniper woods of the Scottish Highlands, the swampy Alder woods of Broadland margins and the mixed woods of Beech, Ash, lime and Wych Elm of southern Carboniferous Limestone, each respectively the arboreal equivalents of heathland, fenland and calcareous grassland. They provide habitats for the herbs, ferns, shrubs, mosses and liverworts that cover the ground, the epiphytes on the trees, the fungi that recycle nutrients and the whole panoply of fauna and microorganisms that make up the ecosystem. By concentrating in this book on indigenous trees – the defining feature of native woodlands – I aim to complement Keith Kirby’s Woodland Flowers (2020), and leave room in the British Wildlife Collection for other volumes on particular aspects of woodlands and plantations. Inevitably I will trespass on the world of forestry, but the emphasis is on what ecologists have for 90 years called semi-natural woodlands. If there is an underlying theme it is an attempt to weigh up the contributions of people and nature to the woods we encounter in Britain today. Ecologists and many countryside lovers seem predisposed to emphasise the natural elements, whereas foresters and those with a sense of history usually emphasise the influences of people, but the diversity we find in woodlands is the product of both natural processes and the way people think and act. As a youth I was not especially fascinated by woodlands, but the New Forest in particular planted itself firmly in my view of the world as a place that meant home, wild countryside, freedom and happiness. All my family holidays were spent in Ringwood on the edge of the Forest. From there we trekked to picnics at Linford and Three Tree Hill and I rode my uncle’s pony over the heaths to Ridley Wood and beyond. Then, while studying at Haberdashers’ School,

opposite page:

A magnificent high forest stand of Beech, Burnham Beeches, Buckinghamshire.

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Trees and Woodlands I enjoyed many natural history camps at Beaulieu Road, where, under the inspirational leadership of Barry Goater, we learned the basics of ecology and fieldwork (described by Roger Deakin in Wildwood). But the moment when I realised these affinities might become a lifetime’s enthusiasm came in the library of King’s College London, where I noticed a paper in the latest Journal of Ecolog y on Cranesmoor, a vast mire near Picket Post (in the New Forest), which I knew as a child. How wonderful it would be if I, too, could spend three years doing ecological research in the New Forest. To my great good fortune, the author of the journal paper, Palmer Newbould of University College London, was willing to take me on as a PhD student if the Nature Conservancy awarded me a grant. I was offered a choice between a follow-up project on nutrient flow through Cranesmoor or research on how Holly managed to grow both in the deepest shade and on the open heaths, and I quickly chose the latter. Freed from the examinations treadmill, this was a dream assignment, which brought me into contact with Colin Tubbs, who taught me a lot about the New Forest, woodland history, nature conservation and life. The doctorate led indirectly to a career as a woodland ecologist working for the Nature Conservancy at Monks Wood Experimental Station, partly in research and partly as an adviser on all things woodland. Dick Steele, my boss, encouraged me to engage with foresters, and this led me through membership of the Institute of Chartered Foresters to appreciate their calling. Through several reorganisations, I spent many years as woodland specialist in the Nature Conservancy Council’s Chief Scientist’s Team, where Derek Ratcliffe gave us the freedom to promote our subject in our own way. Then, after a sabbatical spent at Harvard University and in mainland Europe studying natural forests, my wife and I moved to the lower Wye Valley, where we still live, 30 years later, amongst trees close to the Forest of Dean. With the Nature Conservancy and its successors I was able to visit woods from Caithness to Cornwall and Kent, and to this day I can talk from personal experience about the woods of any region in Britain. By visiting a large number of woods here and abroad I developed a wide geographical knowledge and a strong sense of their variety and its causes. My knowledge of each individual wood was, however, shallow, so, to gain some understanding in depth, I first studied the history and flora of the Lincolnshire limewoods and later immersed 8

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Preface

myself in Lady Park Wood in the southern Welsh borderland. Here I took the baton from Eustace Jones, came to know trees as individuals and learned from him and the wood how woodland behaves naturally. Throughout, the underlying theme has been time. I am more interested in how woods have developed than in how they work. Conservation, though, has been my motivation: amongst much else, I initiated the Ancient Woodland Inventory and helped to negotiate the Broadleaves Policy of 1985. Now in retirement, I have broad interests in, and sympathy with, all aspects of woodlands and their management, neither natural historian, forester, ecologist, teacher nor campaigner, but a bit of all five. It was Colin Tubbs who opened my eyes to historical sources as a way to understand woodlands, but this was amplified during many years of contact with my near-contemporary, Oliver Rackham. In changing the way we look at woodlands, his reputation is so wideranging and secure that a small tale of fallibility – his and mine – will do no harm. Half a century ago, when he and I jointly managed Overhall Grove as a nature reserve, we noticed that a large elm was looking sickly and feared that Dutch elm disease had arrived in this elm-dominated wood. So, during the next work party, he and I set

An ancient, spreading Beech in Savernake Forest, surrounded by much younger, closegrown stands.

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Trees and Woodlands out to fell it with axes. It took so long that at the end of the day the undergraduates who formed the rest of the party gathered to watch and were carefully positioned opposite the intended line of fall. It fell in exactly the wrong direction, scattering the mercifully quickwitted crowd. Not only had we misjudged the balance in the crown, but, when we checked, we discovered that the tree had been suffering from wet-wood disease, not DED. This book is both about woodlands and about trees as individual species. After outlining the significance of woodland, the historical perspective and the meanings of ‘natural woodland’ (Chapter 1), I describe the forms trees take (Chapter 2) and the character of Britain’s native trees and shrubs (Chapters 3 and 4). The various species come together in woodlands, where, like people in towns, they are both part of a community and individuals struggling to survive in a competitive environment. In natural woodlands (Chapter 5) they fight it out according to their own resources, but in most woodland in history and prehistory their relationships have been regulated, or at least influenced, by people (Chapter 6). In Chapter 7 I try to bring some order to the current manifestation of the ever-changing relationships between people, trees and their environment, which is what we see when we travel around Britain. Although this book is mainly about trees, we must not forget that woodlands are home to all kinds of other wild species (Chapter 8). Equally, we know that trees and woods are also valuable to us, both materially as timber and mentally as important elements in our history and culture (Chapters 9 and 10). Finally (Chapter 11), after acknowledging that trees and woodland are widely perceived to be threatened by all manner of ills, yet regarded as part of the solution for environmental degradation, I consider what we might do for the best. Twelve representative woods are described in boxes scattered through Chapters 3 to 9 which collectively show the variety of native woodlands and our interactions with them. Throughout, I hope something of my enthusiasm for woods shines through, but also my constructive concern. opposite page:

Great West Wood, one of the Lincolnshire lime woods, once a coppice of Small-leaved Lime beneath Pedunculate Oak standards, growing towards a high forest structure.

George Peterken St Briavels Common September 2022

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Preface

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Trees and Woodlands Site location map key 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

Rackwick Bay Strathbeg Birchwood Loch A’ Mhuilinn Dunbeath Water Torboll Beinn Eighe Sheildaig Rassal Ashwood Bearreraig Bay Geary Ravine Tokavaig Woods Rum Barrisdale Glen Affric Drummondreach Moniack Burn Spey floodplain woodlands Creag Meagaidh Abernethy Forest Glenmore Rothiemurchus Forest Glen Feshie Morrone Birkwood Crathie Wood Glen Tanar Sunart Woods Glasdrum Ballachuan Hazelwood Black Wood of Rannoch Meggernie Old Wood Tay floodplain Angus Glens Glen Finglas Loch Lomond woods Middle Clyde Valley Carrifran Chillingham Park Watendlath Seatoller Wood Castle Eden Dene Arnside Knott Gaitbarrows Colt Park Wood Littondale Yew Cogar Scar Grass and Bastow Woods North York Moors Peak District Sherwood Forest

50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98

Little Scrubbs Wood Potterhanworth Wood Swithland Wood Coedydd Aber Coed Cymerau Artro Valley Coed-y-Brenin Coed Ganllwyd Benglog Ashwood Rheidol Gorge Llanerch Alder Carr Pengelli Forest Ty-Canol Wood Lawrenny Wood Wyre Forest Pepper Wood Shrawley Wood South Cubbington Wood Heart of England Forest Moccas Park Haugh Wood Kentchurch Park Cwm Coed-y-Cerrig Cwm Clydach Dinas Powys Castlemorton Common Collinpark Wood Lady Park Wood Forest of Dean Hudnalls Sedbury Cliff Cranham Woods Tortworth Chestnut Felbrigg Park Swanton Novers Wood Hindolveston Wood Herons Carr Wayland Wood Bradfield Woods Edwardstone Wood Chalkney Wood Staverton Park Bedford Purlieus Rockingham Forest Woodwalton Fen Monks Wood Overhall Grove Hayley Wood Finemere Wood

99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135

Wytham Woods Cheddar Gorge Exmoor Millook oakwood Helford River woods Wistmans Wood Holne Chase Chudleigh Rocks Melbury Park Lyme Regis undercliff Hatfield Forest Broadbalk Wilderness Sherrardspark Woods Wormley Wood Epping Forest Berkhamsted Frith Ivinghoe Beacon Aston Rowant Park Wood, Ruislip Burnham Beeches Savernake Forest King’s Somborne Odstock Copse Langley Wood Bentley Inclosure, New Forest Ridley Wood, New Forest Denny Wood, New Forest Beaulieu River Woodland Pamber Forest Windsor Great Park Ankerwycke Yew Richmond Park Box Hill Darenth Wood Westerham Wood Toys Hill Selborne Hanger

136 Ebernoe Common and The Mens 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146

Wakehurst Knepp Estate Parham Park Rook Clift Kingley Vale Blean Woods Perry Wood Asholt Wood Ham Street Dungeness

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Preface Site location map N 2 3

4 5

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relief 40 38 39 47 41

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54 55 56 57 58

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100 101 107 108 105

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scale

The sites within squares are described in boxed text in chapters 3–9.

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A gate into the woods

chapter one

W

oodlands are conspicuous habitats. We can see them across fields and admire their shapes on distant hillsides. If they are felled, we notice and sometimes

protest. If we use maps we know exactly where they are, for they are marked clearly by the Ordnance Survey. But they are also places where we can be inconspicuous, hidden from view, moving secretly through the countryside. Within woods we can lose ourselves, creep up on deer, savour a hint of danger – and then return refreshed to civilisation. Woods and trees have always been important. Our words for oak, beech, birch, lime and other trees come from proto-Indo-European roots and must, as Bill Bryson pointed out in Mother Tongue, have been familiar in Neolithic conversation. The earliest known story, the Epic of Gilgamesh, features a great forest, believed to be the Cedars of Lebanon. Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, reputedly an apple. Magna Carta, signed in 1215 beside the Ankerwycke Yew near Runnymede, was followed in 1217 by the Carta Foresta, which restored the free man’s right of access to royal forests. Nevertheless, humanity has been ambivalent about trees. Throughout history we have also treated them as worthless, nuisance and threat and have realised their value only after we have done our best to destroy them. Now, once again, they are important. The UK government established the Forestry Commission in 1919, initiated the New National Forest in 1987, and now promotes accelerated afforestation. The Woodland Trust started in 1972 and now has a membership of over half a million while managing over 26,000ha of ancient woodland and new plantations. COVID-19 reinforced the importance of contact with nature, especially woodland, for our mental wellbeing. Forest schools have become popular for building

opposite page:

Coille na Glas-Leitire, the ancient Scots Pine wood that forms part of Britain’s first National Nature Reserve at Beinn Eighe.

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Trees and Woodlands

The Ankerwycke Yew, 8m in girth and said to be at least 1,400 years old, stands opposite the meadows of Runnymede where Magna Carta was signed in 1215.

sympathy with and understanding of our environment. Countless suburban roads are named after native trees. Mature trees are sometimes preserved when new housing estates are built, and are invariably pencilled into the plans. The vast new A1/A14 interchange to the west of Huntingdon seems to have been aligned round one veteran oak. Sustained outcry recently greeted the felling of street trees in Sheffield. And, when the government sought to privatise the Forest of Dean in 2010, they discovered that the long tradition of resistance was alive and riotous (Griffiths 2020). Woods are also prominent in the world of ecology and nature conservation. A wood near Huddersfield featured in one of the earliest ecological studies in Britain (Woodhead 1906). Woodland usually comes first in catalogues of habitats, notably The British Islands and their Vegetation (Tansley 1939), the Nature Conservation Review (Ratcliffe 1977) and the National Vegetation Classification (Rodwell 1991). Woods featured in many of the earliest National Nature Reserves, including the first at Beinn Eighe (1951), which included the native pinewood of Coille na Glas-Leitire. They figured even more prominently in the Victorian drive for commons preservation and access to the countryside

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A gate into the woods (Eversley 1910) and, long before that, in the medieval reservation of land as forests for the preservation of beasts of the chase. Symbolically, like bulldogs and lions, oaks personify the strength of the nation. More to the point for most people, they and other trees mark the changing of the seasons. Leafless in winter, they break bud as Swallows arrive in March and April, then shed leaves when they depart in October and November, leaving only the pinewoods in Scotland and the woods of Holly, Yew, Juniper and Box unchanged through the year. Strolls through woods in late March and early April are particularly bright, for the sun is high, yet the buds have not yet broken and the great spring displays of Primrose, Wood Anemone, Bluebell and Wild Garlic reach their peaks. Through summer the woods are places of dappled shade; in autumn they become blizzards of russet leaves and a source of scientific and aesthetic wonder (Wilkinson 2019); in winter the gloom is relieved by sharp shadows when the sun is low, then reverses when snow covers the ground below grey skies, transforming the trees into silhouettes.

Autumn colours in Sessile Oak

An excursion to Kent One of my best finds in a lifetime of hanging around second-hand bookshops was an intact copy of the General View of the Agriculture of the Country of Kent, written for the Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement in 1794 by John Boys, who farmed at Betteshanger in easternmost Kent. Amongst the district-by-district descriptions of farming he included observations on the woodlands. In east Kent, for example, the ‘chief of the productions’ of the chalky soils were Ash, willow and Hazel, whereas on the cold clays they were oak, birch and Beech. These woods ‘furnish the country with firewood, tillers for husbandry uses, and the dock yards with timber for shipbuilding; but the most material part of their produce is the immense quantity of hop-poles’. In the Weald, much woodland had been cleared but there were ‘some woodlands still in their original state’. Around Maidstone he reported a great number of orchards, cherry gardens and filbert plantations. 17

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Trees and Woodlands Much more detail was given for the North Downs district between Chatham Hill and Charing. There, woods were cut at 10–14 years. Once ‘the leaf is off’ the wood was parcelled out among the different workmen employed by the purchaser. The first step was ‘to clear the stocks of the small spray, bushes, etc.’ and this was bundled up into bavins, bound with two wifts (a local term for bands). After the stocks had been cleared, the wood was cut down and thrown into ranges for stakes and binders, thatching rods, austry rods, wheel timber, piles, props and several kinds of pole. The remainder not fit, or wanted, for these purposes, was thrown into the range. The ‘best poles’ were chestnut, ash, willow and maple; the ‘ordinary poles’ were oak, gascoign (cherry, presumably Wild Cherry), red birch, beech, hornbeam; and the ‘use poles’ were ash, chestnut, willow, asp (Aspen) and gascoign. Thatching rods, stakes and binders were cut out of hazel, ash, oak, willow and maple. Austry rods, which were smaller hazel rods, were used to bind billet wood for the London market. Hurdle rods were cut to make hurdle gates for folding sheep. Wheel timber was cut out of large beech of two or three falls’ growth (i.e. at 20–42 years). Piles were cut out of beech and hornbeam: they were used to prevent the tide from washing away the chalk at the foot of the sea walls. Props, which were used in the coal mines at Newcastle, were cut out of oak and birch. Concluding, Boys reported that: It has been found by those who have been very attentive to the management of their woodlands, that wood, like everything else, decays, and produces fewer poles every fall, unless they are replenished. This is best done in Autumn after the wood is felled. The plants, whether chestnuts, ash or willow, should be taken from the nursery with as much earth as can conveniently be done, and their small roots should be cut as little as possible.

opposite page:

The path through the woods: Sweet Chestnut enriched woods near Pembury, Kent. Coincidentally, a nearby part of the same woodland is known as Boys Wood.

Boys’ account introduces many of the woodland themes that are considered later in this book. We see clearly that the woods were an integral part of the community and an essential supplier to distant markets and both local and remote industries. To those who lived in and around them, they were a resource, not just the environment or an adornment to the landscape. The woods were stocked with a great variety of trees, yet every species found its use, even the brushwood ‘spray’. Most trees were local natives and a few woods still looked aboriginal, but efforts were made to maintain productivity by planting fresh stock more suited to current markets: the woods were

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A gate into the woods

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Trees and Woodlands not just natural growth. The woodlanders deployed a specialised and local vocabulary indicative of their local background and reflective of their intimate knowledge of the woods. And there is also a hint that not all trees grew in woods. At the end of his book Boys includes a fold-out listing a selection of woods throughout Kent, their owners, soils, composition, recent changes and what they produced. In most, the ‘produce seemingly natural’ comprised ash, aspen, beech, birch, hornbeam, oak, ‘etc.’ in various combinations, some of which was ‘good’, some disparaged as ‘ordinary’ or ‘scrubby’. In roughly half the woods, they had achieved ‘extra from improvements’ by planting mostly ash, chestnut and willow. Some improvements were already ‘exceedingly good’, but others were still ‘going on’. This is important for ecologists, for many of these woods survive and we now describe them as ‘semi-natural’, usually without knowing which elements are natural and which are artificial.

Divergent perceptions and traditions The woods John Boys described were the product of what Oliver Rackham, the leading woodland ecologist and historian, called woodmanship, an ancient tradition of sustainable coppice management worked by sweat and hand-tools using the trees that happened to be there. Woodland was worked largely by the community for the community. However, if we read the General Views of Agriculture for other counties, we find that woodland was consistently distinguished from plantations ( Jones 1961). With minor exceptions, ‘woodland’ meant ancient coppice woods and ‘plantations’ meant groves of trees established by transplanting small saplings grown from seed onto open ground and allowing them to grow in dense stands to full height, what we would now call secondary woodland grown as high forest. By the late 18th century, therefore, two forms of woodland management were running side by side, which today we usually label ‘traditional management’ and ‘forestry’. Forestry started with the medieval royal forests but developed with the need to replenish supplies of timber, mainly oak, for the navy. Under the early guidance of Standish (1613) and Evelyn (1664), it was infused with the spirit of improvement, growing whatever tree species the owner preferred and switching from one species by planting another. Making good use of the opportunities provided by enclosure 20

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of common fields and pastures and the new species discovered in foreign countries, it was incentivised by the popularity of fox hunting, pheasant shooting and the fashion for embellishing new country estates with belts of trees and individual trees tastefully distributed around parks. From 1919 onwards it was promoted as a matter of national policy. During the 19th century a new force emerged in woodlands. With enclosure and urbanisation proceeding at pace, the Commons and Footpaths Preservation Society succeeded in preserving Burnham Beeches, Berkhamsted Common, Epping Forest, New Forest and several other ancient woods as public amenities. The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty was formed in 1895. At the same time, the new science of ecology was born and joined with the established interests of naturalists to promote nature conservation. With post-war reconstruction, nature conservation became a statutory role of the newly established Nature Conservancy in 1949. By 1969, when I joined the Nature Conservancy as a woodland ecologist, woodmanship and forestry were far apart and hardly on speaking terms. Coppice management and the woodland crafts were nearing the end of a steep decline and most of the ancient coppices stood neglected. Forestry aimed to grow as much timber as possible, using trees that grew straight enough to be harvested and processed

Coverts and shelterbelts planted during the 18th and 19th centuries into an almost treeless landscape of the Lincolnshire Wolds near Hainton Park.

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Trees and Woodlands

Dust jackets of books by Herbert L. Edlin that span the full range of traditional and modern woodland management, as it was in the 1940s. ‘Bill’ Edlin worked as publications officer for the Forestry Commission. Reproduced by kind permission of Batsford. Artists: Brian Cook (left), Irene Hawkins (above).

by machines, and to maximise net discounted revenue in the process. By this time, strenuous efforts, including the liberal use of herbicides, were being made to convert the ancient coppices into plantations that were almost as uniform as the swathes of conifers that covered lowland heaths, the western hills and the northern moors. In writing about Trees, Woods and Man for the New Naturalist series, Bill Edlin (1956) scarcely mentioned coppice, even though he had earlier produced one of the best books on the woodland crafts (Edlin 1949). The 1970s brought peak divergence between forestry and the mix of other interests which had grown up around woodland. Nature conservation espoused the ancient coppice woods for the good reason that they were best for wildlife and represented much of Britain’s stock of native and relatively natural woodland. We watched aghast as foresters felled and poisoned our native woods, and we denounced as blots on the landscape the conifer plantations that marched over the hills. Foresters in turn dismissed the ancient semi-natural woodland as scrub, regarded conservationists as hopelessly out of touch with modern economic and practical realities, and forecast an ecologically diverse future for the upland plantation forests once they’d had time to develop. Of course, relationships were never quite as testy as they 22

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A gate into the woods seemed. There were, for example, foresters like Morley Penistan and John Workman who were as interested in native trees as the conservationists, and generally more practical. Much has changed since 1980. Official forestry has become less single-minded and has enthusiastically adopted multiple objectives. The government’s Broadleaves Policy of 1985 provided a basis for balancing the many interests in native woodland, and recognised the particular interests in the ancient woodlands. Once timber values fell after 1989 with greater access to forests in eastern Europe, forestry needed other reasons to exist. Ecologists increasingly recognised the past and present role of management in shaping our semi-natural woods and maintaining their wealth of wildlife. They also steadily withdrew from their background ideas about successions leading to stable climatic climax vegetation, and recognised what foresters already knew, that wind and other disturbances limit any tendency to stability. The woodmanship tradition survived by adapting into a niche commercial and recreational interest, while elements were incorporated into the management of nature reserves and amenity woods. Today, the two interests still differ to some extent on how we should manage our woods, but such differences are more likely to be resolved on the basis of a common interpretation of what we have and how it came to be like that.

Past and present in the New Forest John Boys and his contemporaries remind us that woods and their context have a past which might have been very different from their present. This leads into my firm belief that, if one wants to know a wood properly, one must know what it was like in the past and how what we see now developed. This first struck me in the unenclosed Beech–oak–Holly woods of the New Forest when I was investigating how Holly adapted to both deep shade below Beech and full sunlight on open heaths. The most eye-catching trees were the great Beech and oak, some of whose crowns spread wide from a short, gnarled trunk. Between them grew smaller Beech, oak and occasionally birch with narrow crowns that had squeezed into the spaces between the larger trees. Under both was a thicket of Holly, some of which had been pollarded like the great Beech and oak. And, in most woods, a scatter of saplings and slender, young trees could be found in the gaps between the large, old trees. 23

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Trees and Woodlands Although the woods had long been left to grow naturally, some dangerous-looking giants had been felled, fallen branches had been cleared from paths and a few tracks had been realigned, so I could find sawn wood on which to count annual growth rings. Estimating ages this way could never be a precise science, partly because many counts were taken well above the base of the trees, but by combining ring counts with tree shapes I resolved the woods into three generations: (A) the old, sometimes-pollarded Beech, oak and Holly, which dated from the 18th century or earlier; (B) the smaller, narrow-crowned oak and Beech and much of the Holly underwood, which had grown up in the second half of the 19th century; and (C) the groups of saplings and younger trees that had grown up in gaps and on margins mainly from the 1930s. Later ring counts by Colin Tubbs and Nicholas Flower (1980) showed that the generations were not as distinct as they first seemed, and that each wood had a slightly different combination of generations and species, but the broad pattern was clear and it needed an explanation. Colin Tubbs, the Nature Conservancy’s local man, already recognised that historical documents held valuable ecological information. Working together, we quickly realised that the B-generation had grown up in response to the Deer Removal Act of 1851, and we sought further understanding in the records of how many deer, ponies, cattle and other herbivores had been roaming the forest. The sharp dips in grazing pressure corresponded with our 19th- and 20th-century generations, but the A-generation trees appeared to date from a period when grazing pressure was high. The implication was that regeneration had been facilitated by management before the 19th century, but thereafter had been left to take its chance during downturns in browsing pressure. The woods that most people saw as natural had been shaped by local foresters, politicians in Parliament and the fluctuating economics of commoning. Our joint paper was written in the bar of the Rose and Crown in Lyndhurst (Peterken and Tubbs 1965). We can delve deeper through the example of Ridley Wood, which can be seen on the horizon as one speeds along the A31 at Picket Post. I first visited Ridley as a babe-in-arms in 1941 and knew it through my youth as a destination for family excursions. By then, it was a dark, unbroken grove of towering Beech and Pedunculate Oak with a dense underwood of Holly surrounded by heathland, but in 1609 it had been a coppice, described by John Norden as ‘well growne with 24

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hazell and thornes, some lopped oaks intermixed … manie younge saplinge oaks … and sundrye vacant and gaulye places which hath noe wood at all’. It had been coppiced shortly before 1592, but before that, in 1565, it contained old, uncoppiced oak; and in 1572, the tenant was in trouble for shrouding (pollarding) 200 trees and felling many young oaks to make a fence (Sumner 1931). Clearly, it had been through great changes. The only reminder of its coppiced past was the wasted perimeter bank, still visible round the entire wood. Later, fascinated by Geoffrey Dimbleby’s studies of pollen in soils (Dimbleby 1962), I looked at the pollen preserved in the soil below the wood (Peterken 1996). Beech and pine pollen was confined to the upper layers, whereas oak and Holly were present throughout and Hazel was present at depth, but absent from surface horizons. This indicated that the wood had changed from an oak–Hazel– Holly wood to Beech–oak–Holly. The pine pollen had presumably been blown in from recent plantations. Unlike soils below other New Forest woods, there was no trace of lime, which hinted that Ridley is a secondary wood (see page 33), albeit one originating well before the 16th century. Perhaps this explains its strange isolation from the main blocks of New Forest woodland.

Beeches in Ridley Wood, part of the New Forest, which originated in the 17th and 18th centuries, against a background of 19th-century Beech and Holly.

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Sampling a heathland soil profile in the New Forest in January 1963. Geoffrey Dimbleby (second from right) used soil pollen to study soil development. Colin Tubbs is second from left.

So the Ridley Wood I knew in my youth was utterly different from the poorly managed coppice it had been over 400 years earlier. It must have been thrown open after 1609, for the Beech and oak that grew up within the old coppice and on nearby heath were pollarded. After 1700 they were allowed to grow out and were supplemented by more oaks and Beeches which grew with older trees into a dense, tall stand. By 1931, in Sumner’s words: ‘As far as we can see rise rugged beech trunks that ramify, low down, with multiple bare limbs, shooting up aloft into continuous twig and leaf canopy.’ Thus the wild and untouched look of mid-20th-century Ridley Wood had been generated as trees responded naturally to over 400 years of changing management, mismanagement and grazing pressure. It did not expand far onto the surrounding heaths, presumably because locals, including my ancestors, burned the heather and mowed the Bracken for bedding. Ridley Wood was already breaking up by the 1960s, and today it is a graveyard of fallen wood, dying-back crowns and closely grazed glades amongst which some fine Beech and oak remain to remind me of the magnificent wood where my great-uncle sketched, one uncle rode his horse, another uncle courted and I first came into contact with wild woodlands. It is easily reached from the Wilverley car park by walking past dying groves of Holly on the open heath, killed by age and the bark-gnawing habits of too many ponies. If modern visitors think it is timeless, they are wrong: it has never previously been like we see it today.

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History in woodland ecology Thousands of such stories could be told about individual ancient woods. Most would be a tale of centuries of coppicing (Chapter 6) ending sometime in the 20th century, when the last woodmen departed the scene. In such ‘neglected’ woods, one can still see large, broad-crowned standard oaks scattered amongst younger trees that grew up after the last coppicing and ancient, gnarled stools from which several trees have grown into the canopy. Take the ‘Lincolnshire limewoods’ – the ancient woods of central Lincolnshire – as an example. When I surveyed Potterhanworth Wood in May 1971, the coppice of Ash, Hazel, Small-leaved Lime and Field Maple had not been cut for 30–60 years. I found a substantial wood bank on the southern and northern margins, but little else to tell me much about its earlier history. Then I came across two medieval documents that mentioned the wood: the entry in Domesday Book recorded 150 acres of woodland for pannage in 1086, the property of Walter de Aincurt; and an Inquisition of 1387 recorded the wood by name as 50 acres of underwood that could be cut at the end of

The outgrown coppice of Little Scrubbs Wood, one of the Lincolnshire limewoods, becoming ever more dominated by Small-leaved Lime.

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Trees and Woodlands 10 years. These brief shafts of light into an otherwise dark history told me that this had been a coppice for at least 600 years, and that 900 years ago it had been larger and probably stocked with acornbearing oaks. Much the same could be said of other woods in the same district. For example, in 1420, the Abbot of Bardney was enjoined to enclose with hedges and ditches any of his woods that had been ‘pruned or felled’, ‘lest the stumps, when they sprout again, be destroyed by cattle entering in default of enclosure’. Instructions were nevertheless frequently flouted, to the hurt of the underwood. In 1259, the Abbot of Kirkstead gave the son of Robert of Tattershall permission to hunt all manner of game in Thornton and Bracken Woods, provided he informed the abbot beforehand and called at the abbey to collect the gate key. If he could not obtain the key, he was allowed to break the locks and enter the woods to hunt, provided he did no other damage. Further, he was not allowed to break in anywhere else, on pain of making amends. Nearby, the Kirkstead Abbey Psalter Map of c. 1300 shows the boundary of a fen-edge vaccary (cattle pasture) terminating at ‘mapelbusk in Schirwodhirn’, so I was excessively pleased to find that there was still an old Field Maple growing where the vaccary boundary met the corner of Shire Wood. These and many other examples clearly demonstrate that the free-growing woods we walk in today have a long history of management as discrete, privately owned features in a well-ordered landscape. These days one hardly needs to emphasise the general point. As Oliver Rackham has taught us, we know a wood by knowing its history – the direct and indirect actions of people, how and when natural influences changed, how grazing and other long-running influences have fluctuated in intensity and what discrete events, such as a felling or a drought, might have changed the course of development. Thus, the patchy distribution pattern of lime in Lady Park Wood (Monmouthshire and Gloucestershire) may be due to medieval pasturage; the floristic poverty of New Park Wood in central Lincolnshire and most of the coppices in Rockingham Forest, Northamptonshire, may be due to both medieval pasturage and their origins as post-Roman secondary woodland; and the absence of Oxlip and Dog’s Mercury from Papworth Wood, Cambridgeshire, may be because it, too, originated as medieval secondary woodland. The long historical perspective is not, of course, the only route to understanding woods. One can also ask how they work by studying 28

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the mechanisms behind growth, nutrient cycling, soil changes, water movement and much else. These approaches are complementary, not distinct.

Individuality of woods No two woods are the same. Within any group of woods, such as the Lincolnshire limewoods, each wood has its peculiar combination of site characteristics, wildlife and sequence of owners, each one of which will have had particular interests and will have been prone to individual quirks and inefficiencies. Even in the New Forest, which has long been under a single owner, each of the coppices was different in 1609 and each has developed in different ways since. Even within an ecologically homogeneous group of woodlands, such as the Caledonian pinewoods, each wood has its own history of management (Steven and Carlisle 1959) and sequence of storms, fires and other natural events. Each wood also has a distinct geographical context and is literally shaped by what goes on around it. Each has its own balance between species, which has itself been partly determined by what happened within it and what happened nearby. That no two woods are the same is abundantly clear from a close reading of Oliver

The remains of Kirkstead Abbey, Lincolnshire. In 1259, local men would call on the abbot to obtain the keys before they could hunt in Bracken and Thornton Woods. Both woods survive.

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What can we learn about woods from a study of their history? • Recognise and appreciate the long interaction between woods and people. • Understand the present in terms of the past. • Identify which modern features might have been inherited from original woodland. • Estimate the current ecological trajectory. If we know the events to which a wood is responding, we know what changes are taking place now. Knowing the ‘direction of travel’ allows us to anticipate changes in the immediate future. • Appreciate the resilience of woods by knowing what they have been through, such as episodes of heavy timber felling or changes in management.

• Avoid the temptation to see the present condition as the only possible and ‘right’ condition. • Understand the conditions under which wildlife now present on the site has survived or thrived, which is particularly significant for slow-colonising species. • Make better management decisions by adopting a fail-safe approach. If we value the species now present, we will know what they have been through, and we can do what was done before.

Rackham’s descriptions of individual woods. In many ways, it is this individuality and the long and diverse interactions between trees and people that make woods and woodland ecology interesting. The diversity inherent in individuality can have political significance. The case for private ownership of woodland and autonomy in woodland management is based on many arguments, but one is the sheer diversity of action taken by individual owners and the diversity of woodlands this generates. Sure, many owners follow general advice, but this still counters the homogenisation inherent in large ownerships with coherent plans and the one-size-fits-all tendencies of central government direction. Trees are also individuals. As with people, their individuality peaks in fit old age when a face expresses the experiences of a long life. This is one reason why woods with old trees are more interesting than plantations regimented like soldiers on parade. Take as an admittedly extreme example an unassuming Holly near Speech House in the Forest of Dean (photograph opposite). Growing in wood-pasture with Sessile Oaks, it must have germinated in the early 18th century. For many years it had been pollarded for winter browse until it developed a thick but hollow trunk. Pollarding stopped and the crown branches 30

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grew heavy until, sometime in the mid-20th century, the trunk split. Crucially, it did not break, so all the branches that now lay in contact with the ground produced new roots and shoots, which eventually grew into self-sufficient new growth centres still linked to the original roots. Today it is an intricate bush like no other.

This Holly, growing in a remnant of wood-pasture in the Forest of Dean, looks like a simple bush from a distance, but delve within and one discovers its complex history.

How much woodland? Britain has a deserved reputation for woodland poverty. In 1924, the newly formed Forestry Commission found that woodland covered just over 5% of Great Britain (Forestry Commission census report 1928), less than almost all other countries in Europe. Its main features reflected the legacy left by traditional management and the Great War: fully 16% was devastated or felled; 7% was dismissed as amenity and shelterbelts; deciduous woodland at 44% substantially exceeded conifer and mixed woodland (33%); and coppice was easily the largest category of deciduous woodland, even though most of the upland oakwoods were classified as scrub. Since then, much has changed, though we remain near the bottom of the European league table. The total area of woodland of 31

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An entry in Domesday Book recording land held by the Bishop of Lincoln. The last line records 162 acres of underwood (silva minuta) in Upton, Kexby and Normanby-byStow, near Gainsborough.

all kinds in the United Kingdom has climbed stealthily for years and now (2021) stands at 3.23 million hectares, or 13% of the land area, with conifers at 1.65 million hectares slightly in the majority. Strong differences can also be seen between districts. At a large scale, conifers are greatly in the majority in Scotland, whereas in England broadleaves dominate, whilst in Wales they are about equal. At a smaller scale, Fenland contains very little woodland, whereas the Weald, Chiltern Hills and much of the borderland district between the Usk and the Forest of Dean has, and always has had, well over 30% woodland cover. This sets them apart from, say, Breckland and the Borders, where the current high forest cover is due to 20th-century afforestation of formerly treeless districts. The woodland area is always changing. By Rackham’s calculations, Domesday Book records that 15% of England was woodland in 1086. In 1688 Gregory King estimated that woods and coppices occupied 7.5% of England and Wales, though wood-pastures were evidently not counted (Hoskins 1968). By 1895, Britain had 4.5% woodland cover, possibly the smallest amount of woodland since the last ice age. Simple arithmetic shows that roughly two-thirds of all existing woodland was created on bare ground within the last 125 years. Much of this afforestation followed the creation of the Forestry Commission, which planted, or subsidised the planting of, great tracts of uplands and agriculturally underproductive parts of the lowlands, mainly with spruces, pines and other conifers. Elsewhere, new woodland regenerated naturally on commons, former pastures, heaths and other abandoned agricultural land, and much of this was broadleaved. The woodland that existed before 1895 included numerous fox coverts, shelterbelts and timber plantations dating from periods of afforestation in the 18th, 19th and, in a few cases, the 17th centuries. Most of it, however, originated as woodland before 1600 and was known in the early 19th century (Watkins 1988) and then again since 1970 as ancient woodland. Some of this ancient woodland

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Definitions of ancient, recent, primary and secondary woodland A woodland is ancient if it originated before 1600 and has been in continuous existence ever since, though it will have been felled and regenerated many times. Woodland that originated after 1600 on what foresters call bare ground is recent woodland, though some examples have existed for over 400 years. Woodland that originated on unwooded ground is secondary, so all recent woodland is secondary, but some secondary woodland originated before 1600. Woodland that has been in continuous existence since the time – usually prehistoric – when woodland covered so much of the land that other habitats occurred as isolated patches within it is primary. All primary woodland is therefore ancient. These terms are often simplified to a simple pair – ‘ancient’ and ‘secondary’ – but that loses sight of ancient secondary woods, which are extensive in some districts. These terms are less precise than they seem. Is new woodland that springs up on

farmland incorporating hedges, boundary trees and field trees truly new, or merely an infilling of already wooded ground? If a wood is grazed so heavily that it becomes parkland, does that break the continuity of woodland cover? Should new woodland originating next to an ancient wood be regarded as secondary or an extension of ancient woodland? Elaborate legalistic definitions are possible, but unhelpful. We are dealing with dynamic assemblages of species, some of which respond quickly to habitat change, while others respond slowly. In many ways, ancient, recent, primary and secondary are not discrete types of woodland but ends of a continuum of habitat age and isolation that runs from, say, a new plantation on an arable field to a woodland with a history documented over centuries and a pollen profile from a small hollow within the wood demonstrating continuity of trees back for more than 5,000 years.

undoubtedly formed before 1600 on former agricultural land and should be recognised as ‘ancient, secondary’ woodland. The cultivation remains and former field boundaries that lie fossilised beneath the trees show up on LiDAR surveys and may even be clear on the ground. But much ancient woodland shows no sign of prior non-woodland land use, which opens up the possibility that it has always been wooded. Some, perhaps most, must be the residue of the woods recorded in Domesday Book, 1086, and earlier land charters. Some indeed may be remnants of the pre-Neolithic forest cover before land was cleared for agriculture – in other words, primary woodland – but this is difficult to prove. All we can say is that, if any woodland is ‘primary’ in the sense that it has ‘always’ been there, it will be part of those ancient woods that show no sign of a previous non-woodland land use. 33

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Trees and Woodlands In the early 1980s I estimated the total area of ancient woodland in Britain at 574,000ha (Peterken 1981). The Nature Conservancy Council’s Ancient Woodland Inventory identified 341,100ha and 56,600ha in England and Wales respectively (Spencer and Kirby 1992), split between 21,918 and 5,770 distinct woods. Most were small: only 1,353 in England and 142 in Wales extended to more than 50ha. A similar assessment in Scotland revealed 136,000ha (Roberts et al. 1992). Since then the total has been revised upwards by adding woods below 2ha, which were originally omitted for practical reasons. The actual area can only decrease with time, a point made repeatedly in relation to developments such as the London-to-Birmingham high-speed rail link (HS2). Even with every scrap counted, ancient woodland covers less than 3% of England and Wales. All these figures imply that one can define woodland and delimit its boundaries, but this is not always the case. The modern Ordnance Survey had doubts in the 1940s, when it mapped recently felled woodland as unwooded, even though its treeless state was merely a phase in the forestry cycle. More seriously, there is much wood-pasture, where tree cover is open, the trees often cover only a minority of the ground, and the land is more pasture than woodland. Conversely, there are districts where the fields are small, the field boundaries are dense and boundary trees are so frequent that the density of mature trees may be greater than the density within woodland. Such districts even look like woodlands from a distance, but they are not mapped as such. Today, the combination of mapping conventions, grant structures, farming needs and land tenure arrangements has increasingly generated a landscape of sharply defined boundaries, in which we have little doubt where woodland starts and finishes. Thankfully, we still have places like the unenclosed New Forest and the scattered birch and pine groves in Speyside where any assessment of woodland area remains approximate, influenced as much by our choices about what counts as woodland as by the actual tree cover.

Natural, semi-natural and artificial woodland Having already used these terms, I ought to explain them, though this will get complicated. Let’s start with the woods I see through the window as I write. The woods in the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty form a major component of the scenery that most 34

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A gate into the woods people happily describe as ‘natural’. As an ecologist, however, I describe the woods as ‘semi-natural’, because I know that they have been shaped by people as much as by nature, though this is less apparent now than it was a century ago. They are quite different from the small, obviously artificial, conifer plantations that punctuate the billowing banks of mature deciduous woodland. Behind this terminological divergence lies a long quest to define exactly what ecologists accept as ‘natural’ woodland, and thence what counts as ‘semi-natural’ woodland. Most people attach a very broad range of meanings to ‘natural’: it labels an inevitable course of action, any rural landscape, and a multitude of objects on supermarket shelves. Woodland ecologists, however, including myself, have generally chosen to restrict it to woodland that has not been influenced by people. We have assumed that the pre-Neolithic woodland that developed after the last ice retreated was largely free of human influence and thus natural. Any woodland that had survived apparently unchanged from these times was called ‘virgin forest’. The founding fathers of British ecology recognised that no British woodland was ‘virgin’ and thus that none is natural. All had been managed, or had at least been influenced by people directly and indirectly. Nevertheless, they recognised different degrees of naturalness – an ancient oak woodland, say, was manifestly more natural than a new spruce plantation on moorland – and came up with the term ‘semi-natural’ for woodland (and other habitats) that the general public would have simply called ‘natural’. Tansley (1939) explained that natural vegetation ‘was primarily due to nature rather than to man’. The extremes were virgin forest and a crop of wheat, but most vegetation was intermediate. Woodland composed of native trees ‘may usually be regarded as semi-natural’ because, even though many of these trees would have been planted, the wood still resembled natural woodland in structure and behaviour. Alternatively, woods in which there had been little or no planting, but the structure and behaviour had been modified by felling, were also semi-natural. Tansley went on to recognise two kinds of semi-natural woodland, based loosely on their origins. One, represented by ‘exploited natural forest which is allowed to regenerate by itself’, ‘began as entirely natural and has been modified by man’s activities’. The other consisted of plantations of native plants on ‘old forest land or even old grassland or heathland or even arable’. These would 35

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Semi-natural woodland or broadleaved plantation? The oak stand originated as a plantation on woodpasture in a region where oak is native. Verdict: semi-natural, because it has developed some diversity of structure and composition.

eventually become semi-natural and little different from the first kind because they would behave ‘very much as they would if they had come into existence spontaneously’. British woods probably included both kinds. Ecologists still use ‘semi-natural’ much as Tansley defined it. We have used ‘semi-natural’ to label what might otherwise be called indigenous woodland, where the trees are mostly British natives and the wood has not obviously been planted. We know the boundary between semi-natural woodland and plantations is fuzzy and allow, say, oak plantations on ground where oak would grow naturally to be included in the semi-natural category, especially when it has matured and acquired a few self-sown trees and shrubs. We accept that no ‘natural woodland’ survives. When describing woods as ‘ancient, semi-natural’ we are recognising two independent variables: (1) the degree to which the trees and their structure are natural, and (2) the degree of habitat continuity, in other words the length of time that the site has been continuously occupied by woodland. Like Tansley, I see a complete spectrum on the naturalness variable, from a stand of trees whose composition and structure have been unaffected by

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A gate into the woods people to a plantation of Sitka Spruce or any other introduced tree. The continuity variable ranges from a site that has been wooded since the last ice age to a site that was unwooded until very recently. Combining these in one diagram (below), the top left corner would be occupied by any surviving remnants of unchanged pre-Neolithic woodland; bottom left, by a young conifer plantation on an ancient woodland site (PAWS); top right, by naturally regenerating young woodland spreading over former pasture; and bottom right would be an upland plantation forest or a Lodgepole Pine plantation on a drained blanket bog. Semi-natural woods occupy the upper part of the naturalness spectrum, whereas ancient woods are at the left end of the continuity spectrum. This must sound rather intricate, but the important point is that semi-natural woodland is not the same thing as ancient woodland. Notice, too, that there are borderline cases and that the woods we call ancient semi-natural include a range of types with different degrees of naturalness and habitat continuity. To complicate life still further, the continuity spectrum can be applied either to the whole wood or separately to particular components of woodland. Thus, to anticipate later chapters, an ancient deer park may have continuity of large trees and dead-wood habitats, whereas a medieval coppice may have continuity tree and shrub mixtures and the woodland ground flora.

Plantation

Semi-natural woodland

Ancient woodland Primary wood Old natural Completely Virgin natural growth forest

Managed natural growth

arranged according to their origins and continuity (x-axis) and degree of naturalness (y-axis). The term ‘ancient, seminatural woodland’ covers those woods in the upper left quadrant.

Recent woodland Pre-1600 secondary wood

Secondary wood originating in 17th to 19th centuries

Secondary wood originating in 21st century New natural

Birch scrub on heath

New Forest Beech-oak

East Anglian coppice Chiltern Beech high forest

Plantations of locally native species Plantations of introduced species

Primary wood used as woodpasture

below: Some woodlands

Norway Spruce plantation on old coppice (PAWS)

Old artificial

Dorset Hazel coppice

Fox coverts Landscape park woodland Sitka Spruce on blanket mire

New artificial

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Trees and Woodlands opposite page:

Above: Secondary woodland, dominated by Silver Birch, developing on Poor’s Allotment, Tidenham, Gloucestershire, after common grazing has lapsed. Oaks have also become established, setting in train a natural succession to oakdominated woodland. Below: Upper reaches of Mynydd Du Forest in the Grwyne Fawr valley of the Black Mountains.

below: John Evelyn,

whose classic early text, Sylva, progressed through several reprints and revisions.

Writing about trees and woods We have never been short of books on trees and woodlands. From Arthur Standish’s New Directions for … the Planting of Timber … (1613) and John Evelyn’s Sylva (1664), we can trace a line through William Gilpin’s Remarks on Forest Scenery (1794), John Loudon’s Arboretum et fruticetum britannicum (1844) and Elwes and Henry’s The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland (1906–1913) to recent volumes such as Thomas Pakenham’s Meetings with Remarkable Trees (1996), Peter Thomas’ Trees, Their Natural History (2000), Fiona Stafford’s The Long, Long Life of Trees (2016), and the astonishing recent popularity of Lars Mytting’s (2015) Norwegian Wood, Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees (2017) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Overstorey by Richard Powers (2018). Richard Mabey’s Beechcombings (2007) spans both ecological and cultural aspects of trees. There is of course a vast library of forestry literature, much of it understandably emphasising timber growing and utilisation. This ranges from the austerely technical, such as John Matthews’ update of Silvicultural Systems (1989), to the personal enthusiasm of Julian Evans’ A Wood of Our Own (2002). It includes works which are almost precedents for this book, ‘Bill’ Edlin’s British Woodland Trees (1944), a species-by-species account of our tree species, and his volume in the New Naturalist series (1956). The latter was my choice on the only occasion I received a prize at school, and it set me on my course between forestry, ecology and nature conservation. Hart (1966) and Pettit (1968) provide authoritative historical accounts of Dean and Rockingham Forests respectively, whilst Mark Laudon Anderson compiled A History of Scottish Forestry (1967) and William Linnard gave us Welsh Woods and Forests: a History (2000). These books spring from an interest in forest management, timber production or trees as individual specimens in arboretums and other non-woodland settings, but others have approached the subject from the point of view of trees growing in woodland in more natural circumstances. John Wise’s The New Forest, its History and Scenery (1863) carefully listed the fauna and flora. Edward North Buxton’s Epping

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above and opposite: Drawings of woodpastures from John Wise’s The New Forest, a fine early combination of woodland history and natural history; above: The Cattle Ford, Liney Hill Wood; opposite: View in Mark Ash. Originally published in 1863, this limited third edition was published in 1880, shortly after the woods had acquired the statutory designation ‘Ancient and Ornamental’.

Forest (1898) was a natural history of one of the first protected forests, but not an ecological text. For decades, Arthur Tansley’s British Islands and their Vegetation (1939) served as a guiding text for ecologists and nature conservationists, bringing together ideas and descriptions from the first 40 years of British ecology, and some of this was presented for a wider readership as Oaks and Oakwoods (Tansley 1952). Steven and Carlisle’s Native Pinewoods of Scotland (1959), with its emphasis on history and context, set the character of woodland ecology and conservation in Scotland. Latterly, Oliver Rackham attracted a wide audience for his Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape (1976), Ancient Woodland (1980), the New Naturalist volume on Woodlands (2006) and much else. He also wrote about individual woods – Hayley Wood (1975) and The Last Forest (Hatfield Forest; 1989) – where, like Richard Fortey (2016), he showed us the vast sweep of interacting detail that can be experienced in even a small wood.

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d This book will inevitably cover much familiar ground, but I hope it provides more than just context for Keith Kirby’s Woodland Flowers (2020) and other volumes in the British Wildlife Collection. It concentrates on woodland composed of native tree species, using my own experience of working with them since 1960, and attempts to go beyond the familiar themes of ecology and nature conservation by considering their wider value. The main theme is the long evolution of native woodland and the ancient woods that embody it. The plantation forests, which are evolving as fast as foresters said they would and now make up the bulk of our woodland, will be mentioned, but they deserve a book of their own.

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The forms of trees and shrubs

W

chapter two

hat is a tree? I once found myself in the ‘artists’ lounge’ at the Hay Festival talking to Germaine Greer – then president of the invertebrate conservation

charity Buglife – about this very question. I mentioned that I had been surprised at the precise and technical style of her contribution on this topic in Arboreal, in which she mentioned several definitions of ‘tree’, showed that each led to a nonsense, then followed with a clear description of how trees work (Greer 2016). Where I would have expected her to write something literary and imaginative, she said she wrote as she did because describing trees precisely is difficult and she enjoyed the challenge. Defining trees is difficult. We all know what ‘trees’ and indeed ‘woodlands’ and ‘forests’ are, but the boundary of any definition is either artificial or fuzzy. My approach here follows Humpty Dumpty: ‘trees’ means ‘just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less’. Here I choose it to mean self-supporting, long-lived, woody growths that become large enough to force me to walk round them. Trees therefore extend beyond the obvious oak, Beech and the less obvious hawthorn and whitebeam – sometimes dismissed as shrubs – to lesser growths such as Elder, Dogwood and Dog Rose. Brambles and Blackcurrants are excluded. Describing their forms is easier. Throughout human history, each era has had an agreed series of terms to describe growth stages and the shapes trees adopt when people use them, though these change. Even if we don’t know the terms, we can easily appreciate that size is some indication of age and that each tree has been shaped by its experiences. This, in fact, was my way into woodland ecology. In the woods of the New Forest and the Middlesex suburbs I could not help noticing the variety of forms and realising that I could tell their histories from their sizes and shapes.

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History in the form of trees. Overhall Grove, Cambridgeshire. The central oak originally grew in the open above coppiced underwood.

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Terms from antiquity Trees and woods have a language of their own. Many of the words that once described the form and condition of individual trees have been lost: few now understand a 17thcentury ironmaster’s purchase of ‘a cord of log-wood, wind-throws, moriors, broochers and offal wood’ (Hart 1966). Likewise, the tree broken by wind was a breakneck and a dead branch that falls naturally from a tree was a deadfall, though today we are more likely to use the American terms snag and widowmaker respectively. Words used to describe trees collectively, such as forest, wood, copse, spinney, scrubs and belt, have specialised and archaic meanings that differ from common parlance. Both medieval land agents and modern ecologists might describe a wood

as an alnetum, populetum or quercetum, but the medieval robora quercus and roborum fagorum described the condition of a tree, not a species. Robert Macfarlane’s (2015) collection of words describing trees and woodland demonstrates just how intimately our forebears observed and understood trees. Thus, in Herefordshire a cag was the dead remains of a branch still attached to a tree, while a rundle was a hollow pollard. Rarely, old words are resurrected. Dotard – a large tree that had died back enough to be worthless as timber – once remembered only by woodland historians – sprang to life in 2017 after the leader of North Korea consulted a dictionary before insulting the president of the United States.

Life cycle Trees grow from seedlings into saplings and then into ‘poles’ and eventually full-grown trees. This much is familiar, but when does one stage morph into another? First-year seedlings expand the cotyledons they possessed in embryo, but second-year seedlings are just minor versions of the adult plant. Rather than accelerate into hip- and head-high youngsters that one would readily call saplings, most just sit there, hardly growing, producing one or two leaves each year, still ankle-high after 10 years. Are these seedlings or saplings? My answer is small saplings: the seed has long since done its work. Saplings pass into poles once they have grown well above head height, provided they retain a strong leader and have not reached the sub-canopy. They cease to be poles in my lexicon when I can no longer circle them with both hands. Saplings that stagnate into slow growth in the underwood can hardly be described as poles because they lack the promise of upward progress. A tree of any size that dies on its feet is known by an American term, snag. They disintegrate from the top, rot at the base, then fall 44

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above: Seedlings and tiny saplings are common and often

abundant, but almost all will perish within a year or two. Here, Beech, Sessile Oak and Ash are established amongst Great Woodrush.

right: Fallen birch whose wood has decayed faster than its bark. This tree, in Lady Park Wood on the Monmouthshire/ Gloucestershire border, germinated about 1942 and probably died standing in about 2005 before rotting at the base and falling. The photograph was taken in April 2020.

and decay into a stump. A dying tree becomes stag-headed when dead, upper-crown branches dominate the crown. Stag-headed oaks on field boundaries may not actually be dying: if they still have healthy foliage on lower branches, they may be retrenching in response to a lowering of the water table. Standing then fallen, a tree eventually decays, a process that can take decades: the remains of branchwood stacks left in Lady Park Wood in 1942 could still be detected in 2021. 45

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Natural growth forms

The roots of a freshly fallen Ash.

The tree’s visible hierarchy of trunk, branch and twig hardly needs explaining: likewise the complementary hierarchy of main roots, branches and root tips. Germinating as a simple shoot, a tree branches into ever more growing points. The topmost growing point, or leader, dominates the rest while the tree grows taller, but its dominance weakens as it approaches top height, and eventually the growing points in the canopy of a fully grown tree are equal. The mature tree comprises a crown of twigs and small branches supported by large branches arising from a trunk. Its basic form is a dendritic network in which the components are linked in a strict hierarchy, like the springs, streams and rivers of a catchment. This analogy is not as far-fetched as it may seem, for each leafy twig functions as a spring from which the products of photosynthesis flow down to the trunk and roots. They also act as pumps that draw a counterflow of water and nutrients from the roots to the growing points. Roots form a matching dendritic network in which the major surface roots distribute the rootlets horizontally, at least as far out as the branches spread, while tap roots anchor the tree to deeper

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The forms of trees and shrubs levels. Roots thus stabilise the tree and forage for nutrients. The latter is achieved by means of mycorrhizae, a symbiotic association with fungi, which spread further and more intimately than the actual roots and, as we now realise, link each tree to its neighbours. This basic form varies from one species to another and from one individual of a species to another. Much of this variation is due to ‘nature’, not ‘nurture’. The steeple-like forms of growing poplars and pines will never be matched by, say, a Field Maple. Nor will the branches of Small-leaved Lime, arching out at a narrow angle from the trunk, ever be matched by, say, the horizontal ‘cake-stand’ branches of Scots Pine. Almost as distinctive is bark pattern. As the tree grows, this outer protective layer of dead material stretches and splits into a pattern of fissures that, combined with its colour, gives each tree a characteristic appearance. Combined with branching patterns, bark patterns enable each tree species to be distinguished from a distance, even when leafless in winter, then verified by checking the distribution and form of the buds. Identification is easier in summer because each species also has characteristic leaves, flowers and fruits, though there is scope for confusion. Ash leaves are divided into pairs of leaflets, but so too are

Patterning in the bark of an ancient Yew, Kingley Vale, West Sussex.

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A young oak developing a pioneer form.

the leaves of Rowan, alias the ‘mountain ash’. Beech, Hornbeam and elms have oval leaves with pointed tips which are superficially similar. Some are quite distinctive, such as the white, felted leaves of whitebeams, the pink and orange fruits of Spindle and the purpletinged buds of Alder. Tree form is also influenced by events and circumstances – ‘nurture’ in human terms. Out in the open, trees are free to spread as they wish, developing what is sometimes known as the pioneer form. Oak, for example, develops a form recognisable in the Forestry Commission’s emblem – short trunk with wide, spreading branches that may eventually dip to the ground – whereas limes and elms generally develop tall trunks and fewer low branches. Within woods, where trees grow in dense stands and side branches are restricted by neighbouring trees, they are all forced into a lollipop shape: tall, often slender trees with small crowns. Protected from the wind and forced to grow tall to stay with the light, trees in woods can grow to great heights, especially in narrow valleys, where the soil tends to be more fertile and the forcing effect of neighbours is enhanced. The open-grown form that is commonly shown in tree identification books may thus be almost unrecognisable in the woodland form of the same species. In effect, trees growing in close proximity lose some of their family identity and individuality. Other circumstances also shape tree forms. Most familiar is the windswept tree near the coast, where salt-laden winds kill buds exposed on the seaward side of the crown. Another familiar feature is the small group, which develops a single crown on multiple trunks. Once the group starts to break up they expose themselves for what they are, a collection of individuals with one-sided hemispherical crowns on the margins and lollipop crowns in the interior. Much the same effect can be seen on any woodland margin, where the strength of the trees on the margin usually reduces the growth of adjacent trees in the interior. Slope is another modifying circumstance. Trees growing on steep slopes develop one-sided (‘unbalanced’) crowns because the growing points on the upslope side are shaded by trees further up the slope, whereas the growing points on the downslope side are free to expand into full light above their neighbours below. In time, such trees develop a lean and grow new leaders from the topside of the trunk in an attempt at self-righting. This may still be in vain, for such trees are likely to fall when the upside roots can no longer take the strain.

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Paul Nash, Wood on the Downs, 1929. Planted near Ivinghoe Beacon, Buckinghamshire, these close-grown Beech trees have formed a canopy much like the crown of a single tree.

Trees are also shaped by events. These range from apparently minor occurrences, such as the death of the leading shoot because a Grey Squirrel stripped its bark, to gales which break or uproot whole trees. Lost leaders of pole-stage trees are quickly replaced, sometimes with two or more new leaders which grow on into a forked tree. A broken tree will often grow again from just below the break, but the new growth will always look disproportionately small in comparison with the old trunk. A tree that was blown over completely may produce new growing points from the prostrate trunk if at least a third of the root system remains unbroken, and in this way the tree can become a colonnade of trees growing from one horizontal trunk. A tree that was left leaning on a sturdy neighbour will try to generate a new crown by growing fresh leaders from the upper side of the leaning trunk, but the original, now-shaded crown will likely die. Events and circumstances are not completely separate. For example, the surviving oak standards in former coppice-with-standards woods often have dead lower limbs, because the underwood, having grown taller than hitherto, now shades limbs that once enjoyed full

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daylight. Whether this is an event or a change in circumstances, this exemplifies a general point, that the lifetime experiences of each tree are permanently registered in its shape. If one observes tree shapes closely and combines those observations with estimates (based on size of branches) of when each event took place – as we did in the New Forest (Chapter 1) – the history of individual trees and whole woodlands can be reconstructed. Saplings, shrubs and small trees in the underwood, and the weaker shoots of trees, are spared wind damage, but suffer shade and the ever-present possibility that larger trees will fall on them. Slow growth is the norm, except below a canopy gap. Shrubs rarely form true leaders. Rather, they grow into a typically bushy shape. Hazels usually form a hemisphere of many competing stems, where the marginal growths spread wide and eventually droop to the ground. Any of these forms will be crushed by a falling tree, but most grow back from the broken ends. Several years after a group of trees has fallen, and crushed shrubs and saplings in the gap have responded with vigorous growth, it can be extremely hard not only to

A Beech on Arnside Knott, Lancashire, which was blown over, but recovered to form several trees from its former trunk and branches. Some new trees have generated their own root system.

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Sycamore on the shingle of Dungeness, where the most vigorous branches creep over shingle in the lee of older stems.

penetrate the resulting thicket but also, once inside, to trace the true origins of vigorous new stems amongst a tangle of decaying trunks wreathed in arching brambles. In southern Sweden, prolonged winter snowpack protects low Small-leaved Lime branches from browsing and allows them to develop into prostrate trunks that contrast totally with their normal gracefully ascending form. On Dungeness, the outer branches of isolated Hollies and Sycamores creep across the shingle surface.

Trees shaped by management Foresters describe a tree that has grown unmodified from seed as a maiden, and it remains a maiden even if the side branches are removed (‘brashed’) to reduce the incidence of knots in the timber. After felling, most broadleaved trees will – foresters permitting – generate a cluster of new shoots (‘sprouts’) from dormant buds in the stump, each of which is capable of forming a new tree. Competition between shoots growing from a single stump is severe, so most eventually die, leaving one or a few to grow into new canopy trees. The strongest shoots from stumps receive a ‘rocket boost’ from 52

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the established root system which allows them to outpace nearby seedlings and saplings of the same species. When a wood is managed as a coppice, these shoots are allowed to grow for a few years, then they are cut and the regrowth cycle is repeated. After several cycles of cutting and regrowth, the stump (‘stool’) has expanded. New growth springs from the external face of the stool, which eventually decays in the centre, creating first a hollow stool, and then an irregular ring of wood. These stools keep sprouting indefinitely: some Ash in ancient woods are certainly medieval, and some lime stool clusters may even be trees surviving from the original wildwood. Even when a coppice is no longer cut, the former coppicing leaves an almost indelible mark in the form of multi-stemmed trees and old stools: a century after the last woodmen coppiced an Ash or oak wood, the trees still bear witness to their memory. The same can be said of standards promoted from coppice. Trees can be cut at any height from flush with the soil surface to over 3m, generating a spectrum of forms. Trees in coppices were often cut at knee or hip height, and in this way developed into highcut coppice stools (‘stubs’) or low pollards. Pollards are trees that were ‘beheaded’ or lopped at 2–3m and then re-sprouted from just

Recently cut coppice in Pepper Wood, Worcestershire, which has exposed the lollipopshaped standard oaks. Maiden standards in the distance contrast with the multi-stemmed oak (left) that grew from coppice.

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This Pedunculate Oak at Hatfield Forest, Essex, has been pollarded, but not recently.

below the cut. Lopping at this height demands effort and care, but it was necessary if deer, cattle or other large herbivores had access to the tree, for they would devour coppice regrowth. Pollarding was therefore characteristic of wood-pastures (see Chapter 6) and trees on field boundaries. It has also become familiar in towns, where street trees are lopped, often at great heights and at great expense. The permanent base of a pollard (‘bollin’) can grow indefinitely. Many of the record-breaking trees with huge girths are old pollards that almost invariably develop rotten cores and then great hollows. In fact, they also develop roots from the inner surface of the rotting trunks that grow down through the hollow to the soil, adding to the grotesque individuality of ancient pollards. 54

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The forms of trees and shrubs Pollards, stubs and stools were created by a regime of frequent cutting in which the new growth never became heavy. Even if the stool, stub or bollin became rotten and hollow, it could always bear the weight of new growth. However, all these forms of management are now obsolete, obsolescent or maintained as part of a conservation programme, so, for the first time in their lives, many former pollards and stubs have been allowed to grow tall and heavy. The result initially is grandeur, but eventually it is collapse, leading to the death of the pollard. If pollarding or coppicing is resumed after a lapse of years to avoid collapse, the regrowth is usually weaker than hitherto, if the treatment does not kill the patient. Both pollarding and coppicing start with the removal of the natural leader. An alternative form of lopping – shredding – retains the leader and removes the side branches. The tree continues to gain height and it rejuvenates its side branches, but with successive loppings the disproportion between the trunk and the side branches increases. Eventually, the shred tree takes on a distinctive, almost absurd form, that can often be recognised in old landscape paintings. Shredding was once commonplace. For example, when Roger Tavener surveyed the timber in the Forest of Dean in 1565, he reported that the woodland in Bicknor and Staunton Woodwardships was respectively ‘half oak lately shred’ and ‘oak and beech of great age, most part commonly used to be shred well nigh unto the top’ (Hart 1966). Past changes in management can usually be detected in the forms of trees long after they took place. A tree that formerly had space to develop a large crown, but which has latterly been closely surrounded by younger growth, will have dead branches in its lower crown. (A conservationist might regard this as damaging, but a forester might describe it neutrally as raising the crown.) Where a coppice has been thrown open as pasture (or has been invaded by deer), stems of coppice origin might be pollarded, generating distinctive multi-stemmed pollards. The spread of Fallow Deer forced this on Hayley Wood in the 1960s, and the multi-stemmed

Claude Monet, Poplars (Autumn), 1891. In the foreground, new growth springs from the stumps of the lopped branches. In the background, the lollipop form of shred trees.

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Ash coppice in Hayley Wood, Cambridgeshire, that was cut high when coppicing restarted in the nature reserve in the 1960s, so that Fallow Deer would not consume the regrowth.

pollard Hornbeams of Epping Forest show that the spread of deer is not just a modern nuisance. Swanton Novers Wood in Norfolk is replete with lime stubs, but cutting through these at soil level quickly revealed that they have developed from the fused stems of coppice that was formerly cut flush with the soil. Evidently there was a change from low-cut to high-cut coppicing in the 19th century, which I can only suppose was a response to the spread of rabbits.

Forms of reproduction Most trees produce immense amounts of fertile fruit/seed during their lifetimes. Birch, for example, was found to produce seed rains of 3,800–43,000 per m2 in Scotland (Miles and Kinnaird 1979), but the amount of seed produced varies from year to year in response to timing of spring frosts, the vigour of growth in the previous year and 56

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The forms of trees and shrubs other factors. This habit is so pronounced in oak and Beech that some years are almost complete blanks, whilst others are mast years, when very heavy crops of acorns and nuts carpet the ground in autumn and defy voles and mice to eat the lot. In the case of Beech, Matthews (1955) found that mast years came every 3–10 years in England, but the intervals seem to be shortening in northern Europe in response to climate change. Thus, mast years in Sweden (defined as 50 fruits falling per m2) were 4–6 years apart from the 17th century until 1960, but are now 2–3 years apart (Övergaard et al. 2007). The oaks in Coed Cymerau, a Sessile Oak wood in Snowdonia, illustrate masting well (Shaw 1974), even though they were observed only from 1964 to 1972, a brief moment in the life of an oak wood. Some 80% of all the acorns produced in those nine years were produced in just two years, 1964 and 1971, and no acorns were produced in 1966 and 1967 at all. Most will have died within a few weeks, killed by drought or eaten by rodents, but each tree has to produce only one seedling that survives to become a mature tree for the population to be maintained. In mixed woods, the heavy seed crops of different species are not synchronised, so in any year there is usually at least one species that has fruited well enough to generate thickets of seedlings next spring.

Leaning trees will generate new shoots from the top of the trunk (‘reiteration’), leaving the original leader to waste away.

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Above: Hazel never loses its capacity for ‘selfcoppicing’. This Hazel by the Dunbeath Water, Caithness, has produced at least two generations of new stems since grazing intensity was reduced. Below: Regeneration by suckers. Elms in Overhall Grove, Cambridgeshire.

Broadleaved trees can also reproduce vegetatively. They generate new shoots from existing trees (re-sprouting), from surface roots at some distance from the trunk (suckers), and from branches that droop (or are pressed) to the ground and take root (layers). New shoots can grow from almost any part of an existing tree. Those growing from crown branches and from the trunk hardly count as reproduction, for they usually form in response to damage or stress in the original tree. Thus, a first response of vigorous, tall Ash to dieback has been prolific sprouting from within the crown and to a lesser extent from the trunk. Trees that lose their tops to a gale will often grow again from the severed end, a form of natural pollarding. Trees that develop a lean will also develop new shoots on the upper side (reiteration) as a form of rebalancing. Spreading crown branches may also generate new vertical shoots. Trees that fall often produce new shoots from the fallen trunk or the branches, and these can flourish enough to grow into new trees. Hazel routinely generates new shoots from the base of the trunk, a form of reproduction that is also found in limes, Ash, Beech, Wych Elm and other species. This natural form of coppicing generates new main trunks for Hazel, but the base sprouts from other species rarely form canopy trees. Normally, they simply arch out from the main trunk or survive as suppressed, often browsed shoots. When a canopy tree tips over, base sprouts also become horizontal, but they quickly adjust and then they can develop into new trees. In fact, they stand more chance of prolonged growth than shoots springing from further along the original trunk. Suckers are particularly characteristic of Aspen, Wild Cherry, Wild Service-tree, Blackthorn, Dogwood and some elms, and occasionally they develop close to the base of a large Beech or lime. Relying on the strength of the main tree, these will grow in shade, waiting their chance should a gap appear above them. They enable these species to form thickets after felling. Layers rarely form in managed woodland, but they are common enough in natural woodland. The weak stems of Hazel, lime, Wych Elm and others that failed to grow into the canopy spread wide and, as they gain weight, lean ever closer to the ground. Eventually, a stem touches down or is pinned to the ground by a fallen branch, whereupon, provided it is not browsed by deer, new shoots and roots will form, leaving the branch that was connected to the original tree to languish and possibly die, though these umbilical cords can

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above: Vegetative

reproduction in Smallleaved Lime. Stems that are pinned to the ground can root at the tip and generate new trees. This stem was bent over by a late spring snowfall. A 93-year-old stand of Small-leaved Lime grown from singled coppice in Shrawley Wood, Worcestershire. This early-May drone shot by Rob Somer clearly shows the clonal structure and variation in leafing dates.

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sometimes be found alive long after the new tree is well established. Repeated layering allows a tree to ‘move’ through the wood on a timescale of decades and centuries in the manner of a very slow looper caterpillar, forming in the process remarkably complex individuals. Mark Ash Wood in the New Forest contained a Beech that had looped twice and retained the living connections of both loops. Likewise, Lady Park Wood has a Large-leaved Lime that has looped, rooted and regenerated twice in a century. Give it another two centuries and it will cross the boundary of the wood and bid for freedom! Trees grown from suckers and layers will eventually grow independently of the original tree, but they will be genetically identical. The clones formed by Wild Cherry are briefly conspicuous as clusters of white-flowering trees in April. Clones of lime can be detected by groups of trees with identical leaf shapes, leafing times and leaf fall times. The 15m circle of genetically identical smallleaved lime stools at Westonbirt in Gloucestershire must be a clone formed either by coppice stool expansion in the fashion of a fairy ring (which would make it very old indeed), or by rooting from the branches of a fallen tree.

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Trees and Woodlands All forms of reproduction count towards regeneration – though only seedling regeneration creates new, genetically distinct individuals – but not all regeneration counts as recruitment. Most seedlings and saplings die long before they grow beyond the reach of deer and, even if they live, their development may be arrested in the form of a low hedge. Recruitment occurs when saplings grow taller, conventionally taken as over 1.3m. From this point onwards, their survival depends mainly on their ability to compete with other trees and shrubs. Ecologists sometimes forget this point: for example, Morgan (1991) found many seedlings and saplings in a small plot in Ridley Wood and claimed that the wood was recruiting, but inspection of the plot 30 years later shows that all the regeneration had failed.

Age and changes in tree form Trees grow larger as they get older. Church porches often display certificates giving an estimated age of the great Yews in the churchyards, based on girth measurements from trees of known age. Foresters, too, routinely estimate a tree’s age from its girth, but they will adjust the estimate for circumstances, history and the apparent vigour of the tree and will know that the older/larger the tree, the greater is the margin of error. Pitfalls remain, nevertheless. For years I asked visitors to Lady Park Wood to guess the age of some Beech saplings standing 3m tall and about 5cm GBH (girth at breast height). Most realised that it was a trick question, but a few guessed 20 years or so, some way below their actual age of 70 years. The size range of a single cohort in a plantation is limited by origin and management. Plantations start as a mass of uniform trees and stay that way if they are thinned. If they are not thinned, some individuals fall behind once the canopy closes, languish in the shade and die, whilst others outpace their neighbours. However, these exceptionally large trees, sometimes known as ‘wolf trees’, are removed during thinning operations along with the runts, for uniformity is the goal in a well-managed plantation. Ideally, when they reach full height, they will all be roughly the same size and shaped like lollipops. Selfsown trees that establish themselves before the canopy closes would also normally be removed, but a few may be retained to contribute a modicum of diversity. Contrast this with a cohort formed by natural regeneration. Take as an example the Ash population in that part of Lady Park Wood 62

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that was felled in 1942 and had reached 75 years old by the time dieback was first detected in 2017. Most germinated between 1943 and 1955, but a few had germinated several years before 1942, had persisted in shade as tiny saplings, then escaped destruction when the overstorey timber was felled and dragged away to help the war effort. The age spread was thus about 20 years, but it became progressively narrower as the stand developed. Within less than 15 years, a few saplings (probably those that had enjoyed a small head start) were taller than the rest and growing strongly, while the majority were shorter and pencilthin, only able to stay upright because they were supported by brambles. Thereafter, those early starters developed into elite trees with straight, branch-free trunks and large crowns, while their fractionally younger brethren languished in their shade and mostly died. Those that survived in 2017 were mostly failing sub-canopy trees or weak underwood poles with little or no crown, kept alive by a few new shoots growing from the trunk.

Ancient trees are individuals. This remarkable Small-leaved Lime in the Lower Wye Valley grows on the boundary of an ancient wood, where it has been both coppiced and pollarded.

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Trees and Woodlands More than 300 years ago, the poet John Dryden said that ‘monarch oaks’ took 300 years to grow, 300 to stay, and 300 more to decay, and this may literally be true of a few oaks. For years, I followed foresters in describing such oaks as ‘overmature’, but in the 1980s some genius renamed them ‘veteran trees’. Today, there is an Ancient Tree Forum which distinguishes between Ancient trees and Veteran trees. The former are literally very old trees, whereas the latter category also includes younger trees that have developed large and hollow trunks, stag-headed crowns, shattered branch ends and other signs of age. Species matters: a birch would be ancient at 150 years, whereas a Yew must wait until it is 800 years old. The Forum also recognises ‘Heritage Trees’ which have particular historical associations. The Major Oak in Sherwood Forest, to quote a famous example, is an ancient, veteran, heritage tree, well into Dryden’s third age. The vast majority of trees are not veterans: as you gaze at the passing countryside from a train window, you are looking with few exceptions at trees dating from the 19th and 20th centuries. Eventually, at extreme old age, trees develop complex and bizarre forms. For me, the supreme example is the Tortworth Chestnut, which grows near St Leonard’s church in a small Cotswold village. Approached across a small close, it looks like a grove of Chestnuts, but it is actually a single individual with an ancient trunk surrounded by collapsed lateral branches that have rooted in contact with the ground and thrown up new, vigorous trees ( Jarman et al. 2019). A plaque explains that it is believed to be about 1,300 years old and was reputed to have been large enough to be a boundary marker in the 12th century. The short, fat trunk is so contorted and irregular that girth measurements look impossible, but in the 18th century it was measured at nearly 16m GBH.

Measuring trees It is sometimes useful to describe trees quantitatively. The simplest, low-tech measurement is girth, measured with a tape held in treehugging style round the trunk at 1.3m, otherwise known as girth at breast height (GBH). In practical terms this means raising your arm horizontally and holding the tape at that height. If the tree is on a slope, the rule is to stand upslope of the tree to take the measurement. The largest trunk I can ‘tree-hug’ a tape round is 148cm GBH; anything larger, and I have to walk round the tree trailing the tape. 64

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Several complications may arise. At 1.3m the tree may have a gall, or perhaps it forks at about that height. When the girth at 1.3m is obviously unrepresentative, move to the nearest representative part and note the height of measurement. A tree may support large Ivy stems: if the tape cannot be fed through under them, measure up to the ivy from both sides and add an allowance for the width of the ivy. Tree height is often hard to determine within a wood, not least because you cannot always see the top, but height to the first large branch in the crown should be easier. Estimates are possible by the methods taught to Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. If you stand back far enough you can hold a pencil or stick at arms length so that a length equivalent to 2m of trunk height is exposed, then step this up the trunk by eye until you reach what appears to be the top. Crown spread ought to be easy to measure by laying a tape on the ground, but it is far from easy to be sure that the end points lie directly below the crown margins.

The Tortworth Chestnut, so complex and vigorous that no photograph can do it justice.

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Alan Orange girths an Ash in Lady Park Wood, 36 years after he spent a summer mapping and measuring all the trees on the monitoring transects.

Measuring trees collectively involves determining their density (or ‘stocking’, to a forester), in other words, the number of trees per hectare. This ought to be simple: simply count how many trees stand in a number of representative sample areas and scale up. In practice, judgements and decisions are required: what is the minimum tree size to be measured and what counts as a single tree when some are multi-stemmed? In Lady Park we included only trees that had reached 1.3m, but comparisons of density at different times have been plagued by differences in minimum size at different recording dates, and this matters in woods with saplings more numerous than canopy trees. As for multi-stemmed trees, we counted all stems, but noted which came from a shared rootstock. It is also possible to calculate the basal area of a tree, which is conventionally the crosssection area measured at 1.3m. More useful is the basal area of the trees collectively, which climbs to 30–50 square metres per hectare as stands mature and fluctuates thereafter in response to episodes of mortality and regrowth. Other measurements are available. Foresters, being interested in timber, calculate volumes in cubic metres per hectare. The traditional handbook for these and other practical matters was The Forester’s Companion ( James 1989), but there are many other books, including the Forest Mensuration handbook (Matthews and Mackie 2006), and much material on the internet. 66

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Other arboreal growth forms We must not forget that Ivy and Clematis are also ‘trees’ according to my definition. Ivy is commonly part of the ground vegetation, and in some woodland types it can form dense carpets, but it also climbs real trees, reaches the canopy and can live for decades. It can also be a factor in tree growth and survival. Heavy growths will burden underwood trees until they break. Even canopy trees may be vulnerable. In Lady Park Wood, the 1976 drought killed the crown branches of a tall Beech, but did not kill the tree. This left the Ivy in full daylight in the canopy, so regrowth of Beech in the crown had to compete with reinvigorated Ivy. It just about succeeded for 20 years, but then the new branches were mortally debarked by Grey Squirrels. Clematis is more a scrambler than a climber. It competes with saplings and shrubs in clearings and grows with them to a considerable height, where it remains as festoons of lianas hanging from the lower canopy branches like a monkey’s gymnasium. Clematis, too, can bend and break a small tree.

Not all woody growths in woodland are trees or shrubs. Clematis lianas drape themselves exotically over a large Hazel coppice.

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chapter three

O

ur 1974 family camping tour of France, which doubled as a tour of French forests, brought us one evening to Compiègne. We did visit the clearing where

the armistice was signed in 1918, but the main point for me was to see Les Beaux Monts, a large reserve of majestic oaks, straight-grown, sound to the core, at least one of which turned out to have been 440 years old when it was blown down shortly before our visit. Like most tree enthusiasts, I have seen the Major Oak at Sherwood and many stupendously ancient pollards, but it has always been the oaks of Les Beaux Monts that epitomise the magnificence of the dominant trees in European forests.

Trees as characters Each tree and shrub species has a distinct character, and not just the kind of character that allowed The Reverend C. A. Johns (1886) to praise oak as a ‘kingly tree, the emblem of majesty, strength and durability’ and Samuel Taylor Coleridge to describe birch as ‘the lady of the woods’. Like people, each tree species has particular traits (such as ability to bear shade or withstand drought), preferences, tolerances and idiosyncrasies that determine how each performs in different circumstances and which species grow together where. To illustrate that general point, we can consider their preferences for different sites or soils. The table overleaf places species according to their ability to tolerate shade (columns) and their preference for acid, neutral or alkaline soils (rows). Scots Pine, to take an extreme instance, is generally light-demanding and favours strongly acid soils, while Small-leaved Lime is, like many others, middle of the road in both respects. These preferences are, however, simply the centres of gravity of a range of tolerance: most species can spread far wider, though their ability to compete weakens towards the limits of their tolerances. The indicated preferences are also compromises.

opposite page:

Large-leaved Limes, a rare forest dominant of English and Welsh woodlands. This pair of trees in Lady Park Wood, Monmouthshire, grew from a single rootstock.

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Trees and Woodlands Native tree and shrub species in relation to soil reaction, tolerance of shade and association with soil moisture and fertility. Light requirements

Reaction

Shade tolerant. Light levels down to 5% in summer

Intermediate

Semi-shade tolerant. Light levels generally more than 10% in summer

Usually on extremely acid soils

Intermediate

Light demanding. Generally Rarely found in well-lit in less than places, but 40% daylight also occurs in at summer partial shade levels

Scots Pine^

Juniper^

Mainly on acid soils

Sessile Oak Rowan Silver Birch Downy Birch

Intermediate Hornbeam

Holly

Alder Buckthorn** Aspen

Pedunculate Oak

Intermediate

Hazel Wild Cherry Wild Servicetree

Alder** Bird Cherry^^ Small-leaved Lime

Guelder Rose

Crab Apple Pear^^ Grey Willow** Osier**

Usually on weakly acid to weakly basic soils

Ivy Yew* Large-leaved Lime Wych Elm

Field Maple Midland Hawthorn Ash Narrow-leaved Elm^^

Common Hawthorn White Poplar Black Poplar**^^ Blackthorn Field Rose* Dog Rose Crack-willow**^^ Elder^^ Whitebeam*

Dogwood Buckthorn Wayfaringtree

Usually on basic soils

Box*

English Elm

Clematis* White Willow^^

Usually on moderately acid soils

Beech

Adapted from Hill et al. (1999). * Species of fairly dry sites ** Species of constantly moist and wet sites ^ Species of extremely infertile sites ^^ Species of richly fertile sites Forest dominants in bold

Purple Willow** Rock Whitebeam*^

Thus, Beech dominates woodland on both the most alkaline and the most acid soils, so it is placed midway between the two. Likewise, Ash will grow on both dry and very wet soils; and Holly forms dense underwoods beneath the deep shade of mature Beech, yet also grows on open heaths. Forest dominants, the subjects of this chapter, are the ‘kings of the forest’. They grow taller, live longer, occupy more space in the canopy, constitute the greatest bulk and determine the performance of other tree and shrub species. Lesser trees can live as long or longer,

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Forest dominants Tree and shrub species for which Biological Flora accounts are published in the Journal of Ecology. Species

Scientific names

Date

Author(s)

Maples

Acer campestre A. platanoides A. pseudoplatanus

1945

E. W. Jones

Horse-chestnut

Aesculus hippocastanum

2019

P. A. Thomas et al.

Alder

Alnus glutinosa

1953

D. N. McVean

Birches

Betula pendula B. pubescens

1992

M. D. Atkinson

Spindle

Euonymus europaeus

2011

P. A. Thomas et al.

Beech

Fagus sylvatica

2012

J. R. Packham et al.

Alder Buckthorn

Frangula alnus

1943

H. Godwin

Ash

Fraxinus excelsior

2016

P. A. Thomas

Ivy

Hedera helix

2005

D. J. Metcalfe

Holly

Ilex aquifolium

1967

G. F. Peterken, P. S. Lloyd

Juniper

Juniperus communis

2007

P. A. Thomas et al.

Scots Pine

Pinus sylvestris

1968

A. Carlisle, A. H. F. Brown

Bird Cherry

Prunus padus

1996

S. R. Leather

Oaks

Quercus petraea, Q. robur, Q. cerris, Q. ilex

1959

E. W. Jones

Red Oak

Quercus rubra

2020

M. K. Dyderski et al.

Buckthorn

Rhamnus cathartica

1943

H. Godwin

Rhododendron

Rhododendron ponticum

1975

J. R. Cross

Robinia

Robinia pseudoacacia

2013

A. Cierjacks et al.

Elder

Sambucus nigra

2002

M. D. Atkinson E. Atkinson

Rowan

Sorbus aucuparia

2000

O. Raspe et al.

Wild Service-tree

Sorbus torminalis

2017

P. A. Thomas

Yew

Taxus baccata

2003

P. A. Thomas, A. Polwart

Small-leaved Lime

Tilia cordata

1991

C. D. Pigott

Large-leaved Lime

Tilia platyphyllos

2020

C. D. Pigott

Suckering elms

Ulmus minor

2003

K. E. Stokes et al.

Wych Elm

Ulmus glabra

2018

P. A. Thomas et al.

Wayfaring-tree Guelder Rose

Viburnum lantana, V. opulus

2002

J. Kollmann, P. J. Grubb

grow tall enough to occupy the canopy, and may even dominate the tallest stratum temporarily, but only the forest dominants achieve these feats together and for so long. There are places on the fringes where they fail, but in most woods forest dominants compete against each other and dominate the rest. The nine, perhaps ten, native forest dominants divide naturally into two groups: the shade-tolerant Beech, Hornbeam, Large-leaved Lime, Small-leaved Lime, Wych Elm and suckering elms, and the light-demanding Pedunculate Oak, Sessile Oak and Scots Pine, 71

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Trees and Woodlands leaving Ash somewhere in between. Beech and oaks seem more dominant than the others, but that is partly because they have long been favoured by foresters. These natives have been supplemented by some naturalised species of similar stature. This chapter and the next can only summarise some important points about individual species. Much greater detail about their biology and ecology is available in the Biological Flora accounts published in the Journal of Ecolog y (see table on previous page), and in some of the many books on trees mentioned in Chapter 1.

Beech Beech is at once the most elegant and the most tedious of trees. Few sights in British woodlands surpass the sight of a clean and graceful grove of Beech coming into leaf over a carpet of bluebells, but few woods display as little variety of composition and structure. Beech has smooth bark and tidy branching, and casts such deep shade that low shrubs cannot obscure its presence. Its American counterpart, Fagus grandifolia, readily sprouts from surface roots and the base of trunks, but this behaviour is uncommon in Britain. Ecologically, Beech seems almost bimodal – strongly associated with both dry, alkaline soils on chalk and limestone and strongly acid soils on sands and base-poor upland rocks. In fact, it is fairly catholic, for it will grow well and regenerate naturally on mesic sites and even dominate on very poorly drained clay loams in the south-east lowlands. Beech fruits abundantly at least once a decade (Packham et al. 2012). These mast years, each triggered by a combination of a warm, dry summer followed by a moist one, are increasing in frequency as the climate warms. The large-cotyledoned seedlings grow best in moderate light levels, but will live on for years as tiny saplings, hardly growing, deep in shade, waiting for a gap to open above them. This ability to regenerate in close proximity to parental shade is what enables foresters to manage beechwoods by the selection system (Chapter 6). Sapling Beech survive better than the saplings of other species in the face of deer, partly because they are evidently less palatable and they re-sprout readily. Leaves of saplings and fresh growth tend to persist on the stem through winter, a trait that has made Beech attractive as hedges. Mature Beech trees look strong, but are accident-prone. As the residents of south-east England learned in October 1987, they are 72

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shallow-rooted and readily topple in gales. In 1976 we also learned that severe drought will desiccate their thin bark, leaving them dead or wounded and vulnerable to fungal infection. Beech bark disease, which is caused by a scale insect and a fungus, has been killing Beech for two centuries or more (Lonsdale and Wainhouse 1987). Beech has also proved to be attractive to Grey Squirrels, which strip bark from poles and crown branches, which distorts growth and prematurely weakens the crowns of mature trees. In natural woodlands, Beech trees rarely live more than 300 years, even as dominant individuals. Calculations based on gap creation rates in natural woodland suggest an average residence time in the canopy of 100 years, which, assuming they take a century to reach the canopy, implies an average age at death of about 200 years. Fallen trees rarely live on, but, if they fall into gaps when still vigorous, will grow new trees from the trunk and branches. Historically, Beech was rarely preferred in coppice-with-standards woodlands because, as a standard, its heavy shade spoiled the underwood and, as coppice, it was less vigorous at re-sprouting than

Low Scrubs, Buckinghamshire, a formerly coppiced Beech wood near the Chiltern scarp.

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Trees and Woodlands competitors. Regrowth of coppice and lopped trees was sometimes encouraged by selection cutting, in which some live growth is left when trees are lopped or coppiced. Nevertheless, it was a common coppice component in some woods, notably those along the Welsh borderland and in the Poor’s Allotments of the Chilterns, locally known as ‘scrubs’. Judging by the size of the stools, coppice beeches will live far longer than 300 years if they are cut regularly. Likewise, some of the spectacular Beech pollards of the New Forest, Burnham Beeches and other wood-pastures must exceed 300 years. Beech’s native range and competitive relationships within British woodland are remarkably uncertain. Even though Julius Caesar reported that Britain lacked Beech timber, no ecologist doubts that it is native in southern England and south Wales, close to the main concentrations of Beech in central Europe, but is it native further west and north? After all, it grows in montane forests in central Europe, and Beech planted in the Highlands grow well and eventually regenerate naturally. Beech was slow to return after the last glaciation and was forced to compete with established populations of Wych Elm and limes when it did. Its expansion in the Neolithic and later was patchy, perhaps held back by coppicing but helped because it withstands grazing better than elms and limes. The outcome was that Beech expanded at the expense of limes in Epping Forest, the New Forest and other wood-pastures, but limes, elms and other palatable species excluded Beech from coppices. The developing pattern of Beech dominance in particular districts was reinforced by selective felling of oak in the New Forest and deliberate promotion of Beech high forest in place of coppice in the Chilterns. Add to this the widespread planting of Beech for timber, ornament and shelter throughout Britain since the 18th century and the modern spread of deer in neglected woods, which places the shade-tolerant and browse-resistant Beech at an advantage, and one can see why Beech now seems such a strong competitor. Rather than agonise over the uncertainties, I would treat Beech as native throughout the north and west. It might have spread there naturally if our ancestors had not fragmented the woods. Sure, most of the Beech there were either planted or descended from planted trees, so it is always possible that ancient native populations remain disguised amongst them.

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Beechwoods on limestone BUCKHOLT AND CRANHAM WOODLANDS, Gloucestershire One of the main concentrations of Beech in southern Britain is found around Cranham and Sheepscombe on the scarp of the Cotswolds. These woods were listed as a potential nature reserve in the report that led to the formation of the Nature Conservancy (Wild Life Conservation Special Committee 1947), and they remain one of the finest beechwoods on limestone in Britain, with a wide variety of histories. Part of their attraction is the limestone grassland of Cranham Common, on which one can sit surrounded by butterflies and flowers looking over the village to the rising mass of Buckholt Wood. Many of the woods are managed by the National Trust, whose former woodland adviser, John Workman, lived in Sheepscombe and bequeathed Sheepscombe Wood to the Trust when he died. John was a forester who maintained his enthusiasm for native broadleaves through the high tide of conifers in the lowlands. In 1980, when the long-term study of natural woodland development in Lady Park Wood (Chapter 5) was threatened by a proposal to fell the large Beeches, John spoke strongly in favour of the study. The woods are not all dominated by tall Beech: the north-facing Witcombe Wood is largely Ash. In the past, parts of the woods were coppiced, a feature motorists can still see as they race south from Crickley Hill. Buckholt Wood was evidently a common, and from Cranham Common one can still see the wide spread of Beech leafing times characteristic of naturally sown populations. Sheepscombe Wood, in contrast, was planted with Beech brought in from France: according to John Workman, its Beech all came into leaf together.

Beech high forest on the Cotswold scarp in Witcombe Wood, near Cranham.

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Hornbeam

Ancient Hornbeam pollard at Hatfield Forest, Essex, now hollowed to a shell.

Hornbeam was abundant in the ancient woods around Ruislip, where I grew up, so it came as a surprise to discover that its range in Britain is limited to the woods of the Home Counties, parts of Sussex and Kent and some districts in East Anglia. In these areas it is abundant as underwood below oak standards and as pollards in wood-pastures, such as Hatfield Forest, Essex, and Mersham Hatch Park, Kent. Outlying, possibly native, populations can be found in the Bristol area and the Welsh borders, and it behaves naturally in woods round Morecambe Bay. In 1653 the herbalist Nicholas Culpepper described Hornbeam as a lesser form of Beech (though other early authors likened it to elm), its leaves being ovate like Beech, though serrated, and its trunk being smooth and pale, though distinctively fluted. Taxonomists place it in the same family as birch, Alder and Hazel: like its relatives, it flowers as catkins which later develop into hanging clusters of nuts attached to long bracts. Both Hornbeam and Beech tend to form pure stands, grow equally in coppice and wood-pasture, and were rarely tolerated as standards. Both have shallow root systems, and as pollards both yield ‘a good flush of shoots, especially when one of the branches is left for a year “to draw up the sap”’ (Nisbet 1893). They were often planted as hedges well beyond their native range. Both are hesitant to colonise new woodland, but they withstand shade and enter as new woodland matures. Both species also cast deep shade, thereby remaining conspicuous presences in mature woodland, unobscured by low shrubs. Both grow on a wide range of soils, but Hornbeam is concentrated on acid and strongly acid heavy soils, most of which are poorly drained. Both are native mainly in the south-east lowlands, but extend as natives to the southern Welsh borderland and Norfolk. And both are major components of central European woodlands.

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Forest dominants The parallels between Beech and Hornbeam extend to their postglacial expansion. Both expanded late from southern refuges into mixed deciduous forest, possibly as a result of human modification of natural woodlands. Under the influence of pasturage, both displaced limes; to quote John Nisbet (1893) again: The bite of cattle, and the nibbling of sheep, do less permanent damage to [Hornbeam] than any other species, for its recuperative power is such that, whenever badly bitten, or even regularly grazed over, a short period of protection suffices to repair the damage done. Within its native range it was displaced when Sweet Chestnut was planted in place of natural mixtures, but, as a popular fuel wood, one wonders whether it was encouraged around London to feed the hearth. Hornbeams do not reach the size and age of Beech. Veteran pollards assume an impressively gnarled and lined appearance, but the Ancient Tree Inventory gives their upper limit as 4.5m girth and 350 years. Rackham (1989) mentions pollards dating from 1700 in Hatfield Forest, which indicates that greater ages are possible. Most coppice stools are small, possibly because Hornbeam regenerates easily from seed and youthful growth outstrips the growth of age, but huge stools have been found in Blean Woods, Kent, and elsewhere. Its timber is so hard it quickly blunts carpenters’ tools – one reason for using it small.

Hornbeam foliage beside a medieval access track in Chalkney Wood, Essex, showing the serrated edge to the otherwise Beechshaped leaves.

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Limes If anything embodies the idea that woods are living cathedrals, it is a grove of tall limes, whose gently arching branches remind us of soaring naves. The most graceful of the two native species is Small-leaved or Winter Lime, which is distinguished by erect flowers and fruits and, as its name suggests, by small, heart-shaped leaves, which are hairless when mature. The other, now uncommon, species is Large-leaved Lime, whose growth is unruly by comparison. Its fruits hang down and its large, broad leaves remain felty. Confusion between the two is possible because they interbreed, generating populations in which many, sometimes most, trees have intermediate characteristics. Some mainly Small-leaved populations include intermediates that may be the residue of past hybridisation when Large-leaved Lime was widespread. Donald Pigott, once the director of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden, has enjoyed a lifelong fascination with limes. His Biological Flora accounts and world conspectus leave no aspect unexplored (Pigott 1991, 2012, 2020). He confirms that Small-leaved Lime is associated with neutral and acid soils in Europe, while Largeleaved Lime is lime-loving. This separation seems less well defined in Britain because Small-leaved Lime grows on a very wide range of site types from strongly acid to calcareous whereas Large-leaved Lime is closely associated with limestones, but will nevertheless grow occasionally on acid ground. Limes were the dominant trees of lowland, pre-Neolithic woodland (Greig 1982), but they are uncommon now, always notable when we come across them. Why? Large-leaved Lime especially may have preferred just those fertile, well-drained soils that were cleared for agriculture (Pigott 1981). Both limes are palatable, which made them vulnerable to browsing by cattle. In the south-east lowlands they were probably eliminated when coppices were replanted with more useful species. Limes rarely colonised new woodland, because they rarely flowered when treated as coppice, and rarely set fertile seed in the cool British summers (Pigott and Huntley 1981). Lately, however, the characteristically fingered lime seedlings have appeared every spring in the Wye Valley woods, so perhaps the ending of coppicing (allowing trees to grow large enough to fruit) and warmer summers will henceforward allow limes to spread. Limes have survived nonetheless because individual trees can maintain themselves indefinitely. Coppice stools re-sprout with 78

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astonishing vigour, eventually developing into giant stool clusters. Pollard limes grow into giants if cropped regularly over centuries. Mature trees maintain a population of base sprouts, which will form new trees if the main tree falls. Fallen trees also sprout freely from the trunk if a tree leans or falls. Limes will even root from the tips of pendant branches if these are pinned to the ground. Against this background, one wonders what age individual limes can achieve. Pigott (1989) estimated ages exceeding 1,000 years in Cumbria, but some of the huge coppice clusters in ancient woods, where all trees come into leaf and drop leaves simultaneously, could be much older clones. The great pollards found in the Welsh borderlands look very old, especially the occasional multi-pollards that have been developed from coppice, but they will be younger than the large stool clusters. By reproducing vegetatively and spreading by layers, limes are potentially immortal. They also remain free of debilitating blights,

above: Left: Small-leaved Lime’s characteristic arching branches can sometimes be confused with Wych Elm in mixed woodland. Right, top: Small-leaved Lime in flower; bottom: Largeleaved Lime at Rook Clift, Sussex, showing pendant flowers in bud.

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First-year seedling of Small-leaved Lime, with characteristically fingered cotyledons and the first leaves, which start to resemble adult foliage. These are now seen every spring in the woods of the Wye Valley.

and in the 1970s proved to be resistant to herbicides. Small-leaved Lime always outnumbered Large-leaved Lime, even in pre-Neolithic woodlands. It is now concentrated into the southern Welsh borderlands, the White Peak, southern East Anglia and the Lincolnshire limewoods (where the county is named after the tree and lime leaves are etched into a brass in the church at Linwood). Large-leaved Lime is now concentrated into a scatter of woods along the Welsh borders, especially the Wye Valley and Golden Valley, the White Peak and the Magnesian limestone near Doncaster, where it is associated with cliffs, steep slopes and well-drained soils (Pigott 2020). Once widespread in the lowlands, it was thought to be largely extinct as a native until a scatter of ancient coppice stools, stubs and pollards was found in ancient woods and on ancient boundaries on the scarp of the South Downs and in the North Downs at Box Hill, all associated with a suite of rare plants and invertebrates (Abraham and Rose 2000). In addition, amongst the Small-leaved Lime woods of eastern England are scattered coppice limes with some hybrid characteristics. Lime bark was stripped to make ropes; poles were used for crates and hop-poles; but its timber was preferred only for decorative carving. Material from scattered limes was presumably just bundled up as fuel, roading and other non-specific uses. Unlike its relative, Large-leaved Lime was widely planted from the Middle Ages onwards as a superior source of honey. Flowering limes are particularly attractive to bees and butterflies, a point brought home to me in a Transylvanian pasture studded with mature limes, each one of which was a fluttering mass of fritillaries. Lime honey, which tastes lightly of citrus fruits and mint, is said to be rich in vitamins.

Wych Elm Wych Elm, which survived the last glaciation in Iberia, Italy and Greece, returned early to Britain, reaching southern Britain by 9,500 years ago. The main invasion front spread at a remarkable 80

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Forest dominants 500 metres per year through central England into Wales, but slowed down in Scotland, reaching north-west Scotland 6,200 years ago at 100 metres per year. It formed a major component of western broadleaved woods in the pre-Neolithic (Birks 1989) and still does: favouring deep, base-rich and often moist soils, it forms a graceful, arching tree characteristically overhanging an upland stream and a dripping rock. Peak elm occurred between 6,000 and 5,500 years ago, but then elms suffered a rapid and widespread decline, which has been attributed variously to a cooling climate, clearance for agriculture and shredding for fodder. The decline, however, happened within a decade in some places and without other trees being affected, suggesting that the main cause was disease (Rackham 2003). Wych Elm is easy to confuse with lime at first glance, for both have arching branches, broad leaves and smooth bark. Indeed, there are precedents for such confusion: medieval languages throughout western Europe, including Welsh, mixed the two genera (Richens 1983). Tansley (1939) described it as ‘a magnificent widely branching and lofty tree when well grown’. Leaves are broadest nearer the tip, which is slightly drawn out into a point, and asymmetric at the base,

Wych Elm fruit and foliage. The leaves of this tree have single points, but many of the Wych Elms in western Britain have three-pointed leaves.

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Trees and Woodlands serrated on the margins, and feel rough on the upper side. Some leaves actually have trident-like three-pointed tips. Wych Elms of the north and west tend to have narrower leaves than those of the south, which has prompted some authorities to recognise them as subspecies montana and glabra respectively, though opinions differ on the correct names. Wych Elm hybridises occasionally with English Elm in southeast England; and often with Ulmus minor in southern England. Shade-tolerant as both seedling and tree, Wych Elm is well designed for persisting in undisturbed forests, but it also shares with light-demanders an ability to grow rapidly in gaps and produce seed early, at 13 years old. Full height, which exceptionally reaches over 40m, is achieved by 60 years. Some live over 400 years. Given the chance in open conditions or as pollards, they will become huge. The largest recorded in Britain, felled in Church Leigh, Staffordshire, in the 17th century, evidently measured 37m tall and 15.4m GBH. When felled, apart from an immense amount of timber, eight local worthies signed a document to record that it also yielded 61 loads of firewood, each requiring six oxen to cart it away (Plot 1686). Most Wych Elms grow in deep, moist, well-drained, nitrate-rich, neutral–alkaline soils, which tend to be best developed towards the base of slopes, where they receive nutrients and water flushing down the slope. They cannot withstand prolonged flooding. Nor can they withstand drought, though one does wonder: Wych Elm grows out of limestone cliffs, and saplings can sometimes be seen growing from cracks in walls. Formerly treated as coppice and rarely planted as timber, most Wych Elms were subordinate trees, though they grew into the canopy when coppice was neglected. Mature trees stand out in spring because they flower from late January onwards and may even produce seed before the leaves unfurl in April. Their fruits are dispersed mainly by wind, which regularly carries them over 30m, but they are also dispersed by water, which will carry them more than a kilometre downstream – no doubt this helped Wych Elm to race across Britain after the ice retreated. Wych Elm leaves are nutrient-rich. When they fall, their litter decays rapidly, encouraging earthworms and sequestering more carbon in the soil than other broadleaves. This nutritious foliage places it at the top of the menu for deer and other browsers, which partly explains elm’s predilection for inaccessible rock faces and rocky stream sides. It also encouraged early farmers to lop it as a source of leaf hay, a practice which just about continues in Norway. 82

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Seedling elms, which are never common, also suffer more than most at the teeth of Wood Mice. Today, large Wych Elms are rare because most were killed in the 1970s by Dutch elm disease (DED), caused by Ophiostoma novo-ulmi, a fungus that suffocates the sap flows. The epidemic entered via timber imported from Canada and rapidly spread out from the ports with the help of Scolytus beetles. The suckering elms suffered most, but Wych Elms were also hit hard, especially where they were abundant, tall and easily found by Scolytus. Nevertheless, the species survives because some seed is set before they die, some grow again from the base, and a few growing slowly on dry sites remained hidden. Woodland Wych Elms have also survived in reduced numbers, partly because beetles rarely disperse beyond 300m (Anderbrant and Schlyter 1987) and surviving elms are increasingly isolated. Through it all, there have been a few big, conspicuous Wych Elms that have survived unscathed. The disease was slower to spread to Scotland and northern Britain, but it arrived. The species recovered from previous outbreaks (Rackham 1980) and will do so again.

Not all Wych Elms have perished from disease. This mature tree in a hedge near St Briavels, Gloucestershire, still fruits abundantly and shows no sign of disease.

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Suckering elms Throughout the southern half of Britain, Wych Elm is accompanied by other elms which I will collectively call suckering elms, though some do not sucker. Elm classification is fraught to the point that no two authorities seem to agree. Considering only the non-Wych Elms, Richens (1983) allows one species with several varieties, the highly variable Field Elm (Ulmus minor). The Atlas (Preston et al. 2002) maps English Elm (Ulmus procera), Field Elm (Ulmus minor) and Plot’s Elm (Ulmus plotii), as well as two hybrids. Rackham (1980) recognised English Elms (U. procera), Smooth-leaved Elms (U. minor or U. carpinifolia) and a range of hybrids between Field Elm and Wych Elm, which he collectively named ‘Lineage Elm’. Later he recognised three groups, English Elm (U. procera), East Anglian Elm (U. minor) and Cornish Elm (U. sarnensis) (Rackham 2006). My experience of woodland elms leads me to Rackham’s first grouping. The elms with small, rounded leaves are English Elms, and those with longer, narrow, Hornbeam-like leaves are Smooth-leaved (or East Anglian) Elms. Both sucker freely and rarely set seed. On the many occasions when I have not been sure I’m looking at Wych Elm, I assume I have found hybrid Lineage elms, which hardly sucker at all. In fact, they form large coppice stools like Wych Elm. Each group has recognisable local forms, which appear to be clones dispersed by planting. Indeed, during lectures, Richens’ partytrick was to invite the audience to present him with any leafy bough from within Cambridgeshire, which he would examine briefly and say which village it had come from. He became convinced that all suckering elms had been introduced as fodder plants from places in mainland Europe in and after the Bronze Age. Rackham (1986) disagreed and noted that the smooth-leaved elms are associated with floodplain woodland in mainland Europe, a habitat long lost from the English Midlands and East Anglia. This possibility had also occurred to me when surveying the elms ranged along a stream in Bedford Purlieus, which before disease were mixed with other native trees, just as they are along the Rhine, Danube and other large rivers. Many of the suckering elm clones are confined to field boundaries, but from there they have spread into ancient woods, sometimes eliminating the previous assemblage of trees. Somehow – as seedlings or by transplanting – they have also reached woodland interiors. Once established, they form dense stands of maiden growth with 84

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an underwood of suppressed saplings. Some ancient woods, such as Papworth Wood (Cambridgeshire), have been taken over completely; in others several clones have spread until they met on armistice lines; and in Overhall Grove (Cambridgeshire) some suckering elms were promoted as standards. Since 1970, these patterns have been grossly disrupted by disease, which has hit English Elms particularly hard, leaving groves of dead wood that have since disintegrated. Some clones, however, proved more resistant (Rackham 2003), and others have scarcely blinked: Overhall Grove is still dominated by elms. Outside woods, the hedgerow elms that were once such a feature of the countryside have been reduced to thickets of new stems, if they have survived at all. Gone are the characteristic billowing crowns spreading out above trunks clothed in smaller branches. Gone, too, are the hedgerow pollards, including the magnificent collection in the village closes of Knapwell, Cambridgeshire. They survive in paintings and photographs, but for those of us who knew landscapes of elms before 1970, this was an epidemic from which lowland village and farming landscapes have not recovered. The Lineage elms that Oliver Rackham found in Suffolk and Essex have generally smooth leaves like Field Elms, but, like Wych

Foliage of English Elms at Boscastle, Cornwall.

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Pollard narrow-leaved elms in Knapwell, Cambridgeshire, in 1967. Since lost to disease, it is now hard to believe that they were ever there.

Elms, form giant coppice stools and do not sucker. Named after Lineage Wood (Suffolk), where the coppice was dominated by these distinctive trees, these were not new arrivals from the margins, but ancient denizens of the woodland interior.

Oaks Oaks are the reliable presence in British woodland. Few woods are completely without oaks; many owe their character to a generation of great oaks; and individual oaks change little through a human lifetime. Their personification of strength, permanence and utility made them the national tree of England and the emblem of the National Trust. Their ecological, cultural and practical importance was recognised in the publication of the most comprehensive of the early Biological Flora accounts ( Jones 1959) and a major symposium (Morris and Perring 1974). They were also graced with a small book for a general audience by no less than Sir Arthur Tansley (1952). The species are named after the length of the stalks on which acorns are borne, which are short for Durmast or Sessile Oak and long for Pedunculate. Confusingly, the leaves are the other way round: Pedunculate Oak has short-stalked leaves with auricles, whereas Sessile Oak leaves are long-stalked. The two species were first distinguished in the 16th century, but their taxonomy and status have long been controversial (Gardner 1974). Their sub-fossil 86

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Forest dominants pollen and macroscopic remains cannot be separated, but we assume that both species were present in prehistoric woodland. The many representations of oak in the decorations of medieval church buildings seem to be overwhelmingly of Pedunculate Oak, the species that was seemingly more esteemed by pigs seeking acorns and by carpenters for its greater production of angled limbs (Hadfield 1974). Oaks were the pre-eminent broadleaved tree in Britain: oak timber was strong and durable enough for the frames of traditional buildings, oak bark was used to tan leather, and small wood was turned into charcoal. Shortly after the Second World War the two species dominated 49% of all English above: Sessile Oak, with characteristic long-stalked broadleaved woodland, 55% in Wales, but leaves and acorns borne on short stalks. only 20% in Scotland (Forestry Commission below: Pedunculate Oak, with short-stalked leaves and 1953). In England and Wales oak-dominated acorns borne on long stalks. woodlands were far and away the largest component of high forest, coppice-withstandards and those woods that had been devastated by wartime felling. In addition, oaks were a substantial component of the underwood in coppice-with-standards on dry, usually acid soils and a frequent element in mixed coppices. For centuries, oak standards were grown for multiples of the coppice rotation and felled at less than 100 years. New oak standards were created by leaving saplings and particularly vigorous stool shoots when the coppice was cut. Since regrowth from a felled standard could become part of the underwood, individual oaks could in theory alternate between overstorey and underwood through the centuries. Trees are shaped by their circumstances. Within woodland oaks grow clean-trunked to the canopy, but in parkland they spread like huge, billowing cumulus clouds. As coppice, their trunks are 87

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Sessile Oak woodland on sea cliffs at Millook, Cornwall, forming depauperate, windswept woodland. Oaks are reduced to creeping shrubs on the most exposed margins. Susan Peterken is my scale object.

often crooked, and in extreme circumstances they can become spectacularly contorted. The graceful, spreading, broad leaves of Sessile Oak contrast with the lumpen foliage of Pedunculate Oak. Within species, variation in form must have a genetic basis: in the Forest of Dean, for example, one can find ‘Jack of Yat’ Sessile Oaks in which a fan of straight branches grow from a very short trunk. Veteran oaks are renowned for their great ages, but, John Dryden notwithstanding (Chapter 2), no-one is sure how long they can live, partly because ancient oaks are invariably hollow and lack early growth rings. The various methods of estimating age confirm that they are medieval and may well exceed 1,000 years (Farjon 2017). They are not immortal, though. The largest oaks listed by Loudon (1844) have since died, including the Newland Oak in Gloucestershire, which late in life had a girth measured variously at 14–18m. About 20 years ago, I counted growth rings and measured radial growth rates at many points in its decaying remains and convinced myself that it had reached well over 1,000 years. The Bowthorpe Oak (Lincolnshire), at over 12m girth, is likewise estimated at 1,000 years. Only open-grown oaks, usually pollards, attain such ages: within woods, they can certainly grow for well over 300 years, but I suspect few reach more than 500 years.

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Oaks have well-marked mast years followed next spring by carpets of seedlings, almost all of which are destined to die within a year. Until the early 20th century, enough survived to restock the woods and wood-pastures, but now they have much greater difficulty surviving within woods because the Oak Mildew arrived from America to grow a silvery coat over leaves, which reduces growth and weakens their competitive power. Outside woodland, especially in ‘unimproved’ grassland, oaks still regenerate prolifically. This inability to regenerate in shade is the modern Achilles heel of oak in woodland: despite their size and durability, oaks need almost as much light as birches to grow in woods. Very long-lived though they are, oaks are slowly vanishing from woodland, except perhaps woods on dry, infertile soils. Their long-term survival depends mainly on planting and colonising new ground. Both species returned to Britain in the pre-Boreal, spread widely during the Boreal period, roughly 9,000 years ago, and achieved such prominence that pre-Neolithic forests are sometimes known as Mixed Oak Forests. We can still handle their mummified remains when bog oaks are dragged from the eastern Fens and low tides reveal them in

Jack o’ Kent’s Oak in Kentchurch Park, the largest oak in Herefordshire, measured at 11.35m girth in 1997.

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Trees and Woodlands the Severn muds. Oaks were nurtured by generations of woodmen in ancient wood-pastures and coppices because they provided acorns for pigs and were so useful as timber. Now their natural place in woodlands is hard to discern, especially in the case of Pedunculate Oak, the tree usually chosen for planting and preferred as field trees. Insofar as one can interpret their occurrence in natural terms, Pedunculate Oak is the species of heavy, fertile, moist soils in the lowlands, whereas Sessile Oak is more a species of thin, dry soils in the uplands, but there are some surprising exceptions. Although Pedunculate Oak was overwhelmingly the standard tree of lowland coppices, it is present in hyperoceanic west Highland woods, such as Tokavaig and Glasdrum, and is the species that forms Wistman’s Wood, the high-altitude extreme oakwood on Dartmoor. Sessile Oak is the main species of Cornish valleys, Welsh valley sides and rainsoaked western Highlands, but it is also scattered through the woodpastures of the New Forest, the common woods of the Chart (Kent) and many clusters of lowland coppices. On a world scale Quercus is a large genus centred in hotter and drier latitudes to the south: British oaks reflect this in their preference for drier soils and their capacity to withstand drought.

Scots Pine Scots Pine, like oak, has become a national symbol. Both are longlived forest dominants that demand high light intensity to regenerate. As the first of the forest dominants to recolonise Britain after the ice ages, pine contributed more than 50% of all the tree pollen preserved in the peats of lowland England 9,000 years ago, but by 5,700 years ago it had been ‘pushed’ north and west by later colonists to strongholds in northern Scotland and south-west Ireland. Today, it remains an acknowledged native in the Highlands and, as a remnant population, at Rockforest on the Burren in western Ireland (Cabot and Goodwillie 2018). Native populations may also survive in the New Forest and other southern heaths, where there is a continuous trace of pine pollen in the bogs and depauperate pines can still be seen on the fringes of mires, just the place where it might have survived through dominance by broadleaves. The main ‘native pinewoods’ were listed and described in The Native Pinewoods of Scotland (Steven and Carlisle 1959). They range from Glen Tanar in Lower Deeside west to Barrisdale on the Knoydart 90

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Caledonian pinewood ROTHIEMURCHUS FOREST, Strathspey Visitors driving into Aviemore, or heading out to the Lairig Ghru or the Cairngorms ski centre, pass into a spacious, tree-filled landscape that is more reminiscent of the large-scale, recently developed landscapes of America than anywhere in southern Scotland and further south. Rothiemurchus is the most accessible of the great tracts of contiguous pinewoods that run from Abernethy and Glenmore through to Glen Feshie. Their open structure affords grand views of snow-capped mountains and a quintessentially Highland freedom to roam. Unlike many Caledonian pinewoods, Rothiemurchus displays the full development of boreal forest, full of Juniper, mixed with birch and ranging from dense uniform stands of narrowcrowned trees to older, spreading, ‘granny’ pines and open heathy glades. A thin scatter of Rowan, Holly, Bird Cherry and Alder can be found, especially along streams. Pine regenerates well on the irregular ground and stony shoals of the River Luineag, but less copiously on the grazed and peat-covered ground elsewhere. Towards Glen Feshie, pinewood reaches high on Creag Fhiaclach, where it comes close to its altitudinal limits. By Loch Pityoulish, mature oak woodland of both species hints at the surprising mixtures of pine and oak found occasionally in the region. Birch-dominated woodland with Juniper and Rowan below develops on grasscovered ground among the pinewoods.

Most Scots Pine woods include old, spreading pines, known as ‘grannies’. This fine tree on the fringes of Rothiemurchus Forest illustrates the open conditions in which they must have originally grown.

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Trees and Woodlands Peninsula, and from Glen Falloch near Loch Lomond to Glen Einig in the northern Highlands, dominating the landscape around Braemar and Aviemore and the long straths west of Inverness. At Creag Fhiaclach on the western edge of the Cairngorms they define the treeline, and at Barrisdale they descend close to the Atlantic shore. Mostly the pinewoods grow on what would otherwise be heathlands, but they also occupy the floodplain gravels of the Feshie and relatively base-rich sites in the Ryvoan Pass, the Findhorn gorge and by the Moniack Burn west of Inverness. Scots Pine is the British representative of a large northernhemisphere genus that stretches from the near Arctic to north Africa (Carlisle and Brown 1968, Richardson 1998). Pines characteristically grow fast with a single strong leader generating annual whorls of branches that in old age develop rather more irregular forms, especially those open-grown trees (‘granny pines’) that form the oldest generation of many pinewoods. With few exceptions they occupy coarse, nutrient-poor soils inclined to drought and the margins of mires. By letting far more light reach the ground than spruce and firs, Scots Pine allows an underwood of dwarf shrubs to develop. Pines and Juniper in the underwood are both flammable, with the result that pinewood dynamics are naturally dominated by fire and their ability to recolonise disturbed ground rapidly from their abundant seed. They associate with oaks in warm regions, and with birch and poplars elsewhere. The Caledonian pinewoods were extensively felled in the 18th and 19th centuries, so most of the trees we see now are less than 250 years old. The old, open-grown and often low-branching granny pines speak of a history of grazing, but grow amongst even-aged groves of younger pines. Each wood is different, as Edwards and Mason (2006) demonstrated. Glenmore had two generations of 30–90 and 180–220 years; Glen Garry likewise, but with generations of 20–60 and 120–170 years. Black Wood of Rannoch’s pines were spread over 80–170 years with an oldest tree at 270 years. And Glen Affric’s pines were 170–270 years, with nothing younger than 140 years. I once thought Scots Pine would not exceed 300 years, but I found a stump with over 400 annual rings on the edge of Rannoch, and in a remote part of Glen Loyne a scatter of aged pines averaging 440 years (with one of 550 years) has been found. In northern Scandinavia they can live over 750 years.

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Ash Ash is the lady of the woods, now the femme fatale. I sang the ‘Ash grove how graceful …’ as an infant and it is still the only tune in which I can switch key from major to minor, a nice metaphor for Ash’s recent history. Lightly clothed in pinnate leaves emerging late from black buds, Ash has a slim trunk, arching branches and smooth, pale bark (Rackham 2014, Thomas 2016). It appears light and almost fragile, but it endures harsh weather as the common tree of exposed, upland farmland. Associated with some of the driest soils on limestone pavements, it is also versatile enough to infiltrate wet Alder woods. It is now the species under threat, for Ashes are dying back throughout Britain and they have yet to face the Emerald Ash Borer, which is making its way across Europe.

A group of Ash in Lady Park Wood, Monmouthshire, drawn tall by 75 years of growth. Stands like this seem destined to remain only in the memory.

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The upland landscape of Ash pollards, maintained by the National Trust at Watendlath, Cumbria, but now at risk from ash dieback.

Pollen profiles suggest that Ash was a widespread but minor species until its expansion in the later Mesolithic and Neolithic, when it evidently profited from woodland disturbance by people and its ability to colonise vacant ground rapidly. Today, the ashwoods of the White Peak are celebrated, yet Ash-dominated woodland can be found almost throughout Britain. Many prove on investigation to be secondary. It is possible that, until ash dieback disease arrived recently (Chapter 11), it was still profiting from disturbance: in many woods in the Lower Wye Valley it has become abundant only in the last century and was still spreading into hedges and underused small fields near woodland. Within ancient woods Ash was treated as underwood. Stools will sprout indefinitely, eventually growing into hollow rings of old wood from which new shoots still spring with great vigour after each cutting. Judging from their size, some date back to the Middle Ages (Rackham 1980). As field trees they were often repeatedly pollarded for fodder, eventually developing vast hollow trunks that are sadly breaking apart now that crown branches are allowed to grow heavy. A remarkable concentration of Ash pollards in boundaries, fields and woods has been maintained by the National Trust at Watendlath, but this is now as threatened by disease as the Knapwell elm pollards were in 1970. Before the current ash dieback (chalara) epidemic, Ash’s ecological strength in woodland derived from a combination of pioneer and forest-dominant characteristics. By fruiting prolifically, Ash maintained vast populations of tiny, static saplings in shade, which

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could spring into vigorous growth if a gap opened above them. Once established in gaps, they outpaced the other forest dominants to the canopy, where they could persist for up to 200 years. They cast only light shade, so shade-tolerant trees such as Beech, limes and elm grew with them and eventually outlasted them. Unless they maintained themselves as emergents above the general canopy height, their crowns were progressively squeezed. Individual Ash are resilient. Seedlings and saplings will grow tall and spindly in an effort to outgrow bramble, relying on the bramble for support. Those growing in shade try to grow towards the light and can grow almost horizontally in the attempt. If the direction from which light comes changes (for example, when a new gap forms), they will turn around. A leaning tree develops trunk sprouts on the upper side, which take over the lead if the original leader fails. Trees being out-competed in the canopy send out larger branches towards any gap, thus generating eccentric crowns. Those losing ground in the sub-canopy generate trunk sprouts as the leader fails until the tree is all sprouts and no crown. Then or later, they also generate base sprouts, which have the potential to grow well, but rarely get the chance. In fact a tree in shade can be reduced to a living stump and still keep sprouting. Fallen trees sprout again from the crown branches, trunk and rootstock, though the latter stand the best chance of survival, being nearer the roots and under the gap. An ageing Ash suffering from canker produces fresh sprouts from the trunk. Deer browse and break base sprouts, yet the Ash attempts to re-sprout many times: eventually they give up, but it can be a long

Variation in the stem pigmentation of Ash. The three specimens were growing within 10m of each other in a hedge.

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Trees and Woodlands struggle. And of course an Ash that is felled will sprout vigorously, hence coppicing and pollarding. Ash populations are now suffering the chalara epidemic, and we wait helplessly to see how much of this behaviour will survive. A tree under attack will respond with new sprouts within the crown. Chalara also infects and kills trunk and base sprouts. Genetic heterogeneity within the population – readily appreciated from variation in the degree of purple pigmentation in new growth – may save a minority, which in time will allow Ash to resume its former place if we and other competing tree species allow.

Naturalised dominants To these native dominants we must add several other tree species that have become naturalised to the point that they now form an integral part of many British woods. Some are near-neighbours – native in nearby parts of mainland Europe – but others have been brought here from afar. The status of some is open to debate. Sweet Chestnut is clearly a forest dominant, and Sycamore is readily bracketed with Ash as a forest dominant with some pioneer characteristics. Holm Oak, an evergreen broadleaved species, is broadly equivalent to Holly, as its vernacular and scientific names imply, though it grows larger. Evergreen conifers, such as Norway Spruce, have only a broad equivalence to Scots Pine. Larches, the deciduous conifer, have no native counterpart. Sycamore is easily the most contentious of the broadleaves. I have given many talks over the years, but only four have generated heated disagreements, and three of these were about Sycamore. Frequently found as an aggressive invader of ancient semi-natural woods, it has been deplored by many conservationists, but there is a case for accepting it as a native (Green 2005) and a practical case for treating it as a de facto native (Peterken 1996). In the samples of semi-natural woodland I recorded throughout Britain in the 1970s and 1980s (Chapter 6), it was in or close to 19% of them, and in most it was clear that Sycamore had not been planted. It was most frequent in western oceanic and wet woodlands. It thrived on a very wide range of soils, but was most frequent on alkaline soils and least on strongly acid soils. Like Ash it regenerates strongly in gaps and can hang on as suppressed juveniles in shade. In fact, it alternates with Ash in the sense that it regenerates well under Ash but poorly under itself, and 96

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vice versa (Waters and Savill 1992). Sycamore is vigorously debarked by Grey Squirrels, which reduce young trees to untidy candelabras and introduce rot to the main branches of mature trees. Sweet Chestnut has certainly been widely planted, but it was growing in Britain centuries ago (witness the Tortworth Chestnut) and regenerates naturally in ancient semi-natural woodland. Formerly regarded as a Roman introduction, recent evidence suggests that it arrived later, albeit by the 12th century ( Jarman et al. 2019). It is now well established in the south, mainly, but not entirely, on acid soils, where it has been widely planted as coppice. Otherwise, it is found mostly as scattered trees, though, like its close relatives Beech and oak, it can dominate high forest. Its elongated, broadly serrated leaves and corkscrew bark pattern make it conspicuous. Very many other broadleaves have been introduced to parks and gardens, but few have been grown for timber. Several have started to infiltrate native woodlands, and some of them have been included in the Journal of Ecolog y’s Biological Flora accounts (see table on page 71). Turkey Oak is now frequent in ancient woods and will invade grassland, for example at Barnack Hills and Holes in Cambridgeshire. Holm Oak is well established and locally dominant in southern coastal woodland. This high forest dominated by long-lived, evergreen trees would have been unprecedented in Britain were it not for the Hollydominated high forest in Staverton Thicks, Suffolk.

Part of an avenue of Sweet Chestnuts at Bigsweir in the Lower Wye valley, now approaching 300 years old.

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Scots Pine regenerating on heathland at Beaulieu Road, New Forest. The Scots Pine woodland in the background originated this way before the Second World War.

Conifers were introduced to Britain in two waves. The introductions from mainland Europe – Larch, Norway Spruce, Silver Fir, Corsican Pine – came in or before the 18th century and were widely planted in new woods and belts, often in mixture with oak or Beech. At the same time Scots Pine was reintroduced to England and Wales. In the mid-19th century the great conifers arrived from western North America – Sitka Spruce, Douglas Fir, Western Hemlock, Lawson Cypress, Grand Fir, Noble Fir, Lodgepole Pine – together with Japanese Larch. By 1947, the commonest conifers in high forest were Scots Pine, European Larch, Sitka Spruce, Norway Spruce and European Larch (Forestry Commission 1953), but they were unevenly spread. The two spruces, for example, were commonest in Wales, and, as a legacy of forestry history, European species still gravitated to private woods, leaving American species concentrated in the 20th-century Forestry Commission plantations. Today, Sitka Spruce accounts for over half of woodland stocked with conifers (665,000ha), far ahead of the next most popular species – Scots Pine, larches, Lodgepole Pine, Norway Spruce, Corsican Pine and Douglas Fir (Forest Research online statistics, 2021). A vast variety of other species have been planted for ornament and tried experimentally for timber growing (Mitchell 1974). Some of these species have been able to regenerate naturally from seed and thus have the basic requirement to become naturalised. Most obvious is Scots Pine, which in the New Forest covered so much heathland (11,000 acres, 4,500ha) by 1937 that it had to be felled to restore the pasturage (Tubbs 1968). Western Hemlock, never a common timber tree, has become a coniferous counterpart of Sycamore: it seeds prolifically, its seedlings grow well in shade, and it spreads rapidly. Others that regenerate well enough for plantations to be restocked naturally are Sitka Spruce, Lodgepole Pine, Douglas Fir, Western Red Cedar and the two larches (Nixon and Worrell 1999). In fact, it is now possible to contemplate facsimiles of the Pacific Northwest rainforest developing in Britain as naturally regenerating mixtures of Sitka Spruce, Douglas Fir and Western

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Forest dominants Hemlock, though whether this would work with fires instead of felling has understandably not been tested. My own experience of conifer regeneration goes back to the 1950s New Forest, where the Forestry Commission were regenerating Scots Pine at Woodfidley by the shelterwood system (Chapter 6), thereby mimicking natural fire regimes of the Boreal, and Douglas Fir in Highland Water by a selection system ( Jones 1945b). More recently, we used the impressive, naturally regenerating, continuous-cover Douglas Fir stands at Ganllwyd to debate forest conservation issues with training courses: this is part of Coed-y-Brenin Forest in Snowdonia, where a wide variety of introduced conifer species are regenerating naturally in clear-fells and on margins. European Larch has also been able to regenerate after clear-fells in mixed woods, though usually in ones and twos. With Norway Spruce, Sitka Spruce, Douglas Fir, Western Hemlock and Western Red Cedar following Sycamore in developing a natural ecology in Britain, these self-sustaining immigrants raise uncomfortable questions about what it means to be native to Britain – uncomfortable because purist nature conservation antipathy to their presence echoes nativist attitudes to ethnic minorities and recent human immigrants. Once these trees spread from their point of entry, integrate into native woodland, adapt to the British environment and become part of British culture, they become almost as British as the species that immigrated before the Romans (Peterken 2001). These species not only fit in ecologically and culturally, they actually become increasingly British as ‘land races’ develop. Thus, if one wants to grow Sycamore or Silver Fir in Britain, the best provenances will be British because, after a few generations, selection pressures exerted by foresters and the natural environment have adapted their genetic constitutions to local conditions. The distinction between native and not-native is not binary: a continuum exists from pre-Neolithic native through Beech in Scotland, Scots Pine on Surrey heaths and naturalised introductions to the most recent of arboreal newcomers. Even long-native trees have been so redistributed and controlled by people that we scarcely know where and how they would grow and combine naturally.

Douglas Fir plantation regenerating naturally near Bolderwood Lodge, New Forest.

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Pioneers, small trees, shrubs and climbers

chapter four

T

he large, long-lived trees dominate the woods and the minds of foresters and ecologists, but the small and transient species deserve notice too. We awake from

each winter to clouds of white blossom on Blackthorns, Wild Cherries and hawthorns. When we visit the chalkland woods, both we and the woodland butterflies notice the diversity of shrubs on the edges. When we walk the hills, the last trees we see on our climb to the top are Rowans and small willows. And, when we southerners journey to the Outer Hebrides or the northern Highlands, it is not Beech, oak and Ash that we see clinging to rock faces or lining burns amongst moorland, but birch, Rowan, Aspen and Grey Willow. This tolerance and resilience is exemplified for me by the Rowan in Cwm Idwal, silhouetted against the narrow sky high on the sides of the great cleft of Twll Du, the Devil’s Kitchen, which has remained unchanged since I first saw it in 1965.

Pioneers Pioneers are capable of reaching full canopy height and thus of dominating woodlands, but they dominate only temporarily and in ecologically marginal and extreme locations. By means of copious and well-distributed seed production and rapid early growth, they are the principal initial colonists of vacant ground. They hold their place for a generation only, to be replaced by forest dominants, for they cannot bear shade and thus regenerate infrequently in established woodland. The pioneers comprise two birches, Wild Cherry, Alder, Aspen, two sallows and several poplars and tree willows. Birches also colonise abandoned heaths and grassland. They and sallows are prolific regenerants in clear-felled woodland. Alder is the main colonist of wet ground, together with the sallows and birches. Aspen and Wild Cherry stand out as radically different, for they regenerate more from

opposite page:

Common Hawthorn, easily dismissed as a flowering shrub, is a small tree that can live for hundreds of years.

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Trees and Woodlands suckers than seeds, building up clones within woodland that spring into action after felling and quickly dominate patches of the new growth: each tree is short-lived, but the root system lives on, supported by weak suckers in the underwood, until another opportunity occurs. The natural habitats of the several poplars and tree-forming willows in riparian corridors have been so altered by millennia of river control and use of floodplains for grazing and haymaking that we know little about the natural woodland they would form in Britain. Birches, Aspen and sallows pioneered the return of trees to Britain 12,000 years ago during the last stages of the last glaciation (Godwin 1975). They were eventually displaced by oak, lime and other forest dominants, except in the north of Scotland where birches in particular still dominate. Alder arrived later and became abundant over 7,000 years ago. Within woodland, pioneers remain opportunists, surviving by the arboreal equivalent of quick wits as rapid occupiers of natural gaps, margins and clear-fells. Outside woodland, on abandoned commons and mires, succession reprises post-glacial succession. Pioneers are short-lived by tree standards. Towards the south, even dominant, well-lit trees that maintain their position in the canopy rarely last more than 70 years, though some birch, Alder and Wild Cherry will exceed 100 years. To the north and at the treeline in Scandinavia, where growth is slower, birch live well over 200 years, but I have found no authentic record of trees of this age in northern Scotland. Apart from Alder, some poplars and tree willows, which are associated with wet ground and floodplains, one looks almost in vain for signs that pioneers pick out particular site conditions. My records (Chapter 7) confirm that birches, sallows, Aspen and Wild Cherry are remarkably catholic in the range of site types they can occupy. Thus, the median soil preferences of Aspen, Wild Cherry and Goat Willow are neutral–alkaline, but their pH ranges (3.7–8.5, 3.6–8.5 and 3.6– 8.5 respectively) are very wide. Downy Birch is slightly more biased to strongly acid soils than Silver Birch. Silver Birch is not recorded on organic woodland soils, but otherwise both could seemingly occur anywhere. Downy Birch is in the majority, even on very dry, shedding sites where Silver Birch might be expected to be commoner. My records also indicate that the two clonal species rarely grow intermixed, but both show signs of regional differentiation. In the uplands of the north and west, Aspen is more a species of well-drained light soils, but seems biased to poorly drained heavy soils in the lowlands. Wild Cherry 102

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Pioneers, small trees, shrubs and climbers is biased to more alkaline clay loams in the Welsh borderlands but will occur on light, acid soils in both south-east England and the Scottish Highlands.

Birches The two birches, Silver Birch and Downy Birch, are almost ubiquitous in Britain. They were lumped together by John Evelyn, Carl Linnaeus and John Loudon (1844), who noticed Downy Birch but regarded it as a mere variety of Silver Birch. They were wrong, for Downy Birch has twice as many chromosomes as Silver Birch, and now taxonomists clearly distinguish the two. There ought to be no doubt which is which, for Silver Birch has sharply toothed, pointed leaves and warty twigs that feel like sandpaper, whereas Downy Birch has rounded leaves that are, like the twigs, soft to the touch. In addition, Silver Birch does indeed have white bark which tends to peel

Silver Birch catkins and developing leaves (above) contrast with the more rounded, furry young growth of Downy Birch (below).

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Trees and Woodlands and which fissures with age into rectangular lumps. The problem is that some individuals seem intermediate, the two hybridise and in the Highlands the twigs of Downy Birches are less downy. In fact, detailed study of leaf size, shape, teeth, hairiness and other features reveals that the form of Downy Birch in Scotland varies from north to south and from east to west (Atkinson 1992). In Scotland, Silver Birch is more a tree of the south and east. Downy Birch forms the northernmost birchwood, which can be found in a moorland gulley at Berriedale on Hoy (Orkney) and other remote northern birchwoods. Their competitive strength comes from rapid growth and colossal annual seed production. Birches formed the vanguard as trees recolonised Britain after the last ice age and became widespread and abundant 10,000 years ago, but they lost ground to later arrivals, particularly Scots Pine, oak and Hazel, except in the far north and west. They remained part of pre-Neolithic forests, presumably taking advantage of disturbances to woodland on dry sandy and wet acid ground. On some other sites they may have had difficulty regenerating, if recent experience in Lady Park Wood is any guide. There, dense birch groves sprang up after wartime fellings, but few birches have colonised the gaps created naturally since 1976. They must, however, have been able to prosper after stand-destroying natural disturbances, as in the Toys Hill beechwood, Kent, where birch regenerated in droves after the ancient Beeches had been levelled in the 1987 storm. Prehistoric forest clearance provided opportunities for birch expansion, but they were limited by widespread grazing outside woodland and vigorous regrowth of coppice within woodland. Recent decades have seen a marked increase in both species throughout the uplands and lowlands. Outside woodland, birch had numerous opportunities to colonise ungrazed heaths and commons, drained fens, such as the residue of Whittlesea Mere at Holme Fen, derelict railways and industrial land. Having expanded, they now quickly reach newly disturbed ground. Conifer afforestation in the uplands provided sites protected from grazing where birch could colonise and expand. Latterly, birch has been a major component of expanding native woodland in the Highlands. In southern coppices, birch has expanded: the likely factors, as listed by Rackham (1989) for Hatfield Forest, were: planting oaks in the 19th century and conifers in the 20th century, which weakened the underwood; felling these plantations, which created extensive vacant ground; 104

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Pioneers, small trees, shrubs and climbers and the arrival of Oak Mildew, which reduced competition from oak regeneration. Birch has always been useful, if not highly regarded. Evelyn (1664) denigrated birch as ‘the worst of timber’, before listing several uses and then describing at length how to turn the sap into a drink with which he could ‘gratifie our laborious wood-man with a draught of his own liquor’. Loudon (1844) said: The Highlanders of Scotland make everything of it; they build their houses, make their beds, chairs, tables, dishes and spoons; construct their mills; make their carts, ploughs, harrows, gates and fences, and even manufacture ropes of it. The branches are employed as fuel in the distillation of whisky; the spray is used for smoking hams and herrings, for which last purpose it is preferred to every other kind of wood. The bark is used for tanning leather, and sometimes, when dried and twisted into a rope, instead of candles. The spray is used for thatching houses; dried before the leaves fall, it made a good bed when heath was scarce. In The Picture, or The Lover’s Resolution (1802), Samuel Taylor Coleridge thought the weeping birch the ‘most beautiful of forest trees, the Lady of the Woods’. Disobedient children may have felt otherwise when they were birched. Birch was sometimes pollarded and often formed part of a coppice mixture, Today it is abundant as a post-disturbance species with Scots Pine and to a lesser degree with oak on dry, acid soils and as a pioneer on heaths, mires, moorland and the fringes of other woodland and as wooded strips lining the heads of burns. Both species are vulnerable to severe droughts, as demonstrated in 1976, but are generally resilient. Heath fires both kill birches and provide the open sites for regeneration. Grazing and browsing will keep birches well clipped, but any relaxation and they can grow away fast. Trampling by deer and cattle breaks up the turf, allows birch seedlings space to establish themselves and reduces competition from herbage. The consequence is that birch woodland is constantly forming and disappearing, an almost amoeboid presence on and around moorland. Both birches live little longer than a human lifetime. Many die standing, but quickly rot at the base and fall, soon leaving only scrolls of rotresisting bark on the ground. Before they fall they sport brackets of the Birch Polypore fungus.

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Wild Cherry

Wild Cherry is briefly conspicuous in the Lower Wye Valley landscape when it flowers in April.

Wild Cherry or Gean, also known as merry or black-fruited cherry, is one of the glories of the late spring woods when its clouds of white flowers stand out against the green flush of expanding foliage. Its leaves – long, bluntly toothed, with drawn-out points – are borne on long stalks attached to dark red-purple twigs with conspicuous spots that expand into a dense pattern of dark horizontal strips on branches. Its bark is smooth, retains some red pigment, and eventually peels in strips. Wild Cherry will grow to 25m, at which height it remains conspicuous in mature beechwoods, such as those in the Chilterns. Reproducing both by seed and vegetatively, it can colonise open ground and occurs singly and in clonal groups within woods, but rarely dominates. There is little doubt that it is native, but, being insect-pollinated, Wild Cherry is confined in the prehistoric record to charcoal and stones from the Neolithic onwards, and it was hardly mentioned in medieval records (Rackham 1980). It is widespread, but frequent only in the woods of south-east England and the southern Welsh borderland. Early writers, such as Loudon (1844), confuse it with

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Pioneers, small trees, shrubs and climbers cultivated cherries, but it seems clear that Wild Cherry has long been planted for its timber and fruit. It was also valued ‘for the food which it supplies to birds, by increasing the number of which, the insects which attack trees of every kind are materially kept under’.

Alder Alder is a member of the same family as the birches and likewise can grow well over 20m, though it is usually much shorter. In winter it can be recognised by its purple buds and tiny, black cones; in summer, by its rounded leaves and dark, fissured bark. In spring it flowers before the leaves emerge. It withstands more shade than birch, especially on what Nisbet (1893) called good, moist soils, but on poor, light soil it demands light. It can be confused with the Grey Alder, introduced from mainland Europe and locally naturalised, but still rare. This has grey, smooth bark and pointed leaves. As John Evelyn put it in Sylva (1664), Alder ‘is of all other the most faithful lover of watery and boggy places, and those most despis’d weeping parts, or water-galls of forests’. Or, as Rackham (2003) explained, it is the native tree most obviously restricted to particular

Catkins and purple buds of Alder, growing characteristically as a waterside tree.

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Trees and Woodlands habitats. We usually notice it as the tree lining the banks of rivers, especially in the west and north, but it also has a strong presence in woodland. In ancient woods, it picks out plateaus, stream sides, low, swampy ground and flush lines on slopes, where it can be found growing as hillside streaks extending from plateau to valley. On floodplains it occupies swamps and lake margins, but here the woodland is usually secondary, on land that was once grazed or mown. The key component in all these situations is a reliable supply of non-stagnant water. If this is assured, Alder will grow across a very wide range of soil pH and on a wide range of soil texture, though it generally shuns heavy clays, where its roots are shallow and thus vulnerable to drought. Alder was one of the early tree colonists after the last glaciation, widespread but infrequent, evidently able to spread rapidly, but confined to wet habitats that tended to be isolated and patchy. Pollen diagrams generally show a rapid increase before the start of the Neolithic that was thought to be due to the onset of a wetter climate, but later analysis revealed that these jumps in abundance took place at different dates, 2,000 years apart (Bennett and Birks 1990), which rules out climate change. Rather, it seems that Alder increased locally when suitable ground became available as floodplains and lakes filled with alluvium and sea level dropped to expose extensive estuarine and coastal muds. Alder woodland regenerates mainly after disturbances because it occupies ground that would otherwise be occupied by vigorous herbage against which its seedlings cannot compete, and this, too, would have ensured that Alder’s expansion was irregular. Once expanded, it became a major component of prehistoric floodplain woodland in, for example, the Brede valley, East Sussex (Waller and Marlow 1994), possibly growing around the kind of braided watercourses that one can still see in the remnant of the remarkable Gearagh, Co. Cork. In both ancient and secondary woodland, as well as along river banks, Alder was generally coppiced, responding vigorously with head-high shoots in the next season. In the wood-pastures of the western oceanic hillsides it has been treated as low pollards. In both regimes, it will sometimes form giant stools and pollards that become ‘veteran trees’ once they exceed 4m girth and perhaps 200 years old. Today, Alders are afflicted by Phytophthora alni, a form of alga, which emerged in 1993 and now infects 20% of Alders (Forest Research website), especially on river banks. 108

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Sallows, Aspen, poplars and tree willows Sallow is a name that has long been inconsistently applied to mediumsized willows with rounded leaves (Loudon 1844). The sallows are known formally as Goat Willow and Grey Willow. Goat Willow grows over 10m, but Grey Willow is usually seen as a shrub. They are best distinguished by leaf shape – broad and rounded in Goat willow, long and narrow in Grey willow – and by the narrow raised ridges formed under the bark of older Grey willow twigs (easily exposed with a thumbnail). Hybrids are common, as is so often the case with willows. Goat Willow catkins, which develop before the leaves, provide an ‘early banquet for the bee’ as the Reverend Johns put it. Both grow in woodlands throughout Britain on all kinds of soil from strongly alkaline to strongly acid and from sandy loam to very poorly drained clay, but Grey Willow tends to favour base-poor soils. Aspen, along with the other poplars, is in the same family as the willows. Like them, it produces catkins in late winter before the leaves develop, male and female catkins being produced on separate plants. Its leaves are small for a poplar, rounded, with blunt teeth (alias wavy margins), held on long stalks that are compressed laterally. This enables them to ‘tremble’ in the slightest breeze and makes them the ‘poetical emblem of restlessness, inconstancy and fear’ ( Johns 1886). Fine, straight trees will grow above 20m: an Aspen at Bothwell Castle, Renfrewshire, was measured at 4 feet (1.2m) diameter. Aspen has a reputation for rarely producing seed, but in 1996 it seeded abundantly in Scotland and most of the seed was viable (Worrell et al. 1999). When fire burned down much of Moscow in 1813, ‘Aspen seedlings sprang up everywhere amongst the ruins’ (Loudon 1844). Seed is dispersed far and wide on the wind, which has enabled it to colonise remote

below: Grey Willow

leaves, fruits and the residue of the catkins’ silky hairs (top), contrasting with the oval leaves with undulating margins of Goat Willow (bottom).

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Aspen foliage, with long, laterally compressed stalks.

cliffs around the Western Isles. Nevertheless, seedlings are very vulnerable to drought, so most successful reproduction in woods is vegetative, with the result that Aspen usually occurs as scattered, single-sex clusters. These clones die out in prolonged shade, but coppicing allows them to generate groves of suckers, as can be seen in Shotover Forest east of Oxford. The trees are fairly droughtresistant, which enables them to grow on sites as different as heavy, waterlogged soils in lowland woods, dry woods on Carboniferous limestone in the Wye Gorge and rock outcrops in the Highlands. Fallow deer find its bitter flavour distasteful, according to Rackham, but Loudon says its leaves and bark were readily eaten by cattle and Beavers respectively. Several other species that are not usually regarded as woodland trees or native deserve a mention, namely White Poplar and its hybrid with Aspen, Grey Poplar, Black Poplar, and several tree willows. The willows White Willow, Crack-willow, Osier and Almond Willow were classified as natives until recently, but are now deemed to be pre-1500 introductions (archaeophytes). White Poplar is classified as a neophyte because no evidence of its presence in the wild has been found before 1597. In the 17th century, Evelyn (1664) declared that White Poplar ‘is ordinary with us’, but Black Poplar was

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rare. Black Poplar is still regarded as native, even though almost all extant trees were originally planted and Ellenberg (1988) considered it to be native only in central Europe, where it is a constituent of floodplain forest, growing with White Willow and suckering elms. Given the highly modified character of Britain’s lowland floodplains and the loss of floodplain forest in the lowlands in prehistory, one is entitled to wonder whether the status of any of these species can be determined at all. They might all be British natives of a lost woodland type. Today, a scatter of Black Poplars is found in farmland (Cooper 2006) as tall, wide-spreading trees with characteristic arching branches and swollen protuberances on their trunks.

Black Poplar pollards on Castlemorton Common, near Malvern, Worcestershire.

Other pioneers Four forest dominants also possess many characteristics of pioneers. Scots Pine and the two oaks seed abundantly (though not every year), distribute their fruits widely, demand light and regenerate mainly on open ground. They can dominate early succession in felled woodland 111

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Trees and Woodlands and on vacant ground outside woodland, but neither can outpace the birches and sallows, which limits their performance in woodland. Ash is much the same, but it bears shade better and grows faster in youth. If they survive in early succession, all four will outlast the true pioneers and eventually dominate.

Small trees Small trees are far from insignificant. They can so dominate the underwood that they inhibit the regeneration of dominants and pioneers, and just occasionally some grow tall enough to compete with the forest dominants. Most are necessarily shade-tolerant and perforce slow growers, but released from shade as components of scrub developing on open ground they will speed up considerably. Regrowth from stumps is generally rapid, but they quit early and then grow slowly. The evergreens Holly, Yew and Box are the underwood dominants. All grow well on open ground and in deep shade, forming small trees with extremely hard timber. Field Maple is often larger than the rest and could at a stretch be counted as a forest dominant, but is best placed here because it so rarely forms a significant part of the canopy. The several trees of the rose family, Crab Apple, two hawthorns, Rowan, the two service-trees, pears and the numerous forms of whitebeam form small trees. If our interest extends to western Ireland, Strawberry-tree would be included as another evergreen.

The evergreens Most British trees and shrubs are deciduous, but four small trees are evergreen, and this gives them a special role in woods. They are all shade-tolerant, but thrive in full sun. Being evergreen, they can photosynthesise through winter and spring. The shade they cast is there at all seasons, which, combined with their ability to form dense underwoods, limits the opportunities for other trees to regenerate until the evergreens weaken or break. All seem sensitive to frost. Two are highly localised and not therefore of general consequence in British woodlands. Box is famously present under beechwoods at Box Hill (Surrey) and forms boxwoods at Chequers (Buckinghamshire) and in the Cotswolds and Kent, where it grows up to 9m. Strawberrytree is limited to western Ireland, where it inhabits the fringes of 112

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oakwoods, notably around Killarney, Co. Kerry. Both are outposts of more southerly ranges. Box is more a species of beechwoods and scrub on limestone in France and the Mediterranean fringes. Strawberry-tree is a relative of heather that hugs the Atlantic and Mediterranean seaboard. As one of Britain’s few native conifers, Yew is bound to be distinctive. Female Yews bear red berries with poisonous seeds that germinate after 2–4 years (Thomas and Polwart 2003). To the Romans it was arbor mortis, because those who slept in its shade were said to die (Nisbet 1893). More to the point, its foliage will poison horses and people, but sheep and cattle seem less susceptible, deer browse it without mishap, and its bark may be stripped by hares, deer, sheep and sometimes cattle. In response, it sprouts vigorously and repeatedly and persists as bitten-down ‘saplings’ for decades. Although it can withstand shade, it grows faster, lives longer and achieves far larger sizes in the open. It is particularly associated with cliffs and rock outcrops, such as Yew Cogar Scar in the Yorkshire Dales, where the trees are well lit and less browsed. It is particularly conspicuous in downland scrub, where it stands out dark at a distance every bit as much as whitebeams stand out pale, and on limestone outcrops, where it contrasts with whitebeams and the fresh foliage of Beech. At Kingley Vale, West Sussex (Williamson 1978), Hambledon

The red ‘berries’ borne by female Yews comprise the poisonous seeds surrounded by nonpoisonous fleshy growths known as arils.

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A sprig of Holly for the Christmas pudding, if thrushes do not strip the berries first.

Hill, Dorset, and the Reenadinna woods near Killarney it forms pure Yew woods. Dense Yew underwoods develop on chalk and limestone slopes, most notably at Castle Eden Dene, Durham, and on the scarp faces of the southern English chalk downs. Most observers regard Yew as a limestone associate, but in the New Forest and elsewhere it also grows in heathland scrub, and in prehistoric times it grew in Fenland carr before it was overwhelmed by peat. Radial growth can be rapid at first, but later it slows to around 1mm a year, though individual trees can grow much faster (up to 2.6mm per year in Lady Park Wood) and it can accelerate at any age. Yew sprouts readily from fallen trunks, a helpful trait for a species of outcrops and steep slopes. The oldest Yews in Kingley Vale are at least 500 years old, but the largest trees survive in churchyards. The various approaches to estimating their age indicate that those of 8m girth are likely to exceed 1,000 years (Bevan-Jones 2002). The age of the largest, at Fortingall, Perthshire, which reached 17m girth, is anyone’s guess. Like Yew, Holly has male and female plants. However, less than half of all bushes have berries at Christmas because every year some females fail to fruit. In the open, Hollies adopt a compact growth form, but in shade and hedges they straggle with long, weak stems that dip to the ground, where they will root if pinned down against leaf

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Pioneers, small trees, shrubs and climbers mould, generating thereby clusters of new Hollies. After coppicing or pollarding, they respond with vigorous new shoots. They are also surprisingly palatable to deer and domestic herbivores, especially at the ‘back end’ when there is little else to eat. Indeed, until the 18th century groves of Holly pollards, known as ‘hollins’, were cultivated as sources of fresh winter fodder, a practice that could still be seen until recently in the New Forest, The Hollies on the Stiperstones (Shropshire), the Black Mountains and hedges throughout the country. This palatability has a downside: in woods where deer are abundant, deer kill Holly stems by chewing the bark and grazing new growth to oblivion: the thick Holly underwood of Denny Wood in the New Forest vanished by this means between the 1950s and 1990s. Holly, however, is resilient, sprouting repeatedly from old stumps until a turn of fortune allows resurrection. Radial increments decline steeply as stems mature. Holly will grow into great trees, for example at Staverton Park, Suffolk, where it shares canopy space with ancient oaks. These are well over 200 years old, and so too are the larger Holly pollards in the New Forest. The isolated thickets on the shingle of Dungeness, growing from stems that creep slowly across the shingle surface into wind-shaped thickets, were individually mapped by the Ordnance Survey in 1799 and must be older (Peterken and Hubbard 1972).

Field Maple William Gilpin, the arbiter of picturesque taste, reportedly said that Field Maple is an uncommon tree, but a common bush, and that sums it up. It has been common as coppice in ancient woods, especially on neutral and calcareous soils, and is still frequent in older hedges, but it was rarely allowed to grow into a tree, even though its timber was highly valued for turning into bowls. It will grow into trees that never rival, say, oak or Ash for size, but will live well over 300 years. As coppice, it has also formed giant stools. Nevertheless, it is best regarded as a smaller relative of its introduced relatives, Sycamore and Norway Maple, with a smaller five-lobed leaf with rounded lobes. Field Maple has a long history as coppice and is well represented in place names, but poorly represented in the pollen record. That might place a question mark against its native status, but in mitigation it grows mainly in the English lowlands on soils that rarely allow pollen to be preserved. 115

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Fresh Field Maple foliage growing from a trimmed hedge, where its presence suggests that the boundary is ancient.

Although Field Maple is almost a forest dominant, it must naturally survive in the underwood or on margins. It is not top of the menu for browsers, and it must have been helped by the widespread adoption of coppicing, factors that would explain how it was second only to thorns in the coppices of 16th-century Rockingham Forest (Peterken 1976). It seems to be a slow colonist of new woodland. It has suffered in Lady Park Wood over the last 70 years, where the threats are prolonged shade, sustained deer browsing and severe bark stripping by Grey Squirrels, and it may be declining generally.

Rowan, whitebeams and service-trees The number of species of Sorbus depends on how you choose to count species. Rowan and the two service-trees are well defined, but whitebeam is either one broad species or a host of microspecies. Hybrids of all kinds abound. Rowan is by far the most abundant and widespread, the true Service-tree the most restricted. Rowan is the principal small tree of woods on coarse, nutrientpoor soils, especially in the uplands of northern and western Britain (Raspé et al. 2000). Conversely, it is rare in wet woods and on heavy, lowland clays. In the uplands it grows out of cliffs and scattered across stony moorland to altitudes of 900m, where its flat clusters of red 116

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Pioneers, small trees, shrubs and climbers berries are a welcome sight for birds and walkers in autumn. Indeed, with its pinnate leaves, it is often known as ‘mountain ash’. Said to live for 150 years in woodland, some of these slow-growing, often sheep-grazed individuals on high-altitude cliffs and screes may be much older. Within western and northern woods, it is limited by browsing and grazing, which will prevent almost all growth. However, if sheep or deer are fenced out, these woods quickly acquire a thicket of Rowan saplings, usually to the exclusion of the oak or pine that were the intended beneficiaries. Together with birches and sallows, Rowan is a common colonist of upland plantation forests. Whitebeams are also widespread, but patchy in their occurrence. Their pale leaves, white-felted below, are mostly broad, toothed

above: Clusters of Rowan berries are often so heavy

that twigs will be bent down. Bitter tasting, they are nevertheless a target for foragers.

below: The characteristic pale foliage of whitebeams briefly resembles clusters of candles.

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Trees and Woodlands and generally oval, but sometimes lobed. The microspecies, which are distinguished by their leaf shape and fruit characteristics (Rich et al. 2010), arise from apomixis, a breeding mechanism in which seed is formed asexually and thus mutations and rare hybrids are perpetuated. Most whitebeams are associated with limestones, where they grow sparsely in coppices and more often in scrub and on the fringes, especially cliffs and outcrops. A few grow on base-poor soils, notably Sorbus subcuneata in the oakwoods along the Somerset and north Devon coast, S. devoniensis in the hedges of Devon and Cornwall, and three species in the northern part of Arran. However, even limestone-loving whitebeams will form part of scrub on heathland in the New Forest, some coppices on acid soils in Kent, and in mildly acid soils around Inverness. The common factor seems to be a welldrained substrate. The two service-trees are especially intriguing. Service-tree is virtually indistinguishable from Rowan at a glance. Until recently only one tree was known in Britain, the ‘Whitty Pear’ in the Wyre Forest, which died and was perpetuated as cuttings from the original tree. Recently, however, shrubs clinging to cliffs around the Bristol Channel were recognised as true Service-trees and, remarkably, there is a highly plausible evidence that they were there a millennium ago, in the form of a record of an ash bearing pears by Nennius, a 9thcentury monk (Roper 2003). Despite some uncertainty, it is probably native, the most recently discovered distinct species in the British Isles (George et al. 2016). The species is otherwise characteristic of woods much further south in Europe. The Wild Service-tree, usually referred to as ‘service’, is frequent, but thinly scattered through England and Wales, where it grows mainly in woodland on clays and limestone. Its broad leaves, deeply divided into sharply pointed lobes which are themselves deeply toothed, can only be confused with its hybrids with whitebeams. Most seeds are not viable, so it reproduces mostly by suckers, which grow within 15m of the parent tree. This habit must account for its strong association with ancient woods and hedges derived from ancient woods, thus making it, after limes, the best ancient woodland ‘indicator’ amongst trees. Within woods it is usually rare, but concentrations can be found in association with Sessile Oak on well-drained, mildly acid soils in the southern Welsh borderland. Even within ancient woods, it is often associated with the edges, perhaps because it has been weeded out of the interiors. It will grow as large as oak standards if it is allowed, as 118

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it does in the woods north-east of Oxford. On the other hand, it will persist for decades as very slow-growing ‘saplings’ in the underwood. In Lady Park this tolerance of shade gave it an even lower mortality rate than Yew.

Wild Service-tree, which is closely associated with ancient woods.

Fruit trees The two pears may both be ancient introductions. The Plymouth Pear is confined to a few hedges in Devon and Cornwall, but the ‘ordinary’ pear, Common Pear, is a widespread plant of hedges and, rarely, woodlands. One of the largest at Cubbington (Warwickshire) achieved fame in 2015 when it was voted Britain’s Tree of the Year for standing in the line of the HS2 railway – fruitlessly, as it turned out. The Wild Plums and Cherry Plums we find in hedges were introduced. Crab Apple is widespread, but never abundant. Apart from the small, hard apples, the rounded leaves on long stalks that are hairless when mature distinguish it from the many wild apples derived from discarded picnics, which remain hairy. It colonises abandoned pasture in small numbers and remains an incidental presence in woodland – the wood would function the same if they were not there – but 119

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An isolated Crab Apple during the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

why it occurs only as well-scattered individuals remains a mystery. In the Aber Valley, north Wales, large Crab Apples remain scattered over the pasture. Elsewhere, it was often the fruit-tree component of wood-meadows.

Hawthorns Two hawthorns are native to Britain, the Common Hawthorn and Midland Hawthorn. The latter are distinguished by two pips in each red fruit, a more relaxed growth form and broader leaf lobes. The former – one of the glories of the countryside in May – is abundant as bushes colonising disused grassland and as hedges, many of which were planted as ‘quicksets’. In ancient woodland and ancient hedges, the two species are equally common on heavy soils in the Midlands, but on light soils Common Hawthorn predominates, even in woodland. Likewise, this species predominates in secondary woods on all soils, even in the secondary extensions of ancient 120

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woods full of its congener (Monks Wood, Hayley Wood). What stops Midland Hawthorn colonising? Apart from their spectacular show of blossom in spring and the hosts of crimson fruits in autumn, hawthorns seem unspectacular bushes or small trees, but one, the Hethel Old Thorn, is specially protected as a Norfolk Wildlife Trust reserve (it is a tree surrounded by a fence in a grassy field; the reserve is just the one tree). Its girth was 277cm in the mid-18th century and 368cm in 1883, but it is now partly decayed. Scattered, now moribund, hawthorns are widespread on the Welsh hills, many dating from a period when the pastures were grazed by cattle, not sheep (Roberts 1959). Spread by birds, they quickly form thickets on abandoned farmland, especially on heavier and deeper soils. Extensive tracts of the Midlands claylands developed into hawthorn thickets during the agricultural depression of the early 20th century; most have since been cleared, but the survivors remain as dark, low woodlands. Within established woodland they both colonise gaps and clearings and form part of

Common Hawthorn on the flanks of Garway Hill, Herefordshire. During early May, when they are in bloom, it is possible to map hawthorns on a landscape scale.

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Trees and Woodlands the shade succession, forming high-turnover populations within which a few individuals persist, growing slowly and, if necessary, resprouting in the face of heavy shade, browsing and coppicing. Exceptionally they reach the sub-canopy of mature Beech woods, as seen at Ocknell in the New Forest.

Hazel

Midland Hawthorn in a Suffolk wood. In addition to the double styles, the rounded leaf lobes distinguish it from Common Hawthorn.

Hazel deserves a class of its own because it is habitually multi-stemmed. Mostly it forms clusters of small stems grown from a single rootstock in the underwood below oak and Ash, but in the north and west of Scotland it can sustain itself as the canopy of woodland. As a particularly versatile underwood species it supported several traditional and still-living crafts, including the manufacture of hurdles and thatching spars (Forestry Commission 1956). One of the earliest arboreal colonists after the last ice age, Hazel may have entered from refuges to the south-west. The earliest woodland evidently comprised mosaics of birch, Hazel and Aspen in various combinations, including pure Hazel woods. Scots Pine, oaks and other broadleaves eventually took over its role in the canopy, but Hazel largely held its own as underwood. In the western Highlands and possibly on some lowland clay soils it survives as almost pure Hazel woods. Hazel is almost ubiquitous in ancient woodland. Judging from my records (Chapter 7), it is frequent and often abundant on mineral soils, especially light to heavy loams of pH 4.5–6.9. In fact, the only combinations of acidity and texture where Hazel was not common were alkaline clays, from which it was often excluded from stands dominated by Beech, Wych Elm or suckering elms, and strongly acid (pH below 4.5) soils of all textures. It still reached over 60% frequency on the latter, except on soils that were both strongly acid and coarse, such as those found in many Scots Pine woods. My records show that Hazel shuns organic soils, except when it colonises the mounds created by old Alder stools.

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Pioneers, small trees, shrubs and climbers Hazel nuts, especially cobnuts from cultivated super-hazels, are a welcome food, if Grey Squirrels allow them to ripen. Oliver Rackham seemed convinced that squirrels consumed the lot, which may be true around Cambridge, but not where I live further west. Hazel still germinates regularly outside woodland and sometimes within woodland, and in both settings it quickly forms substantial multistemmed bushes. Regularly cut, these become huge, dense groves of what John Evelyn called ‘scantlings of small wands and switches, or somewhat bigger’. If they are left uncut, they splay out and eventually the outer stems droop to the ground, where they will root and form new individuals. As the older stems lose their vigour, new shoots grow from the rootstock and the upsides of leaning trunks – a form of selfcoppicing. In Lady Park, old stems rarely last beyond 70 years, which, once they die, leave only younger stems on an old rootstock. In fact, it is possible to disguise ancient Hazels as young plants if the old stems have totally rotted. In theory, woodland Hazels are immortal, but in practice old, less vigorous stools were replaced by pegging down small stems into vacant places. Hazels in hedges will re-sprout indefinitely – likewise Hazels concealed in limestone pavement trimmed by sheep. In long-grazed Hazel woods, individuals are reduced to a single, large, partially rotten trunk, which will also regenerate vigorously once grazing ceases. A long-term study in Monks Wood, Cambridgeshire, where Hazels grow as an underwood below Ash, Field Maple and Pedunculate Oak, showed that large Hazels (i.e. those with many stems) grew more and survived better than small Hazels, but that competition between individual stems was more severe in large Hazels (Tanentzap et al. 2011). During the study period, populations of Muntjac were greatly reduced by culling, which reduced the contrast between large and small Hazels. In Lady Park Wood, turnover of individuals was high, but a small core of large stools persisted.

Hazel catkins, heralding the onset of spring.

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Atlantic rainforest BALLACHUAN HAZELWOOD, Argyll To reach this Scottish Wildlife Trust reserve on the island of Seil you must cross ‘The Bridge over the Atlantic’, pass the ‘House of Trousers’ pub and park at the isolated Kilbrandon church. The Hazel wood occupies a low ridge between marshy grassland and the sea. From a distance the few prominent trees are Downy Birches and scattered planted Beech and Wild Cherry, but these rise from dense stands of Hazel, which form a mosaic of closed Hazel woods, separated by what were herb-rich grasslands, but which are now vigorous tracts of Bracken. Hazels are regenerating where paths create openings in the Bracken, but otherwise the mosaic seems stabilised by the utter dominance of either Hazel or Bracken. Within the green gloom of the woodland, the Hazels look like neglected coppice growing from subterranean stools, some of which are huge and grouped in clusters. However, the Hazels are not cut, but regenerate continuously as new shoots from established stools and, just occasionally, by new stems growing from fallen marginal stems. The result seems to be perpetual exclusion of seedling regeneration of both Hazel and other tree species. Genetic analysis of a few stool clusters confirms that some are single clones, possibly centuries old, but most seem to be mixtures of two or more clones. Hazel woods are also found in an oceanic climate on Hebridean islands, such as Mull, Eigg and Skye, and the coastal mainland, mostly on rocky, shallow soils. In the absence of heavy grazing, exposure encourages the growth of dense stands of medium and small stems supporting a canopy of distorted, clustered twigs, which shelter and densely shade the interior. With heavy grazing by sheep and deer, stools are reduced to one or two large trunks and the woods become open, but these trunks immediately regenerate clusters of vigorous shoots if grazing ceases. Unlike the extensive Hazel scrub of the Burren, Co. Clare, most of which has expanded only recently due to changes in livestock management, these ancient Hazel woods are possibly 10,000 years old, and all are replete with rare lichens, bryophytes and fungi. Like most ecologists, I was long unaware of their significance, but the recent work of Brian and Sandy Coppins (2012) and others has revealed their special features and highlighted their mysteries. If any woods are our rainforest, it is these. 124

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Shrubs Some woody species cannot form trees, but survive as shrubs in the underwood, on ride sides, around external margins of woodland, in hedges and especially in scrub, forming the early stages of succession to woodland. Within woodland, they are almost always found as a thin scatter of shrubs, but in the past, when ancient woods were coppiced on short rotations, they were (probably) much more frequent. Indeed, in the 1970s, one could still find examples where these shrubs had been cut with the coppice and had regrown. Today, in my experience, Elder and Blackthorn are the most frequent in woodland interiors. I have omitted Sea-buckthorn and Gorse, the former because it is not part of woodland and the latter because one must draw the line somewhere. Four widespread species are particularly likely to be found in ancient woodlands: Blackthorn, Elder, Dog Rose and Field Rose. Neutral, medium-heavy soils suit them best, but they are catholic enough to grow on a wide range of acidities, textures and drainage conditions. Widespread in Britain, they thin out in Scotland or, in the case of Field Rose, fail to reach there. In the English lowlands and adjacent fringes of the uplands, they are found in most ancient coppice woods, mixed hedges and scrub, but they thin out sharply in the woods of the uplands further north and west. Blackthorn suckers

Blackthorn flowers, harbingers of spring.

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Fragrant Elder flowers contrast with the bitter smell of leaves and twigs. Dogwood, with characteristic reddish stems. Leaf veins prove to be sticky when broken.

vigorously, a habit that enables it to form thickets in scrub and on abandoned rides and to persist as clones within woodland. Elder is a marker of high fertility, widely dispersed by birds and able to establish itself in deep shade. Despite its name it is short-lived, except perhaps when repeatedly cut back. The roses look ephemeral, but in Lady Park individuals persist for decades in the underwood of mature stands. All four flower freely on margins and in scrub, where the white blossom of Blackthorn is a harbinger of spring, Elder is the source of fragrant cordials and tasty fruit, and rose hips yield syrups and teas. Blackthorn and Elder were both part of pre-Neolithic woodland. Four other species are found mainly in the English lowlands and barely reach Scotland, but differ from the foregoing in being more strongly associated with lime-rich soils, though they do grow sparingly on acid soils. They, too, are species of woodland margins, hedges and scrub that were probably commoner when woods were

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left: The unmistakable orange and pink fruits of Spindle. above: Privet in Monks Wood, Cambridgeshire, where it

seems far commoner in the secondary parts of the wood.

coppiced. Dogwood and Spindle both grow on well-drained and poorly drained soils with a wide range of textures and a high median pH of 6.5 and 6.8 respectively, and both were present in pre-Neolithic woodland. Both tolerate shade, but are usually found on margins and in hedges and scrub; in woods they seem unable to survive the thicket stage of stand growth, but individual stems will live for 30–40 years with enough light. Dogwood – the shrub with sticky veins – colonises grassland readily, whereas Spindle – the shrub with green stems and gaudy orange and pink fruit – is strongly associated with ancient woodland and hedges in the English lowlands. Wayfaring-tree, a shrub of southern England and south-east Wales, is even more strongly associated with freely drained, alkaline soils. Its broad leaves wilt in droughts, but recover well. Only mildly shade-tolerant, it prefers edges and scrub: its name may reflect its occurrence on the edge of tracks. The fourth species, Privet, hardly merits inclusion, but it retains its leaves late and seems to tolerate heavier shade, which allows it to persist in woodland as a low shrub. Juniper, one of three native conifers, is probably best known for its dark purple berries, which flavour gin and cooked meats. It grows on chalk, southern limestones and heaths mainly as a transient component of the scrub on former pastures. It was once frequent as a component 127

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Juniper on Arnside Knott, Cumbria. Normally Junipers are either prostrate or columnar, but this bush shows some individuality.

of developing scrub, but Lena Ward (1981) could find only 18 large populations, most having been reduced to tiny remnants being shaded out by taller species or cleared for cultivation. At Aston Rowant, Buckinghamshire, a still substantial population is maintained in sheep pasture by planting. The southern populations are now separate from the other main centre of distribution in the northern uplands, the almost forgotten lowland populations north of the chalk having now expired. It once grew in the medieval coppice at Monks’ Park Wood, Suffolk, for example (Rackham 2003). In the uplands it grows both as scrub and in woodlands, where individual bushes can live well over 200 years. Particularly extensive scrub Juniper survives in Upper Teesdale and at Tynron in south-west Scotland, and there are strong populations in such diverse places as the Carboniferous limestone pavement around Morecambe Bay and coarse-grained, well-drained, strongly acid soils on the higher reaches of west Highland mountains. In woodland it is a notable presence in pine and birch woodlands, which are the lineal descendants of early post-glacial woodland. Throughout, bushes assume both prostrate and erect, columnar forms. Four shrubs have close links to water. Guelder Rose grows on poorly drained, medium-textured soils across a wide pH range in various Alder, Hazel, Field Maple and Ash woodlands almost throughout England and Wales; in Scotland it is widely distributed,

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Pioneers, small trees, shrubs and climbers but infrequent. It grows in shade, but forms its umbels of white flowers more on the margins. Dispersed by birds, it invades unused meadows and fens. Like Dogwood and Spindle, it was part of pre-Neolithic woodland. Buckthorn and Alder Buckthorn (with Grey Willow) dominated the early succession to scrub on Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire (Godwin 1936). Both are principally species of the English lowlands and adjacent uplands, but the former inclines to alkaline soils, where it is a locally common pioneer shrub on chalk, but is rarely seen in woodland. Its dense growth and viciously spiny stems contrast with the delicate, spine-free Alder Buckthorn, which is usually found sparsely scattered in scrub and woodland mainly on light, acid, often wet soils, but also in scrub on limestone. Bird Cherry is a tall shrub of northern and western woods from south Wales to northernmost Scotland, with an outlying population in Norfolk. Catholic in its soil preferences, it can be found in wet Alder wood in the Welsh borders and well-drained ground in Wharfedale ashwoods. In Norfolk, it almost dominates woodland on well-drained soils in shallow valleys in Swanton Novers Woods and Wayland Wood. In May its lilaclike clusters of fragrant white flowers stand out in hedges and margins. Growth recovers rapidly from defoliation and coppicing, but growth rates of individual stems plummet during their first decade. Suckering is common, so it tends to grow as thickets; stems live at least 45 years and genetic individuals survive indefinitely.

Naturalised, non-native shrubs Pheasant coverts have frequently been embellished with Snowberry and the persistent Wilson’s Honeysuckle. Buddleja (also known as Butterfly-bush) is found remarkably often in woods on ride sides, but the non-native shrubs that matter are the two long-lived broadleaved evergreens, Rhododendron and Cherry Laurel. Both cast such

above: Guelder Rose

(top). The outer ring of flowers in each umbel is designed to attract, but it is the dowdy inner flowers that are fertile. Racemes of Bird Cherry flowers (bottom) brighten the margins of woodland in the Honddhu Valley, Monmouthshire.

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Buddleja, now a common colonist of woodland margins and clearings, especially on alkaline soils.

deep shade that ground vegetation is obliterated and woodland management becomes impossible, and, like other recent introductions, both have few invertebrate associates. Rhododendron was introduced in 1763 and spread in the 19th century, eventually to occupy large tracts of the Killarney oakwoods in south-west Ireland, the oakwoods of Snowdonia and Argyll and other western oceanic woodland, together with the rocky hills and ravines nearby. Cherry Laurel also naturalised in the 19th century and is now widely established and still spreading, especially in southern Britain and the Scottish lowlands. Rhododendron spreads freely by means of vast numbers of small, wind-distributed seeds, but Cherry Laurel seems to be less invasive. Certainly, on my doorstep, saplings emanating from elderly sprawling bushes, originally planted round a 19th-century squatter cottage still known as Laurel Cottage, have spread no more than 100m. Substantial efforts are being made to eliminate Rhododendron from oceanic woods, but without these the species appears to be able to occupy the ground indefinitely and prevent tree regeneration. In Turkey, both species grow in oak, lime, Sweet Chestnut and Oriental Beech woodlands, along with Holly and Box.

Woody climbers Finally, we must include the two great climbers of woodland, for they are woody, live for decades and influence the shape and behaviour of the real trees. Improbably, Clematis belongs in the same north temperate family as buttercups, whereas Ivy is a temperate outlier of a mainly tropical family. Clematis (alias Traveller’s-joy), a species of calcareous soils in southern Britain, is colloquially known as Old Man’s Beard in recognition of the long silky-white appendages to its fruits. It can germinate in shade, but generally establishes itself in scrub and young growth. If it does not flatten the developing saplings completely, these carry it up to the canopy on ill-disciplined lianas up to 30m long that festoon low growth and loop like ropes through mature stands. British Ivy takes two forms, the widespread form and the predominantly western form known as Irish Ivy, which has twice as many chromosomes. Avoiding extremely acid, wet and dry soils, they grow best in shade on moist, heavy, fertile ground. On the ground they will form thick mats that exclude herbs and ferns, especially in 130

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secondary woodland on alkaline clays. We notice them when they climb trees, to which they cling tightly by a mass of short, adhesive roots. Growth, which is strongest in well-lit situations on woodland margins and the margins of gaps, is strong enough to reach the crowns of large trees and grow out along the main crown branches. Clearly, ivies cannot be as old as the tree they climb, but some are not far behind, for they start growing up polestage trees and grow with them into the canopy. Growth rings can be counted in large ivies: the oldest in my experience was over 70 years old. Contrary to popular suspicion, they do not suck sap from living trees, but their weight can overwhelm the growth of moribund trees and snap branches of healthy trees, often during a snowfall. Their fate is necessarily bound up with that of their tree, and vice versa. A heavy Ivy load will break crown branches, increase wind loading on top-heavy crowns and accumulate enough snow to bring a tree down. If any ivy-clad tree dies standing, it will stand for a few years as an ‘ivy tree’, but it eventually collapses when the trunk rots. Once within reach, Ivy foliage is consumed by deer and farm stock.

above: Mature Ivy flowers

are an important nectar source in autumn. The berries, which ripen from green to black (inset), provide food for birds in winter.

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Natural woodland

I

chapter five

have recently spent a fortnight in exploring one of the largest natural forests in Eastern Europe. Here to my mind the chief beauty resides, not in the standing

trees, but in the giants that lie prone among their roots. Many of them have lain for several centuries. They are gorgeous with moss and lichen; their great trunks are seed beds for their descendants and they tell a story of mighty hurricanes and snowstorms which we would miss, if it had been possible to remove them. Such features are the characteristics of all virgin woodlands.

Edward North Buxton, Epping Forest (1898)

Tree and shrub species do not naturally live in isolation, but combine in various ways to create woodland. There was a time before people had much impact on their environment when trees and shrubs did this naturally. But we have changed the rules by planting and felling, and, indirectly, by altering soils, controlling grazing and introducing new species to the neighbourhood. Today, trees in those woods we leave to grow freely can again combine naturally. How did pristine, prehistoric woodland work, and what forms did it take? How would our woods change if we allowed them unfettered development in the future? Would they eventually revert to their original, pristine condition? Working as a forest ecologist concerned with past and future management, I quickly started to speculate about the natural woods that preceded us, or might yet develop (Peterken 2016). Like Edward North Buxton and many others, I initially imagined primeval woodland as groves of spectacularly tall trees of many species growing amongst dense thickets of their smaller and younger brethren over a carpet of moss-covered, rotting trees that humans could hardly penetrate. These notions evaporated when I read Eustace Jones’ paper on the structure and function of virgin forests in the north temperate zone (1945a), which reviewed the evidence from virgin

opposite page:

The old-growth stand of Beech, Ash and Smallleaved Lime in Lady Park Wood, which has been allowed to grow without significant direct human intervention for 150 years.

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Trees and Woodlands forests in mainland Europe and old-growth forests in North America and East Asia. Two key points stood out. First, natural woodlands were dynamic because they were perpetually recovering from storms and other disturbances. Second, although most took the form of high forest, they displayed a great variety of structures and dynamics, some of which were remarkably similar to particular silvicultural systems. The vision of virgin forest, revealed by Jones and many others, as generally closed, but punctuated by temporary gaps and some permanent openings, was challenged by Frans Vera’s treatise on the relationship between temperate forests and large herbivores (2000). He reviewed the evidence from pollen diagrams, historical records and modern experience of grazing regimes in woodland pastures and concluded that natural woodland comprised a mosaic of open ground, scrub, mature woodland and degenerating stands of ancient trees, all bound up in cycles of change controlled by the behaviour of cattle, deer and other large herbivores. Far from being wall-to-wall trees, much of the primitive environment was open, even though most of the ground could support the growth of dense woodland. Put simply, Vera thought natural woodland was more like the unenclosed New Forest, while Jones’ review concluded that it was more like Chiltern beechwoods managed by the group selection system. We have also been forced to wonder whether woodland was ever natural woodland in the sense of being entirely free of human influence. Wherever we look in the world, the forests we thought were pristine were once inhabited and used by far more people than inhabit them now. Given this, equating ‘natural woodland’ with pristine woodland now seems unhelpful. Here I summarise the character of the prehistoric natural woodland that covered Britain before people influenced it unduly, and the natural woodland that develops today, both when previously managed woodland is left unmanaged and when trees are allowed to colonise vacant ground.

Pre-Neolithic woodland The early herbaceous vegetation that developed after the retreat of the ice was colonised by a succession of tree species moving north from several glacial refuges. Starting with birch, Aspen, Hazel, Scots Pine and other efficient colonists, this eventually developed into what Godwin (1975) and his contemporaries knew as the mixed oak forest 134

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in which oak, Wych Elm, Hazel and lime were prominent, but within which the early colonists maintained a limited presence. The structure, composition and dynamics of this woodland have been inferred from sub-fossil remains, principally pollen and spores, but also the remains of beetles, snails and the ‘bog oaks’ emerging from waterlogged peatlands, buried layers in floodplains and ancient soils buried beneath earthworks. Pollen samples taken from extensive bogs provide a broad summary of woodland composition on a large scale, whereas samples taken from small hollows within ancient woodland show which trees were growing in the immediate vicinity of the deposit. Pollen from herbs and fragments of charcoal in these deposits enable inferences to be drawn about the openness of the vegetation and the incidence of fire. Much of the evidence was set out by Hodder et al. (2005) and British Wildlife (2009). The big issue now is how open the pre-Neolithic environment was. Apart from lakes, wide rivers, high ground above the treeline, salt marsh and other coastal formations, where trees do not grow, how much other ground was occupied by herbs and low shrubs that require high light intensities to survive? The scattered occurrence of rare herbs on the southern chalk suggests that open ground persisted

The New Forest has become a model for Frans Vera’s ideas about natural woodland as a mosaic of groves, open woodland, scrub and unwooded ground controlled by large herbivores.

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Trees and Woodlands through the five millennia when trees and shrubs covered most of the landscape (Pigott and Walters 1954). The sheer abundance and variety of epiphytic lichens on ancient parkland trees, especially those confined to woodland where such trees had been present for centuries, convinced Francis Rose (1993) and others that open woodland must have been part of the primitive environment. Studying the origins of meadows, I became convinced that the continuous trace of meadow herbs through the forest maximum indicated that open vegetation must have been widespread, especially on wet ground (Peterken 2013), but accepted that pastures and meadows evolved with traditional land management (Poschlod et al. 2009). Fossil pollen tends to be biased towards trees whose pollen is dispersed far on the wind, but against insect-pollinated trees and herbs in general, whose pollen is limited by grazing and released in the shelter of glades. When allowance is made for these differences, the landscape of Britain and Ireland 6,000 years ago is revealed as a patchy forest, divided equally between open ground (with various combinations of heather, grasses and other herbs), forest dominated by tall trees (such as lime and elm) and woodland dominated by understorey species such as Hazel (Fyfe 2018). Western districts were much more open than eastern districts. Whilst some of these openings would have been due to natural forest disturbances (Brown 1997), the finding that 35% of the ground was occupied by species of open spaces provides some support for the Vera model. Broadly, this proposes that, under the controlling influence of large herbivores, every part of the forest could cycle through four phases: open ground, scrub, mature high forest and degenerating over-mature stands. At any one time, these phases would form a patchwork of open ground and various kinds of wooded ground. The small-scale pattern would change constantly, but at larger scales the overall proportions of the phases would remain roughly constant. The duration of each phase would determine the balance between open ground, scrub and woodland. By making reasonable assumptions about how long each phase lasted, Kirby (2004) reckoned that at any one time some 35% of the ground would be in the scrub and parkland phases. Even before the Neolithic, some of these openings were due to people. Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were using woodland plants, especially oak and Hazel, for food and fuel and may even have been pruning Hazels and inadvertently coppicing them and oaks (Bishop et al. 2015). Snail shells preserved in chalkland soils revealed that the Wessex Downs were 136

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Natural woodland patchily wooded with large areas of parkland and natural grassland which would have attracted hunters and then settlement from which the important cultural centres around Stonehenge developed (Allen and Gardiner 2009). Snail shells also revealed that north Wiltshire in contrast had mainly closed-canopy woodland with some open-canopy woodland, and that the Sussex Downs were also clothed in closedcanopy woodland where people had to clear trees before they could occupy the ground. Pollen deposits from Caburn, Sussex, supported this: they indicated some persistence of grassland, but the slopes above the deposits were covered in Ash–Field Maple woodland, which was possibly coppiced (Waller and Hamilton 2000). Fossil beetles indicate habitat if we assume that their habitat preferences have not changed since the last glaciation (Whitehouse and Smith 2010). Initially, beetles of open conditions were well represented, along with associates of light-canopied trees, such as oak, pine, Hazel and birch, but by 8,000 years ago indicators of pasture and other open ground decreased and beetles associated with more shade-tolerant trees, such as lime and elm, became more frequent. Clearly the woodland was less open, though open ground and woodpasture persisted in some districts. Oak continued to regenerate during this period, but it seemed more associated with floodplains and archaeological sites. From the later Mesolithic, 6,000 years ago, the woodland became more open and composition fluctuated. Mesolithic

Remains of a prehistoric pine forest exposed at low tide in the sands of western Ireland.

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Trees and Woodlands hunters were evidently burning forests, and Neolithic farmers cleared woodland for cultivation and pasture. For the first time, dung beetles became important, presumably owing to the increase in domestic herbivores: hitherto, there had been very little sign of grazing animals playing a significant role in creating open areas. Further evidence of conditions in pre-Neolithic woodland also comes from buried remains of the trees themselves. Admittedly, these grew in a specialised environment and only timbers with considerable resistance to decay would have survived. The trees preserved in the Severn alluvium were narrow-crowned. The oak, pine and Yew found below the Fens included many very large, tall oaks, one of which reached 27.5m before the first branch (Godwin 1975). As Rackham (2003) put it, most of the oaks grew close together to heights now seldom seen in Europe. Surviving logs dry out and split radially. One such sliver from a completely sound oak log exposed near Holme Fen, which I have as a home decoration, shows 288 remarkably even annual rings and a radial growth rate of 1.14mm a year, which happens to be exactly the same as the growth rate of oaks in the oldgrowth stands of Lady Park Wood. The notion that pre-Neolithic woods were open partly rests on the continuing abundance of oaks, which are light-demanding, and Hazel, which produces abundant pollen only in the open, but both points are open to debate. Oaks may have been more shade-tolerant before the 20th century (Chapter 3), and Hazel groves will cast as much shade as closed stands of taller trees. There is also some doubt that these species require large herbivores to keep the woods open, for both species were also abundant in pre-Neolithic woods in Ireland, where there were no large herbivores (Mitchell 2005). Accepting that pre-Neolithic forests were a mosaic of high forest, parkland with scrub and open, herbaceous vegetation which was more open in the west and on southern chalklands, it seems that several factors were responsible for the openings. If openings had been due only to large herbivores, the palatable limes and Wych Elm would hardly have been so abundant (Greig 1982). Even if we allow that much of the pre-Neolithic woodland was closed forest, this does not mean it was unaffected by people. Megaherbivores were once profound ecological engineers long before the present interglacial (Schüle 1992). Their cascading impacts not only maintained open forests, but also influenced nutrient circulation and climate. While they held sway, they restricted closed forest to upland 138

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Natural woodland and infertile ground (Bakker et al. 2015), leaving the lowlands covered by open woodland, much as they still do in African game reserves. Megaherbivores were exterminated from temperate regions long ago by a combination of climate oscillations and hunting by prehistoric people. With their extinction, closed forest developed not just in temperate regions but also in the equatorial regions. Viewed in this light, the extensive presence of high forest in the British Isles before the Neolithic can be seen as a natural response to early human impacts. Pre-Neolithic woodland was opened up from the late Mesolithic onwards, and tracts of woodland were later overwhelmed by peat. Some 5,000 years ago, Neolithic people imported agriculture, developed a more settled style of living and enlarged clearings. Low population density ensured that some original woodland remained intact, and a lifestyle built around abandoning settlements and settling elsewhere enabled what we now call secondary woodland to spring up on abandoned farmland. By Roman times, much of the landscape must have been at least as open as we found it in historical times, with much of the woodland beyond the immediate settlements used as pasture. Nevertheless, increasingly fragmented and no doubt modified remnants of pre-Neolithic woodland survived long after the Neolithic. In fact, claims have been made that the last of the original-natural woodland near London was felled in late Saxon times (Goodburn 1992).

Surviving elements of pre-Neolithic woodland in the modern landscape Would Mesolithic people find anything familiar if they could visit present-day woods? Simple answers are unlikely, given that we do not all agree on the character of pre-Neolithic woodland. Wood-pastures and some native pinewoods would be the prime candidates if large herbivores had dominated. Indeed, the New Forest was seen by Frans Vera as an analogue of his vision of natural forest; even though it was much more open in medieval times (Flower 1980), it has only become dominated by Beech in recent centuries, and its character has long been controlled by people responding to wider political and economic factors (Chapter 6). Similar reservations must be placed against Białowieża National Park in Poland, that supposed survivor of pre-Neolithic woodland. Visiting ecologists quickly see that it has been much more open in the past, and indeed it has a 139

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Old Small-leaved Lime in Białowieża Forest, the archetypal original-natural forest in the extreme east of Poland.

long history of exploitation for hunting, timber, pasture, hay, honey, tar and much else (Latałowa et al. 2015). In recent times it has been subjected to both felling and large fluctuations in grazing pressure. Nevertheless, if they could ignore the regular grid of straight rides, Mesolithic returnees would as least encounter mature high forest, large herbivores and dangerous carnivores. What about similarities in composition? After all, the broad distribution of trees 5,000 years ago (Birks et al. 1975, Rackham 2003) can still be recognised in ancient woods, some of which may be the lineal descendants of pre-Neolithic woodland. The problem is that we rarely have the evidence to demonstrate that a particular ancient wood is primary. Many can be traced back to 1086 and sometimes earlier, but some of these are underlain by earthworks that prove the wood to be secondary. Further, the pollen sequences extracted from deposits within ancient woods usually indicate that the woodland has been fairly open at some time in prehistory and has changed in composition. In any case, the composition of many ancient woods changed profoundly in recent centuries (Chapter 6). For example, the Beech–oak woods of the New Forest and the Beech–Hornbeam–oak woods of Epping Forest were once full of limes, but limes can scarcely be found now. Nevertheless, though ancient woods are hardly unchanged survivors, clear links with pre-Neolithic woodland survive. Scots Pine

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Natural woodland has dominated Abernethy Forest for over 7,000 years (Birks 1970). The woods of the Lower Wye Valley still reflect the mixed woods of limes, Wych Elm, oak, Hazel and a modicum of Beech and Hornbeam that grew on the higher ground around the Severn valley in 5700–3700 bc (Brown et al. 2005). Rackham’s (1980) reconstruction of East Anglian wildwood using adjusted pollen diagrams revealed combinations of species that can still be recognised, though today’s ancient woods have no pine, much less lime, more oak, much more Hornbeam and Ash and an admixture of Field Maple that was not apparent 5,000 years ago. The correlations between soils and the pattern of tree species within ancient woods may express preferences that have remained unchanged since the Mesolithic. Small populations of saproxylic beetles (Cerambyx) may be the residue of large, widespread populations in pre-Neolithic forests (Whitehouse 2006). The distribution of limes is significant, for these are slow colonists of no great commercial value that were abundant in pre-Neolithic woodland of the southern half of Britain, but are localised now. Their presence in ancient woodland may be a sign that the wood is primary. Conversely, their absence from a neighbouring wood could indicate that this wood is secondary, that it has been subjected to prolonged grazing, or indeed that other species have been planted in its place.

The Large-leaved Lime wood at Rook Clift, Sussex, may well be a survival of the preNeolithic woodlands of lowland Britain, though it has passed through a history of coppicing.

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Natural development of woodland on open ground

Birch regenerating naturally on unplanted ground within the conifer plantations of Coed-yBrenin, Gwynedd.

As Network Rail has discovered since steam engines stopped setting fire to railway embankments, most open ground will, when left to itself, be colonised by trees and develop into woodland. Likewise, woodland has sown itself on commons, downland, heaths and claylands abandoned by farmers. Self-sown secondary woodland has developed naturally, its composition biased towards trees and shrubs with efficient longdistance dispersal mechanisms, such as birch, oak and Scots Pine, but against habitual slow colonists, such as lime and Wild Servicetree. Composition will also strongly reflect nearby seed sources in woodland, farmland and residential land, which in turn will reflect the history of the surrounding landscape. Soil type matters: irrespective of seed sources, coarse, light soils will most likely be colonised by birch, thin soils over limestone by Ash, and swampy ground by Alder and sallows. Indirectly, the history of prior land use will also be influential if the land has been drained, fertilised, or eroded, or if the soil has been leached under heathland. Early ecologists such as A. S. Watt and R. S. Adamson were fascinated by natural successions from grassland and heath to

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Natural woodland woodland. They recognised successional pathways, or ‘seres’, that were characteristic of certain regions and site types. Thus, on the Chiltern escarpment, Watt (1934) separated a ‘juniper sere’ on shallow, highly calcareous soils that developed into Beech woodland 18–24m high (with Sanicle prominent in the ground flora) from a ‘hawthorn sere’ on deeper, less calcareous soils that led through Ash woodland to beech woodland 21–27m tall (with Dog’s Mercury dominant in the ground flora). Initially, developing stands are dominated by shrubs and pioneer trees, but they eventually yield the ground to slow-growing, longer-lived species. Eventually, regeneration resumes in their shade or, later, when the initial canopy starts to break up. ‘Shade succession’ follows as Beech, Holly, Rowan or Rhododendron colonise below a mature oak canopy, or Ash saplings proliferate in old Alder carrs. However neat and predictable they seem, natural successions are subject to chance. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, tracts of New Forest heathland and grassland developed into woodland. Some developed as a mixture of birch, Holly, oak, Beech, Yew and hawthorn into oak–Beech woodland with a Holly understorey, but others developed into almost pure Holly woods. If oak and Beech became established at the outset, then they eventually prevailed, but, if by chance they did not, they were allowed no further opportunities for at least a century after canopy closure. The Holly woods thus represented succession arrested at an intermediate stage, much like the arrested successions on the southern chalklands which generated long-lasting Yew woods. A spectacular instance of secondary succession can be traversed on the undercliff between Axmouth and Lyme Regis. Formed by a series of landslips, including a massive collapse during the 19th century, it developed into woodland after sheep ceased to graze and Rabbit populations were reduced by myxomatosis. The main native tree colonists have been Ash and Field Maple, but Holm Oak and other non-native trees were planted, along with Rhododendron and Cherry Laurel. Since the ground is steep and extremely irregular and the trees are festooned with Ivy and Clematis, this nowmature, mixed evergreen woodland is as close as English woodland gets to the popular conception of jungle.

The ‘jungle’ that developed naturally on the massive 19thcentury landslip between Axmouth, Devon, and Lyme Regis, Dorset.

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Birch starts to colonise heathland in Glen Feshie and will eventually form closed woodland. According to John Miles’ idea of circular successions, this will one day revert naturally to heather moorland.

We assume that the woodland generated by these successions will remain woodland indefinitely, albeit changing in structure and composition, but in the Boreal zone of north-east Scotland, where the main trees do not tolerate shade, this is unlikely (Miles 1988). If grazing remains light and there are no fires, Scots Pine, birch and Juniper stands can renew themselves or change into one or the other, but they are far more likely to change to grassland, heather, or gorse and broom scrub before sometimes returning to woodland. As grazing becomes heavier and fires more frequent, so the woodland is less likely to renew itself and less likely to return if it is replaced. The result under fluctuating grazing and infrequent fires is constant, kaleidoscopic flux in the pattern of woodland – the famous migratory woods.

Natural development of existing woodland Many woods have been left unmanaged far longer than the customary intervals between silvicultural operations. A substantial proportion of these were coppices last cut sometime in the 20th century, which have now ‘enjoyed’ 30–100 years of unfettered growth. They become more natural with every year that passes. 144

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Natural woodland Long neglected but formerly managed ancient woods are where we first developed our ideas about how natural woodland works. The Urwälder (see below) of mainland Europe and the old-growth stands of North America have been left to grow naturally for the last one or two centuries and have passed into that stage of growth where dead wood is accumulating and regeneration is filling gaps. Eustace Jones’ review of their structure and dynamics, which is still an excellent summary 80 years after it was written, has been reinforced by a wealth of later studies in North America, mainland Europe and East Asia (Peterken 1996). These Urwälder were once thought to be remnants of the original wildwood that had miraculously escaped human influence throughout the post-Mesolithic millennia, and that may indeed be true of some of the sub-montane Beech–Silver Fir–Norway Spruce stands of central Europe and remote forests, such as the cove forests of the southern Appalachians and the wave-regenerated Balsam Fir montane forests of the Adirondacks. However, most European examples were once managed as wood-meadows or wood-pastures, and their present state is the result of a century or more without silvicultural interventions. Further north in boreal Europe, natural forests were pastured and burned extensively and latterly have been indirectly changed by fire-control policies. Likewise, the North American equivalents of Urwälder, the old-growth stands, have filled in since Europeans evicted native Americans. By translating Urwälder as ‘virgin forests’, ecologists were encouraged to think of them as untouched remnants of primeval forests. They do indeed have direct links back to primeval wildwood, but, as a broad generalisation, European Urwälder and North American old-growth forests have merely enjoyed a longer period of natural development than Britain’s ‘neglected’ ancient coppices and wood-pastures, not a fundamentally different history. Thus, it is no surprise to find, say, that oaks are present only in the oldest generation of the Hutcheson Memorial Forest (New Jersey) and Białowieża Forest (Poland) and for much the same reason that they are found mainly as former standards in long-neglected British coppices – past human intervention ensured that oaks once had enough light for regeneration. Nevertheless, whatever their background, these old woodlands are functioning naturally now, so their development affords clues about how natural stands behave within a managed landscape and may tell us something about how pre-Neolithic woodlands worked. 145

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above: Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, a

cove forest of the southern Appalachians. The huge emergents are Tulip-trees.

left: (top) Stužica Prales, a ‘virgin’ Beech

forest in a remote corner of north-east Slovakia, bordering Poland and Belarus. (bottom) Temperate rainforest in the Hoh valley, Olympic peninsula, Washington.

Jones (1945a) identified several general features, emphasising the prevalence of disturbances in contrast to the then-current ideas of successions leading to stable, climax forests. Perhaps the major regional contrast lies between the wind-dominated temperate broadleaf forests and the fire-dominated boreal and summer-dry forests around the Mediterranean and in the Pacific Northwest (Pyne 1982). Locally, floodplain forests are distinct in being dominated by fluvial processes. 146

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Some general features of natural woodland • Natural woodlands are subject to a wide variety of stand-destroying and standmodifying disturbances, most of them unpredictable. Some stands escape major disturbance, either by chance or because they occupy protected locations. • Within natural woodlands several different disturbance regimes can be identified, from floodplain forests dominated by movements in the courses of river channels to fire-dominated boreal forests and wind-dominated temperate forests. The major disturbances can recur regularly or irregularly. • Composition, structure and disturbance regimes interact. Frequent, large disturbances generate forests of light-demanding trees and strong even-aged components, whereas infrequent, small-scale disturbances generate a steady supply of small gaps favouring shade-tolerant species and generating a multi-aged forest based around small even-aged groups. • Composition and structure change according to the particular sequence and severity of disturbances. There is no single structure that characterises the forest on any particular site, just a range of possibilities to which different probabilities can be attached. Further, the past trajectory of development is a poor predictor of future trends, because disturbances cannot be predicted.

• Where stands have escaped standdestroying disturbances for 150 years or more, they enter a state known as oldgrowth in which some very large trees might emerge above the general canopy level and substantial quantities of large coarse woody debris (dead wood) are present, as both fallen and standing trees. However, the biomass of living and dead trees reaches its peak before old-growth is achieved. • No single final state of stand development can be identified, though some outcomes are more probable than others on each site type. In so far as stands have a probable destination, some have at least two such destinations. For example, pine stands invite fire, but if they happen to escape burning, broadleaves become established and make fire less likely. The result: either a fast-turnover, fire-controlled conifer stand or a slowturnover broadleaved stand on exactly the same site type, with chance playing a large part in which happens where. • The dynamics of many woodlands approximate to well-known silvicultural systems. Boreal woodlands take the form of extensive even-aged stands or two-storeyed high forest. Temperate woodlands mostly approximate to small-group selection forests.

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Disturbing events in British woodlands None of the studies reviewed by Jones was in Britain, so how do his findings apply here? Judging by experience elsewhere, we would expect wind to dominate throughout Britain, supplemented by channel movement on major floodplains and fire in the Highland Scots Pine woods. Quite the most exciting moment of my professional lifetime came early on 16 October 1987 after the great storm passed across south-east England, leaving an estimated 15 million trees prostrate, including specimens in Kew Gardens. Some woods had been almost completely flattened, notably the Beech–oak wood-pasture of Toys Hill, Kent. Most had been only partially levelled and many were left with trees leaning at startling angles. Trees on wet ground proved to be particularly vulnerable. Those with shallow roots, such as Beech, were generally uprooted, whereas trees with deep roots, notably oak, stood their ground while large crown branches were ripped off. Holes blown in hitherto closed canopies were progressively enlarged, because trees on the margins of new gaps became vulnerable. Whilst the ancient oaks of Staverton Park, Suffolk, remained unscathed, the adjacent pine plantations were flattened. Valleys aligned along the direction of the storm tended to concentrate the air flow and suffer more blowdowns. Woods on south-facing scarp slopes were exposed, but so too were woods in the lee, which could be brought down by eddies generated as wind passed over the scarp. On a larger scale, the storm appeared to be ‘streaky’: whilst some districts remained intact, others of similar character were devastated. Most trees, it is worth saying, nevertheless remained standing and unchanged. This storm came as a nasty surprise to the people in London and the Home Counties, whose collective memory had long erased the previous equally severe storm in the region, which passed 284 years earlier in 1703. Most people understandably saw the 1987 storm as immensely damaging, not just to people and property, but also to the landscape. Foresters’ management plans had been devastated along with their woods. Less understandably, nature conservation interests also cried ‘damage’ and sought donations for restitution, initially unwilling to recognise the storm as a natural event that ought to favour nature. The storm was far from unique in Britain. Scottish foresters are used to wind taking plantations apart and remember that in 1968 a swathe of lowland Scotland had been equally buffeted. In 1990, three 148

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The great storm of October 1987 devastated woodlands and trees in town and countryside. Famously, six of the ‘Sevenoaks’ in Kent were tipped over, and nearby much of the ancient wood-pasture of Toys Hill (left) was flattened and patches of ancient coppice woods were knocked aside. Nevertheless, the bluebells still flowered next spring in Edwardstone Wood, Suffolk (right), and continuing coppice management in Chalkney Wood, Essex (below), has long since removed all trace of storm damage.

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Trees and Woodlands stand-destroying storms swept south-west Britain, and in November 2021 Storm Arwen levelled plantations and felled trees in north-east England and Scotland. In short, storms can occur unpredictably anywhere at any time. At any given point, the interval between them can be well beyond the lifetimes of most trees, or so short that the next generation of trees escapes destruction because they are still saplings. The other major events in my lifetime have been the outbreak of Dutch elm disease (DED) in 1970, the great drought of 1976 and the advent of ash dieback disease in 2012. DED was evidently imported in timber and spread out from the docks. It quickly infected and killed large numbers of farmland elms, including sadly the village elm pollards that had once been sources of fodder. Suckering elm woodlands developed from clones were also reduced to a jumble of dead timber. Wych Elms proved to be more resistant or less easily found by the Scolytus beetle that spreads the fungus, helped partly by their locations in woodland remote from the sources. An Epitaph for the Elm was written (Wilkinson 1978). Fifty years later, however, we still have elms in our woods and hedges, because some of the elm clones were untouched while others succumbed (Rackham 2003). Some individual Wych Elms survived unscathed, even in districts that were otherwise severely affected, and seed was released from the dying Wych Elms and released again from the resulting young elms before they again became diseased (Peterken and Mountford 1998). Sure, there are fewer elms now than in 1970 and the disease persists, but elms survive and DED has abated to a chronic infection that keeps elms perpetually young. The great drought started in 1975 and became severe in 1976, eventually breaking with downpours on August Bank Holiday. It killed or impaired large numbers of Beech and birch, but left other species such as oaks and limes unaffected. Many large Beech died outright, and others were so badly damaged by the death of crown branches and sheets of bark at the base of the trunk that they have been declining and dying ever since. Other species differed in their responses: large numbers of birch that were already struggling died, but oaks, Ash and limes prospered for a decade because competition from Beech was reduced. At the same time, large numbers of mature Beech trees in southern counties looked sickly. Moreover, similar impacts were felt by Beech over much of Europe (Cavin and Jump 2017), but not at the southern limits of its range, where trees were already adapted to drought. For many years the poor condition of 150

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above: A Beech that was severely desiccated in the

great drought of 1976, but lived to maintain a healthy crown. It still stands (2021), but will soon split.

left: Top; Diseased Ash west of the Rhinogs near Harlech. Although chalara spread from the east, it is well established in westernmost Wales. Bottom; To understand the present state of Denny Wood, New Forest, one must remember summer flooding in the 1960s, severe drought in 1976, the great storm in 1987, and relentless grazing since the 1960s.

British Beech contributed to Europe-wide alarm about Waldsterben – mass forest death – caused by acid rain. This, however, has largely been discounted, partly because mass mortality of forest trees was recorded long before air pollution became a problem, though Ling et al. (1993) concluded after extensive survey that pollution played its part. The drought and the great storm eventually became distant memories and DED abated, but the sequence of formative events continues. In 2012, the chalara ash dieback disease that had been spreading across mainland Europe reached eastern Britain naturally and arrived in the west and north in imported Ash saplings. It is now well entrenched even in the remotest places – by 2019 it was common on the western side of the Rhinogs, for example – and bids fair to be as devastating as 151

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Trees and Woodlands DED. If a proportion of Ash prove to be immune or resistant enough to survive, there is always the Emerald Ash Borer waiting in the wings. Each time, the woods quickly recover their tranquil appearance, so much so that 30 years after the storm of 1987 younger generations barely know it happened and those that know have to search carefully for signs that it did. Expectations change: woods that I knew to be co-dominated by Ash and Wych Elm became Ash woods with an underwood of Hazel and scattered elms, but young ecologists don’t know that. Without personal memories or good records, existing woods may be difficult to interpret.

Individual woods The events described above are the severe and widespread ‘headline’ disturbances of recent times, but how do they seem from the standpoint of an individual wood? Consider two important points relating to Lady Park Wood. First, the sequence of disturbances that actually shaped the wood is just one of an infinite number of different sequences that might have happened. The wood’s development could have been quite different if, for example, a storm had chanced to blow from the north-west, the full force of which, funnelling down the Wye gorge, would have flattened it. Under that scenario, Lady Park would now have scattered remnants of the mature Beech–oak–lime–Ash stand embedded in a thicket of birch, Goat Willow and Ash. Second, the condition of the stand determined the impact of disturbances just as much as the disturbances determined the condition of the stand. For example, if the Beech had been younger in 1976 the drought would have impacted only the birch. In a wider context, this sequence of events is specific to Lady Park. It defines its individuality every bit as surely as its particular shape, soils, hydrology and history. Importantly, wind is probably the most significant form of disturbance in British woods, yet it has largely passed Lady Park by. It has brought down rotten crown branches and toppled some trees, but in these cases wind was merely the last link in a chain of causation. Elsewhere, woods were totally changed by great storms. Even on a small scale, the history of disturbances is a differentiator, for disturbances of all kinds were patchy even within Lady Park. Just as each wood experiences its particular combination, intensity and sequence of disturbances, so each part of a wood has a particular disturbance history, and this contributes along with soil patchiness to its small-scale heterogeneity. 152

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Long-term observations in a near-natural wood LADY PARK WOOD, Monmouthshire and Gloucestershire This is the wood that has occupied my thoughts since the 1970s. In 1944 the Forestry Commission set Lady Park aside as an untouched reserve for ecologists to study how natural woodland develops. Routine recording initiated by Dr Eustace Jones of Oxford University has been continued by the Nature Conservancy and its successors. The wood itself is only part of the densely wooded borderland where the Forest of Dean meets the woods lining the steep flanks of the lower Wye Valley. Here, the native range of Beech intersects the belt of mixed woods of Ash, Wych Elm, Field Maple, both oaks and both limes that runs north–south down the Carboniferous limestone outcrops. For centuries its coppice provided charcoal for the local metal industries, and mining families searched unsuccessfully for ore. Direct human influence has now been excluded for 80–150 years, so Lady Park provides an opportunity to study a form of natural woodland. The baton of recording was passed by Eustace Jones to Alan Orange, myself, Edward Mountford and others, and now the record of individual trees is as long and detailed as anywhere in Britain and perhaps Europe. Through it, we have witnessed how drought, disease and other events have shaped the wood. The full catalogue shows that disturbances have become more frequent and diverse as the wood has grown more natural. Some are natural but many are ‘semi-natural’ in the sense that they are the indirect consequences of human actions elsewhere. They have taken many forms, from discrete, almost fleeting events to chronic conditions, changes in chronic conditions and events that became chronic conditions. One thing has led to another, which means that the order of events has been significant: the limes bent over by the 1983 snowfall could only be pinned to the ground because birches killed in 1976 were breaking up, and they would have layered if the deer had been fenced out by then. Each event affected each species differently and created its own incidence pattern. None was predicted. Nevertheless, some parts were hardly affected. The wood changes constantly: currently it is developing towards dominance by the two native lime species. Lady Park Wood has been an education. I feel I know every individual tree and its life history. Scientifically, it has generated several papers, some from collaborative studies also involving Wytham Woods (Oxfordshire) and long-term study sites throughout Europe, and we have written a book describing what has happened and what we make of it (Peterken and Mountford 2017). Many groups of ecologists and foresters have visited to see how natural woodland works, so Lady Park has become a forum for ideas and discussion. And, most recently, we invited the Arborealists, a group of professional artists, to work there and, we hope, help us reach out to a wider audience through exhibitions and our book Art This beech collapsed in November 2018, having been severely damaged by drought in 1976. Meets Ecology (Peterken et al. 2020). 153

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Events and disturbances in Lady Park Wood, 1945–2021 Apart from limited felling within the reserve margins of trees that were deemed to be a danger to walkers and cyclists, the following natural and semi-natural events have been recorded in Lady Park Wood since 1945: • Slope  Large trees fall down the slopes, topple other trees in their path and crush underwood. Where they fall, these are massive disturbances, but at a larger scale they are a constant part of the wood’s dynamics. Tree falls have become increasingly frequent, especially in the oldgrowth stands and on the steepest slopes, where trees grow with unbalanced crowns, heavily weighted to the downside. As they grow taller, they become less stable and topple even on calm days. The result is a gap, which is often elongated downslope if the falling tree skittles others in its path. • Drought  The 1976 drought killed many canopy Beech outright. Crown branches of many surviving large Beech were killed;

bark at the base of their trunks dried out and died in sheets, admitting rot. Beech with heart rot that started in 1976 were still splitting or dying standing in 2019. Undamaged beech stopped growing for several years. The drought also killed large numbers of birch, especially small individuals already stressed by competition, thereby accelerating the thinning. • Wind Lady Park escaped the storms of 1987 and 1990, but gaps created by droughtinduced mortality have been enlarged in subsequent storms, and many crown branches have been torn from mature Beech. • Snowfall  A late spring blizzard crushed many weak underwood stems in 1981. Weak lime stems were pinned to the ground by birch killed in the drought and would have rooted if the wood had not be heavily grazed by deer. In 2017, a December snowfall stripped major limbs from Beech already weakened by the 1976 drought.

Small-leaved Limes brought down by heavy wet snow in December 2017.

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• Bank Voles  In 1985, a sharp peak in their population stripped bark from the base of Beech saplings and killed almost all.

eventually causing them to snap, thereby reducing growth and perhaps shortening the life of canopy trees.

• Deer  Fallow Deer were a constant presence until 2007, when they were mostly fenced out. The fence was imperfectly maintained and they regained almost unrestricted possession by 2017, by which time Muntjac had also spread to the district. Between 2007 and 2017, regeneration from seed was patchy but substantial growth of shoots from the base of mature individual limes and Hazels was vigorous. Both have now been browsed almost to oblivion.

• Feral pigs  Breached the fence in 2015, and now resident. They plough patches of the deeper soils and excavate around decaying stumps of large trees.

• Grey Squirrels displaced Reds in 1943 and have since debarked sallows, Field Maples, Beech, oak and birch, reducing stems that could have grown into large trees to tattered shrubs. Squirrels also debark the upsides of crown branches of the large Beech, admitting rot and

• Dutch elm disease  Arrived in 1971 and has since become chronic. Most large elms were quickly killed, but regrowth and regeneration from seed was common. Slow-growing elms on shallow and basepoor ground remained uninfected, though some of these have since become diseased. • Ash dieback disease  First detected in the wood in 2017, it was well entrenched throughout by autumn 2019. • Felling outside the reserve  Felling of plantations adjacent to the reserve was followed by wind-throw of some marginal trees.

Events

Disturbances and circumstances that have influenced stand structure and regeneration The main events have been the 1971 outbreak of Dutch elm disease and the 1976 drought, but ash dieback disease may have large impacts from 2020 Slope Drought Windthrow Snowfall Bank Voles Fallow Deer Grey Squirrels Feral pigs Dutch elm disease Ash dieback disease Felling outside reserve 1945

1970 1976

1985

2000

2020

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Old growth in Lady Park Wood that has been unaffected by most events since 1945, save for the 1976 drought. Last coppiced in 1870, it has hardly been touched since.

Competitive thinning and stand growth In between substantial disturbances, trees grow and compete. As trees grow larger and stand biomass increases so the number of trees decreases, for there is a fixed area they can occupy. In any period more trees die in a young stand, which has a high density of small trees, than in an old stand with fewer but larger trees, but, irrespective of density, the proportion of the trees that die in a given period is constant. Stands are initiated when trees and shrubs colonise open ground or when new growth springs up in recently felled woodland. A thicket develops within 5 (felled coppice) to 20 or more years (abandoned fertile pasture). Within a century or so, trees reach their full height while still maintaining an unbroken cover over a deeply shaded ground. Thereafter, the canopy remains closed until canopy trees fall or die standing and thereby leave gaps in the canopy. Gaps fill with more young trees, which repeat the competitive sequence on a small scale. Long before this, shade-tolerant shrubs and saplings colonise the underwood and the original tree colonists differentiate into canopy trees and sub-canopy trees. The mature stand is thus vertically layered and horizontally patchy, and this is the condition that we see in so many semi-natural stands that have not been managed for decades. If, as in many woods of the western oceanic uplands, deer or sheep consume shrubs and saplings, the underwood may be restricted to inaccessible ground on rock outcrops.

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Natural woodland The mortality rate during competitive thinning is truly sobering. For example, before chalara, the Ash in Lady Park maintained a population of up to 1 million mini-saplings per hectare (i.e. the seedlings that have survived for more than 2–3 years), but only 64 trees per hectare remained in the 145-year-old stand. Between 1945 and 2018 the old-growth stand of Beech, Sessile Oak, Small-leaved Lime, Ash and Silver Birch lost 65% of its canopy trees by selfthinning, including all but one of the birches. What enables one sapling to succeed while almost all its siblings fail, or one tree to survive while its neighbour dies? Is it chance and luck, or can we pick winners at the outset? Those seedlings that germinate immediately after the felling or, better still, anticipate the felling by germinating a few years earlier have an immediate advantage if they survive the felling. These anticipators and first-movers quickly become larger than their younger neighbours, so, when competition is joined in the developing thicket, they enjoy full light and shade their neighbours. An even greater advantage is conferred on new shoots springing from the stumps of felled trees, for they are propelled by the full force of an established root system – in effect, a subsidy from the previous generation. The strongest coppice shoots and the first-mover seedlings are the heirs, the rest are spares. Luck and circumstances also play a part. Some saplings root into ideal seedbeds, but others chance on some metaphorical ‘stony ground’. Seedling trees are small and easily shaded by bramble, Bracken, Dog’s Mercury and other members of the ground vegetation. For several years, vigorous brambles and Bracken can climb over and flatten them, whilst less vigorous brambles may protect them. Worse, a sapling may find itself competing with Clematis, or it may grow beside a path used by deer which browse its leader as they pass. Eventually, some saplings break clear and the ground vegetation ceases to influence the course of events. Once the canopy closes and the new stand has become a thicket, subsequent germinants are born into a deeply shaded world, so most quickly expire – the window of opportunity has closed. As the thicket grows, a feedback develops: the taller individuals grow faster and are less likely to die, for they are not shaded by their neighbours, whereas smaller trees generally grow more slowly and are more likely to die. As the smaller individuals languish, their disadvantage intensifies with each passing year. This is the essence of competitive thinning, or exclusion, which, in the absence of disturbance, is relentless and 157

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Trees and Woodlands predictable, a pitiless Darwinian or ultra-free-market process in which the fit get fitter and the weak go to the wall. It operates as soon as the canopy closes and continues to operate as the stand grows to full height and on into maturity. Species matters during stand initiation and competitive thinning. Pioneers such as birches and sallows produce copious, widely distributed seed and grow fast, so they tend to be quick off the mark – the first to arrive on newly vacant ground and the fastest-growing species in the thicket. They cannot bear shade, however, so they will die immediately if they fail to grow tall quickly. Shade-tolerant species, such as Beech, are more likely to be in situ as established saplings when a stand is felled or a gap forms (‘advance regeneration’), so they may be able to keep up with the pioneers and will be well equipped to survive as shaded, slow-growing saplings deep within the thicket if they do not. Ash, and to a lesser degree oak, has the ability to put all its resources into early height growth, forming pencil-thin saplings up to 1.2m tall after five years, which stay upright only with the support of the bramble through which they are trying to grow. Ash also shares with Beech the ability to maintain a population of saplings under a closed canopy that remain ready to seize their chance if a canopy tree falls. The pattern of competitive thinning is much the same in young thickets and stands nearing maturity. Larger trees or saplings grow faster and survive better than smaller counterparts. Indeed, in Lady Park, the future dominant Ash identified themselves in the first 20 years, for, as in the Boat Race, there is very little later overtaking. Small Ash try to evade their neighbours and grow towards betterlit parts of the stand, becoming absurdly misshapen in the process. Heroically, they still sprout from low on their trunks if their crown dies, and in the end will still produce weak and slender sprouts from the rootstock for a few years after the original tree has died, but they are doomed, despite their valiant efforts. This unforgiving process is not absolutely rigid. Large trees occasionally languish and die and small individuals recover or regenerate, then grow into the stand. Unlucky large trees include otherwise healthy trees from which a major crown branch breaks in high wind, usually because it was burdened by a large and persistent Clematis or Ivy; hitherto vigorous trees that become cankered; a tree into which fungi gained access after deer or a glancing blow from a nearby falling tree damaged the bark. Lucky small trees are those 158

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Natural woodland

that survive a neighbour’s fall and are still vigorous enough to rapidly increase their growth. This opportunity, however, is rarely taken by old and evidently debilitated individuals that have survived prolonged hardship in the underwood. Eventually, even the large trees in the canopy become more vulnerable. Partly this is due to size – a large tree is more likely to be exposed and blown down. Partly it is the cumulative effects of circumstances, such as one-sided growth of trees on slopes which causes them to lean and eventually fall. Older trees also tend to bear the scars of a long life and they no longer have the youthful resistance to infection. They are also less able to withstand stresses, such as the 1976 drought, when the large Beech suffered more than the smaller Beech. In Lady Park, we found that mortality rates increased as the stand became older. This general trend was interrupted by a mortality spike following the great 1976 drought which killed many Beech outright and damaged many others. Oak, incidentally, prospered for a decade after the drought because competition from Beech had been temporarily removed. In July 2013, this Beech–oak interaction was featured in a live transmission from the wood on BBC TV’s Breakfast show as an example of the effects of climate change.

A thicket of mainly Beech poles in Cwm Clydach near Swansea, not far from the acknowledged western limits of native Beech. They will eventually be reduced to five or fewer trees by competitive thinning.

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Regeneration within natural woodland Woods are full of new seedlings in spring, but most die within a year and the vast majority perish before they can reasonably be called saplings. Shallow-rooted at first, many die of drought. Others are eaten by small mammals or grazed back by deer until they are too weak to re-sprout. Sometimes large numbers survive as thickets of tiny saplings, established, but growing slowly. Thus, after a heavy mast year, clusters of oaklings can be seen in, for example, the oak–Hornbeam woods. Ultimately, large trees that produce seeds in millions over their lifetime will be replaced by only one of their progeny. In Lady Park, parts of the woodland floor are permanently bristly with tiny ashlings. Beech, too, maintains numerous established but suppressed beechlings, waiting their chance to grow faster, which arrives when a tree above them dies or falls, admitting more light and creating vacant canopy space. Second- and third-year seedlings of other species, such as oak and birch, which cannot bear shade, are fewer and further between. They are all there, though, even groups of limes (which have a reputation for rarely setting fertile seed) and Wych Elm (which has suffered nearly 50 years of disease). However, species may alternate, with one species regenerating where another once stood. This is the basis of ‘gap-phase regeneration’, a key feature of natural temperate broadleaved woodland. Gaps are essential for light-demanders, but almost as important for shade-tolerant species. Beech and Holly, for example, both noted for their ability to withstand shade, often generate an understorey of saplings and poles, but these only grow fast and tall if they are allowed more light. If gaps fail to form, a ‘shade succession’ takes place: poles of shade-tolerant trees combine with shade-tolerant shrubs to form a slow-growing underwood: common examples are Beech and Holly regenerating under an oak canopy, and Alder woods with groves of Ash saplings growing below, waiting their turn. Saplings grown from seed may well be the main form of regeneration in natural woods, but not always. The alternatives are various forms of vegetative regeneration: suckers grown from mature root systems; shoots from the base of established standing trees, some still standing, others broken off; layers from branches that droop to the ground and take root where they maintain stable contact; new shoots from the trunks and major branches of mature trees; and regrowth from the 160

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Natural woodland

above: Alternation of species in Lady Park Wood. Beech colonises a gap created by the blowdown of Smallleaved Limes. left: Small-leaved Lime regenerates naturally (with Field Maple and Ash) in a gap created by the death of a Beech.

prostrate trunks of fallen trees that retained enough of their old root system to stay alive. Oaks and birches rely on seed, but most other species such as Wych Elm, Beech, the two limes, Holly and Hazel will produce shoots from the base of mature trees. Hazel in fact constantly sprouts from the base and eventually produces a large mixed-age cluster of stems on a single rootstock. Beech and the limes also sprout from mature surface 161

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Gaps fill with shrubs, saplings originating from seed, regrowth from fallen and broken trees, bramble and Bracken in various proportions. Trees usually suppress bramble and Bracken, but not always.

roots close to mature trunks, thereby taking a step in the direction of clone formation (North American Beech is fully clonal). The most impressive bursts of vegetative regeneration rise from fallen trunks of Beech, limes and less often Ash, which form colonnades of new shoots rising from the old crown right down to the rootstock, and these are quite capable of generating several new trees. Sprouts also spring from the leaning trunks of mature limes and Ash, thereby eventually restoring some balance to the crown. Regeneration and recruitment from layers is probably confined to limes and Wych Elm in natural woodland, but is also possible with Beech. The balance between seedling and vegetative regeneration varies according to composition. Beech-, oak- and Ash-dominated woods probably recruit mostly from seed, whereas lime-dominated woods must rely more on vegetative regeneration. When a tree regenerates from suckers it forms clones. Wild Cherry, Aspen and suckering elm clones are common and often conspicuous features of ancient woods still managed as coppice or still growing out from former coppicing, but the question here is whether they would develop so often in natural woodland. Experience at Lady Park indicates that the light-demanders, Wild Cherry and Aspen, would either die out completely (Wild Cherry) or maintain only weak shoots

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above: Not all successful

regeneration in natural woodland comes from seed or regrowth from stumps. Here, a Pedunculate Oak has generated several new trees from its prostrate trunk.

left: This Aspen clone

generated several trees, but, after thinning, only one was retained.

in small gaps (Aspen). In the Highland Scots Pine and birch–Hazel woods, Aspen forms clones on outcrops and amongst birch groves, where it is less shaded. Suckering elms may once have been part of natural floodplain forests, but they have been planted in and around other woods, where – DED willing – they can maintain themselves. The other clonal species are Wild Service-tree and Blackthorn, both of which seem well able to maintain themselves in natural underwood. 163

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Trees and Woodlands The trees that occupy the new canopy space may not be regenerants of any kind. Small gaps are often filled by crown expansion from trees on the margins and new shoots from the trunks of leaning trees. Saplings and vegetative shoots thus all face a race to the canopy to beat crown expansion, and the odds in their favour increase with the size of the gap and its shape (higher in circular gaps). In large gaps, it is possible that vegetative growth stands a better chance than saplings from seed because it starts with an established root system. Lady Park observations show that saplings grown from seed have a lower growth rate and higher mortality rate than vegetative sprouts. The severely competitive processes of growth and regeneration within a natural stand are tempered by forms of assistance and cooperation. As the tall, slender trees in Lady Park sway languidly to and fro in the slightest breeze, one can appreciate the mutual protection each tree affords to its neighbours in a storm. Further, as Suzanne Simard (2020) has revealed, trees support each other by transmitting nutrients through the mycelial network and pheromones warning of insect attacks. In short, much like people in cities, the trees in a wood coexist through a perpetual mix of competition and collaboration.

Boreal and floodplain woodland

opposite page:

Floodplain woodlands (top) are naturally shaped by channel movement. On the braided lower reaches of the Spey unrestrained channels still undermine woodland and deposit debris downstream. Aftermath of a fire (bottom) in open pine woodland near Aviemore. Inset shows the bleached trees in 1975. By 2021 some recovery had taken place.

Most of the above relates to temperate broadleaved woodland where wind is the major element in the disturbance regime. On floodplains of larger rivers, channels naturally migrate as banks are undercut and sediment is deposited elsewhere, with the result that floodplain forests comprise a mosaic of even-aged stands distributed in elongated sediment deposits. Modified forms of this can still be seen along stretches of the Danube, other major European rivers and the larger Highland rivers, notably the Spey and Tay, where spring spates develop as mountain snows melt. Larger English rivers were probably less dynamic because they did not spate so strongly in spring, but may have been braided into a network of small channels. On the floodplains of naturally stable rivers and those where channel movement has been restricted, woods tend to develop much as they would on higher ground, but with a greater inclination to windthrow. Highland Scots Pine woods must naturally have been prone to fires, much like their counterparts in Scandinavia, where fires arrest any tendency for long-term replacement of Scots Pine by Norway Spruce or broadleaves, and generate even-aged stands or two-storey

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Trees and Woodlands high forest. Arguably, the modern Scots Pine plantations are closer approximations to the natural state than the open-grown ‘granny pines’. Highland pinewoods still catch fire, but the natural fire regime has largely been suppressed by grazing and replaced by a new balance between the actions of careless visitors and the response times of the fire brigade.

Natural woodland as an idea Natural woodland means different things to different people. To the general public, it embraces much of our mature broadleaved woodland, together with Highland pinewoods and no doubt the self-sown pinewoods of the New Forest and the Surrey commons – in other words, any woodland that is not obviously managed and was not obviously planted. Ecologists have tried to be more discriminating, defining natural as free from human influence, but this has left them with a category that has become almost empty, or hypothetical, now that we recognise how and how far back people have influenced their environment. My ideas on this have changed since I first encountered ‘virgin forest’ in southern Bohemia (Peterken 2016). Now, I think we should bring the ecological definition closer to common parlance by accepting that human influence is pervasive and has been throughout the period since the glaciers retreated. Defining natural woodland to include any woodland whose characteristics have not been deliberately determined by people allows several different kinds of natural woodland to be recognised (Peterken 2019). It still leaves questions about where we draw the boundaries, but it does eliminate the implied separation of people from nature for which ecologists and conservationists have been criticised. Natural woodland is therefore woodland that has responded naturally to its circumstances and history. In practice it takes many forms. At one extreme we have the towering old-growth cove forests of the southern Appalachians with their emergent giant Tuliptrees and immense variety of other tree species and sizes all mixed together and regenerating mostly in small gaps created by single-tree mortality. At another, we have the treeline of mountains in upstate New York, where dense monocultures of Balsam Fir last only a few decades before another wave of exposure to ice storms kills them and provides space for regeneration. At another extreme, we have young birch scrub developing on a Surrey common. 166

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As far as the British Isles are concerned, I would include: • Pre-Neolithic woodland, irrespective of how much it has been shaped by people. • Coppice on ancient/primary woodland that has grown up since the last cutting. Even when freshly cut, its composition is relatively natural (Chapter 6) and its structure becomes more natural with time. • Wood-pasture regenerating naturally, especially if grazing levels are at natural intensities. • Scrub woodland developing by natural colonisation on former common or agricultural land. Knepp Wildland is now a famous example , but there are numerous other secondary woods that have grown naturally on open ground. • Naturally regenerating stands of introduced species would also be natural, not just Sycamore-dominated woods but also self-seeding stands of spruce and other introduced conifers.

Knepp Wildland, West Sussex. This new woodland develops freely according to the inherent abilities of the self-sown trees and shrubs and their interaction with freeranging cattle and deer.

Not that this solves all the problems. There will still be borderline cases, and the last example will no doubt be controversial, but even introduced tree species will become increasingly adapted to the British environment, and wildlife populations will be increasingly adapted to them (Chapter 8). 167

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Trees and Woodlands Finally, I think we should recognise different types of natural woodland in another sense. After many discussions about woodland nature reserves where managers wanted to restore or maintain natural woodland I was struck by the need to clarify what we meant. For example, in the ancient woods on base-rich boulder clay west of Cambridge a reserve manager who asks what composition counts as natural could receive five different answers. Depending on which one is chosen, he or she would plant lime (to simulate original-natural), allow Sycamore to spread (to permit future-natural), plant Beech and Hornbeam (to generate current-natural) or just keep the present composition (to maintain inherited-natural). Equivalent tables can be drawn up for other woodland types and districts. The composition of natural woodland in the Cambridgeshire woods on boulder clay differs according to the definition of ‘natural’ adopted. Form of naturalness

Originalnatural

Currentnatural

Potentialnatural

Futurenatural

Limes

+++

++

Pedunculate Oak

++

+

++

Ash

+

++

Field Maple

+

++

+++

+++

+++

+++

++

++

Wych Elm

++

++

+

+

+

Hazel

+++

+++

+++

++

++

Beech

+

++

Hornbeam

+

Sycamore Other species

Inheritednatural

++ + ++

++ ?

Only principal species are shown, with the number of plus symbols denoting relative contribution of each species. •  Original-natural. The composition of pre-Neolithic woodland before it was directly modified by people. This was real and can be discovered by pollen analysis. • Current-natural. The composition of the woodland we would see now if it had not been directly modified by people. None did survive, but we should still recognise that pre-Neolithic woodland would have continued to change in response to the last 5,000 years of climate change, soil maturation and species migration. •  Inherited-natural. The species in existing ancient woods that might have been directly inherited from originalnatural woodland. This is real and can be judged from knowledge of a wood’s history. •  Potential-natural. A hypothetical form of naturalness, that expresses the present potential of the site. This can be envisaged as the composition that would develop if we withdrew human influence and could telescope the resulting succession into an instant. •  Future-natural. The composition that would result from ‘shutting the gate’ and just leaving a wood to get on with it. This could happen, but we can only guess the result and recognise that there would be no final outcome.

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Natural woodland

above: This mixture of

mainly Pedunculate Oak, Ash, Hazel and Field Maple in Hayley Wood, Cambridgeshire, is only one of several natural combinations which have existed on this site, or might in future.

left: A form of natural

woodland: Sycamore–Ash secondary woodland colonises Arnos Vale cemetery, Bristol.

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History: how people have used woodland

E

chapter six

very wood has a past. Events that happened long ago still leave their mark on the sizes and shapes of trees, the distribution of each species of tree within the wood

and indeed the presence or absence of particular species. So, the first question I have on entering a wood is: how did it come to be as it is? Much of the answer lies with the people who have used the woodland over the millennia. Not always, of course – many woods in south-east England have groups of old trees scattered through a thicket of 30-year-old youngsters, because most of the old trees were blown flat in October 1987 – but generally, the sizes and shapes of the trees tell me about past management. If, say, I judge that all trees originated after 1870, I ask what happened in 1869. If most trees are multi-stemmed and no older than 70 years, I deduce that coppicing ceased about 1950. And, if I find a sawn stump, I count the growth rings to check my assessment of age and look for changes in growth rates. Woodlands can only be understood if we take into account both the natural circumstances and the long history of exploitation and management and how different tree species have reacted. Exploitation implies degradation whereas management implies far-sighted sustainability, but ‘exploited’ woods on commons were sustained for millennia, and management plans change to meet changing markets and have been breached when woods have been felled outright to meet emergencies, both personal and national. The simplest representation of Britain’s woodland history recognises three stages: natural woodland in the form of wall-towall trees; traditional management in the dual form of either woodpasture or coppice; and high forest of maiden trees, most of which

opposite page:

Bradfield Woods, Suffolk: ancient, possibly primary woodland, but shaped by centuries of coppice management.

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Trees and Woodlands Historical summary of woodland management in Britain. Stage

Condition of woodland

Period

1 Pre-Neolithic woodland

Primeval forest (see Chapter 5)

Pre-Neolithic

2 Pre-medieval woodland

Extensive, unregulated wood-pasturage and coppicing

Neolithic and pre-medieval

3 Traditional management

Wood-pastures, coppices, wood-meadows progressively formalised

Early medieval onwards

4 Improving traditional management

Forestry with native trees, mainly oak, Beech, poplar; latterly Ash and other species; planting and various silvicultural systems

Late medieval onwards

5 High forest and plantations

Intensive plantation forestry with mainly even-aged 18th century onwards systems; emphasis on introduced tree species, mostly coniferous

6 Conservation management

Nature reserves, amenity woods, native woodland restoration

19th century onwards

7 Minimum intervention Natural reserves and rewilding; effectively includes neglected woodland and neglected farmland undergoing secondary succession to woodland (see Chapter 5)

19th century onwards

were planted. However, as shown in the table above, I will interleave four more stages: a stage of exploited wildwood between natural woodland and traditional management; a stage of improvement in traditional management before high forest; a stage of native woodland restoration; and a stage of reversion, planned or otherwise, to unmanaged woodland. The seven stages are neither discrete nor absolutely consecutive, but should be read as changes in emphasis down the millennia. Today, we can find woods in stages 3–7. Here I concentrate on stages 2–6. Each stage can only be a broad summary: one has only to examine a few of the thousands of pollen analyses and individual woodland histories to realise that each wood and region is subtly different.

Pre-Neolithic woodland (stage 1) This is the ‘wildwood’ or ‘original-natural woodland’ whose features were discussed in Chapter 5. Its composition changed over millennia and at any given time varied from place to place. Its structure could not have been uniform, not least because parts would have been recovering from storms and fires whilst other parts had long grown undisturbed. Not all ground was covered in trees: there were always 172

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History: how people have used woodland places on the coast, high ground, steep slopes and wet ground where trees could not grow well, or grow at all. Moreover, people were involved. They were already changing woodland directly in the Mesolithic, before the introduction of agriculture, and they must earlier have had a pervasive indirect impact on woodland by exterminating the megafauna and changing the balance between large carnivores and herbivores. The latter included the elephants and rhinoceros of an earlier interglacial that may well have influenced the evolution of the trees that resprout as coppice and wood-pasture. By the late Mesolithic, a broad pattern of five provinces had been established (Rackham 2003): a ‘lime province’ covering lowland England; a birch province of northernmost Scotland; a pine province of the Highlands and the Burren (western Ireland); an oak–Hazel province of much of the uplands, western seaboard and western Ireland; and a Hazel–elm province of south-west Wales and most of Ireland. This basic pattern influenced how woods were later managed and is still detectable in today’s ancient woods.

The drinking horn in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, supposedly from the last Aurochs in Britain. Oliver Rackham was appointed Master of the college in 2007.

Pre-medieval woodland (stage 2) Between the onset of agriculture at the start of the Neolithic (3800 bc) and the emergence of woodland into the written record in AngloSaxon and early monastic land charters (ad 600), rainfall increased, soils continued the natural process of maturing to a lower base status and sea levels continued to rise. Some woodland was lost naturally with the spread of mires and coastal inundations, leaving buried forests under fens, bogs and intertidal sands. These natural changes, however, were dwarfed by clearances for agriculture, which by Roman times had generated landscapes that were every bit as open, settled and farmed as modern landscapes. At the same time, some land reverted to woodland during intervals when mires dried out and when land was abandoned as farmland. Some woodland exploitation must eventually have progressed to forward-thinking management. As soon as people adopted farming they necessarily settled in particular places, felled and ring-barked woodland with stone axes 173

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Trees and Woodlands and burned the residue to create ash-fertilised fields. This process was tested in Draved Forest in Denmark by Johannes Iversen and Jørgan Troels-Smith using a real Neolithic flint axe head mounted on a shaft copied from a Neolithic axe that survived in a bog. Trees of 30cm diameter could be felled in 30 minutes with rapid, short chops, but a full swing merely broke the axe head. ‘Neolithic revolutionaries’ also domesticated cattle, pigs and other animals, and lopped leafy branches from elm, lime and other trees for winter fodder. Intriguingly, the scientific names for Hornbeam (Carpinus) and Ash (Fraxinus) are derived from the Latin carpere (to pluck) and frangere (to break). The ground initially preferred for clearance must have been easily cultivated, but declining fertility eventually forced settlers to clear more woodland, leaving the abandoned fields to be grazed or revert to woodland. Meanwhile, the woodland beyond the clearances was grazed and browsed by domesticated cattle, and no doubt woodland also provided timber, wood, honey, a place to hunt and much else. By the Bronze Age, woodland had been largely cleared from the southern chalk uplands and light sandy soils. The ecological impacts of these activities were profound. The original woodland cover was punctuated then fragmented. Whatever openings there were before the Neolithic were enlarged into increasingly extensive grassland, heathland and cultivated ground. New woodland could form at a distance from original woodland. Within the surviving original woodland, a zone of substantial human influence with more openings and an increased representation of pioneer trees and possibly shrubs must have formed around settlements. Coppicing and pollarding became part of the scene as fodder and fuel wood were gathered, timber was felled to build houses (including crannogs), lime bark was stripped as bast for ropes and palings were built around cultivated ground. One imagines, too, that Wolves, other large carnivores and deer were hunted down. The onset of the Neolithic is marked by the elm decline, when the relative importance of elm in the pollen rain decreased suddenly over a wide area. This was long explained by woodland clearance combined with lopping elms and other trees for fodder, but more recently disease has been invoked, especially after ecologists, like everyone else, had been forced to recognise how virulent it can be (Rackham 1980). Reviewing all the datable elm declines, Parker et al. (2002) concluded that onset was rapid, that it happened as a ‘uniform phased event’ between 6350 and 5300 years ago, and that the main 174

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History: how people have used woodland

Danish scientists felling an oak in Draved Forest, Jutland, with ‘Neolithic’ stone axes, April 1953.

cause was disease. Disease, clearance and lopping together would have been greater than each acting alone, for clearance would have exposed remaining elms to the vector beetle and disease would have opened woods to clearance. The elm decline was both an event specific to elm and a consequence of broader changes, but the other marked change, the lime decline, was due to broader changes spread over millennia. Most, if not all, substantial declines date from the late Neolithic to the late Bronze Age, 5,000–3,000 years ago (Grant et al. 2011). Some disappearances were caused by peatland development and marine inundations, but most were linked to people. Once limes had declined, they rarely recovered, though some would have survived as lopped limes, invisible in the pollen record. They disappeared quickly from calcareous and loamy soils, and by Roman times their retreat was almost complete, presumably because there was scarcely any undisturbed forest left to clear. The continued decline of the limes is consistent with their palatability and limited ability to spread. They retreated under long-term pasturage in Epping and New Forests (Baker et al. 1978) and they are now notably restricted in the wood-pasture portions of the Dean, Lower Wye Valley and the Trellech plateau, as well as the Weald and the Chilterns. Largeleaved Lime, the likely dominant on easily cultivated, fertile soils, probably retreated further than Small-leaved Lime (Pigott 1981). 175

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Trees and Woodlands The prolonged retreat of limes reinforces the conclusion that disease was primarily responsible for the rapid retreat of elms. Whilst the long-lived shade-tolerant species with a limited colonising ability retreated, underwood species, pioneers and other fast colonists, such as birch, Ash and Hazel, increased; Alder, already common, remained so; and oaks held their ground, relatively speaking. No doubt there were other changes, such as an increase in sallows and Aspen (whose pollen cannot be identified) and the loss of outlying populations of Scots Pine, Beech and Hornbeam. Towards the end of this stage, Beech, Field Maple and Hornbeam increased. Forest clearance combined with periods of agricultural retreat also favoured scrub species. Godwin actually remarked ‘that it is difficult to realise that in pre-Neolithic times scrub was unknown, or at most limited to small areas of extreme exposure to wind or to local grazing’, though hawthorn and Blackthorn were certainly present (Godwin 1975, p.471). Perhaps they were commoner than they seemed, for their pollen is under-represented. The Roman occupation imposed order, imported knowledge of land management from Italy and established centres of industrial iron-working with their associated demand for charcoal. Buildings needed timbers. Several Roman writers mention coppicing and pasturage in woodland. In fact, as Dark (2000) concluded, woodland was likely to have been managed sustainably once fuel had become scarce. Short-rotation coppicing is indicated by the wattle-work found at Vindolanda and fencing found at Carlisle, York and other places that included poles cut at 10 years growth or less. When the remains of Roman roads were unearthed in Scotland, eyewitnesses noticed that some very large, narrow-crowned oaks had been felled to construct wooden causeways over mires (Anderson 1967). The remains of the cleared woodland, which had been preserved under peat and alluvium, still lay in all directions close to stumps bearing the marks of the axes used to bring them down. Roman retreat created opportunities for woodland to recover. Thus, at Wentwood, Monmouthshire, land that had been largely cleared by the Romano-British period soon reverted to woodland of oak, Hazel and Alder with limited elm, which later developed towards Ash and birch (Brown 2010). At Metchley Roman Fort, which lies within the grounds of Birmingham University, pioneer woodland and scrub with willow and hawthorn spread over a previously occupied landscape from about ad 200 (Greig 2002). This woodland matured 176

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into Ash and then oak woodland, which replaced the scrub. Much later, Saxons cleared the oak woodland for cultivation, after which there was a change to Holly woodland, possibly wood-pasture. Regional variation in the overall impact of changes on woodland can be illustrated by Scotland, where the woods were less diverse than in southern England (Smout et al. 2005). In the Highlands and southern Uplands, Scots Pine, which had spread over drying peat after 4000 bc, retreated to its current range, and by the time the Romans arrived the hills were largely treeless. On lower ground, extensive semi-permanent pastures developed by the late Neolithic in place of oak-dominated woodland. The Romans entered a ‘populous, well-worked countryside’ and made heavy use of timber for building. Coppice regrowth was used, not just in Roman constructions, but also in the oak framing, Alder planks and wattle walls of crannogs.

Excavations at the Roman frontier town of Vindolanda, near Hadrian’s Wall, reveal the woven Hazel rods that formed the core of wattleand-daub walls.

Traditional management (stage 3) During the medieval period, changes that started before and during the Roman occupation eventually led to the partitioning of most woodland into wood-pastures and coppices. Both started as exploitation without forward thinking, wood-pasture by turning domestic stock into forests, coppice by returning to places where trees had been felled and 177

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Trees and Woodlands finding smaller and straighter trunks in their place. By 1086, when Domesday Book was compiled, most English woodland was still some form of wood-pasture, save in Lincolnshire, where coppices were in the majority. In Derbyshire, for example, wood-pastures occupied 24% of the land, whereas coppice occupied about 2%. Transformation of woodland to coppices accelerated in the following centuries, driven by the need for an increased and more reliable production of wood and timber, but wood-pastures remained extensive in some regions well into the post-medieval centuries. Indeed, coppices were still being formed out of wood-pasture as late as the 16th and 17th centuries in the Wye Valley and Forest of Dean, and in the late 18th to early 19th century in much of the western uplands. Coppices and wood-pastures overlapped, for grazing continued intermittently within coppices; and some early coppices reverted to wood-pasture. Additionally, wood-meadows were frequent in parts of mainland Europe, so we will also consider whether they also occurred in Britain. The unparalleled detail of traditional management in Rackham (2003) can be supplemented by Smout, MacDonald and Watson (2005) for Scotland and Linnard (2000) for Wales.

Wood-pastures Wood-pastures were the default usage of prehistory, unclaimed and open to all. A few had been appropriated as parks and hunting grounds before the 11th century, but the Normans brought with them an enthusiasm for hunting and the established idea of forests. During the following centuries hundreds of tracts of wooded countryside were enclosed as parks (emparked), placed under forest law or earmarked as chases (private hunting grounds). Common rights survived in the residue of wooded commons and over land placed under forest law. At the same time, new wood-pastures were created when ordinary farmland was emparked, complete with its boundary trees. Most forests and parks were later disafforested or disparked, yet modified forms of traditional wood-pasturage – like all subsequent stages in this account – continue to this day. The wood-pastures were a diverse resource, a mixture of dense and open woodland interspersed with grassland, heaths and mires. Grassland provided pasturage for deer, cattle and other stock and was occasionally mown as meadows. Heathland provided poorer pasturage, but was burned to provide a flush of fresh, palatable 178

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A hunting scene recorded soon after 1066 in the Bayeux Tapestry. The hunt evidently took place near the church of Bosham, West Sussex, which is where this copy hangs.

growth. Mires provided important grazing land, especially in dry periods, turves were dried as fuel and occasionally Cranberries were picked by the poor (Yates 1979). Bracken reduced the pasture’s value, but the fronds could be cut as litter for bedding and the residue could be burned for ash to spread on cultivated fields. Shrubs such as furze (gorse) and thorns could be cut as fuel; evergreens were used as fodder; and the residue of both would provide ash. Underwood of Hazel, Holly and other small trees also provided browse wood, fuel and material for specialist uses, such as hurdles. Trees of all kinds were lopped for browse and fuel, and the wood was not wasted when they died or were felled. Maiden trees provided timber for building, fencing and specialised implements as well as fuel wood from branches. Oak and Beech also yielded mast for fattening pigs under rights of pannage. All habitats combined to provide a supply of meat from deer and cattle; flowers, which provided nectar sources for bees and thus honey; perhaps fungi and medicinal plants; and, in the case of forests and parks, the wherewithal for the sport of hunting. The inherent management challenge is to retain the trees in the teeth of grazing and the pasture in the shade of trees. Intense and prolonged grazing risks the eventual loss of trees through failure of regeneration. Insufficient grazing risks loss of worthwhile herbage as trees and shrubs spread. Unless there is a downturn in the grazing pressure, new trees have to be protected against deer and cattle, but regeneration can occasionally be prolific. Rackham (2003, p.187) cites an example from Enfield Chase where natural regeneration following clear-felling of mature timber created a thicket of oaks that 179

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Trees and Woodlands needed thinning. In the New Forest copious regeneration followed the great mid-19th-century reduction in deer populations (Peterken and Tubbs 1965). Clearly, trees did persist and regenerate in some wood-pastures, but how? In 1609 John Norden, a widely travelled surveyor, described how to supplement natural regeneration in the New Forest (Flower 1980): To raise timber in open forests, parkes, chases and wastes without incoppicing. Everye keeper in fforest parke or chase, as also officers within his Majesty’s Mannors upon wastes, agree to be enjoyned to caste acorns and ashe keys into the straglinge and dispersed bushes: which (as experience proveth) will growe up, sheltered by the bushes, unto suche perfection as shall yelde times to come, good supplie of timber.

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Wood-pastures were once a widespread feature of western uplands. This extensive surviving example at Glen Finglas in the Trossachs consists mainly of old Alder, Hazel and birch, now being rejuvenated by the Woodland Trust.

Other measures were available: singly or in combination, their application and effectiveness varied between the different kinds of wood-pasture. Wooded commons were once everywhere, and remained so well into historical times. In medieval Wales, common woods were ‘indispensable to every community’ (Linnard 2000), providing wood, fuel, grazing, mast, honey and bedding. Trees were both coppiced and lopped, subject to some local controls. In Scotland, woods were still grazed through the 18th century (Smout et al. 2005). Woodland and wood-pasture were almost indistinguishable. Parts of England were enclosed as coppices by the 11th century, but they were still regularly grazed. In all three countries, common rights, including grazing, survived in forests and some parks. Scottish woods were valued for their pasture and hay as much as for timber and firewood. Grazing was, however, limited by Wolves until the 16th century and by lack of winter feed until the 19th century. Some woods remained dense, but most were fairly open, and on higher ground trees were thinly scattered across moorland. Locally, cattle browsed oaks and other trees back to low scrub, which nevertheless shot forth again each summer. Regeneration was possible, especially in the openings and more remote places, so the trees tended to ‘shift their stance’, as one writer put it. By the 16th century, most lowland woods had been enclosed, thereby protecting the young growth from cattle. As grazing increased in the 19th-century Highlands, the lower and thicker woods also required enclosure. Thereafter, a switch from cattle to sheep intensified grazing on the hills.

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Measures for maintaining and regenerating trees in wood-pastures • Cropping trees by pollarding and shredding, which places new growth beyond the reach of browsers and maintains a lightweight, vigorous crown, even on aged trees. • Allowing timber trees to grow longer and larger, thus reducing the frequency of regeneration. • Assisted natural regeneration, such as sowing and heeling in acorns. • Promoting the presence of hawthorn, Holly and other protective cover for saplings, as suggested by John Norden. • Planting and protecting individual trees. Always a possibility, but rarely undertaken in woodlands before the 17th century, this could be worthwhile within enclosures. • Temporarily excluding cattle and deer with fences for long enough to allow natural

regeneration, or planted saplings, to grow out of reach. • Enclosure. Permanently enclosing portions of a wood-pasture behind hedges, banks, walls and fences, thereby making other forms of woodland management possible. Rackham (1980) described these forests and parks as compartmented. • Control of grazing animals. Cowherds would be able to keep beasts from saplings, but they would have had to be out all night to keep deer away. • Regulation of numbers, seasonality and duration of grazing animals. • Long-term fluctuations in grazing pressure. Downturns in pressure could come about when deer were struck by disease, culling or severe weather.

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Trees and Woodlands English wooded commons were subject to a range of common rights, including pannage (mast for pigs), pasture, browse and small wood for fuel and building, but great timber was reserved to the lord of the manor. Stone and turves might also be taken. The Chilterns were still well wooded before 1500, though the woods were moderately open and lacked underwood (Roden 1968). Some had already degenerated to scrub and heath, and most others eventually became heath with scrub and a few old trees. This was the general pattern – depletion of tree covering, sometimes almost to complete loss – to which the general response was clearance for farming or enclosure as coppice and, in the Chilterns, high forest. A few commons retained scatters and groups of large pollards, usually Beech and oak, such as Pipers Hill (Worcestershire), Berkhamsted Frith (Hertfordshire), Ebernoe Common and The Mens (West Sussex). With the recent lapse of common rights, these have filled with younger trees, and the commons that had been reduced to heaths and grassland have developed naturally into woodland. Not all wooded commons followed this standard route. As I write, I can look over the Hudnalls, one of several ancient common woods of Beech, Smallleaved Lime and both oaks in our Lower Wye Valley parish, which survived on rocky slopes as scrub woodland, lightly grazed by cattle, through several centuries of haphazard wood-cutting. Forests were tracts of wild countryside and ordinary, settled farmland placed under forest law, whose main provisions concerned the beasts of the chase and their habitats. Chases were much the same, but here the owner was a nobleman, not the Crown. Great tracts of England were afforested by the Norman and early Plantagenet kings until at one point forest law applied to a third of the land. Forest courts reputedly applied the law harshly, but there is doubt that this was so, especially after Crown ambitions were curbed by the Charter of the Forest (Carta Foresta) in 1217. Common rights survived, providing constant sources of friction with the Crown. Today, the finest survival is the New Forest, much of which is ancient woodpasture within which pasturage and pannage rights are still exercised and even the Verderers’ Court still sits. The Forest of Dean also has its Verderers’ Court and attendant ceremonial of elections in Gloucester Cathedral, but sadly has very little ancient wood-pasture. Some forests, such as Rockingham (Northamptonshire), were compartmented into coppices separated by grazed plains and launds (grass enclosures), but others remained as wood-pasture, albeit after 182

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Beech–oak wood-pastures on base-poor soils EBERNOE COMMON AND THE MENS, West Sussex These historic wood-pastures represent the widespread Beech–oak–Holly woodlands of base-poor soils in the south-east lowlands: the strange name of The Mens comes from an Anglo-Saxon word for common pasture derived from woodland. Ebernoe still has some ancient, spreading Beech and oak, but neither wood retains much open ground because both filled with new growth during the 19th and 20th centuries when pasturage ceased, and now they seem truly wild. Beech, both oak species, Ash, both birches and occasionally Wild Service form dense, natural high forest with an underwood of Hazel, Holly, both hawthorns, Yew and many other shrubs. The lichens that like large trees are still well represented, along with Purple Emperor, Wood White, Barbastelle, Bechstein’s Bat and other infrequent species. The great storm of October 1987 dealt a severe blow to The Mens. Many of the blowdowns were charted by Tony Whitbread, who later became chief executive of the current owners, the Sussex Wildlife Trust. It takes a trained eye to detect the ‘damage’ now, but 35 years later I could still find the fallen trees on the Bedham Escarpment, now well rotted and shaded by new growth. These wood-pastures were once part of an interlinked set of Wealden commons, each open woodland with much grassland studded with large, spreading trees. The Trust would like to reconnect these two and has made a start by acquiring farmland around Ebernoe Common and allowing it to develop naturally in the presence of free-ranging cattle. Helpfully, the landscape around is still well-treed, but cattle would now have to be helped across that archetypal long, winding road, the A272.

Ebernoe Common, West Sussex.

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above: One of several common woods in Hewelsfield,

Gloucestershire, of mainly Beech, Small-leaved Lime and both native oaks, which have not been lopped or felled since the early 20th century.

Electing a verderer for the Forest of Dean by a traditional show of hands in the nave of Gloucester Cathedral, November 2011. Candidates brought their supporters in by coach.

attempting enclosure for coppicing. In the New Forest, Ridley coppice (Chapter 1) was just one that failed; others were reduced to old thorns or in one case old and decayed Hollies that had been stripped of bark by ‘the countrie people’. In the wood-pastures, trees were progressively depleted by felling, grazing and burning, leaving forests such as Woolmer and Ashdown largely as open heath. The medieval Dean was a mosaic of coppice, high forest and decaying groves of ancient lopped trees. Much of the New Forest became open heath, grassland and mire within which wood-pastures were scattered irregularly. Both are well wooded today because open ground and existing woodland were progressively enclosed as high forest to grow timber for the navy. Only fragments of heath and wood-pasture remained in the Dean, whereas the New Forest retained its medieval habitat diversity. Parks were enclosures for deer – mostly Fallow, but sometimes Roe and Red Deer

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History: how people have used woodland – wild swine and even hares along with domestic stock and their ancestors. They were privately owned by the local and national aristocracy, who used them for ceremonial hunts and a supply of fresh meat. A few originated before the Norman conquest, but their numbers expanded greatly in the 12th and 13th centuries. Most were formed in well-wooded districts by enclosing portions of the woodland. Bounded by substantial banks and cleft oak paling, deerleaps were installed to allow escapees back in. Within them common rights were generally extinguished or much reduced. Parks were doubly popular as both resources and status symbols. Many were created out of ordinary countryside, not remnant common wood-pastures, and existing parks were often expanded. Between the 17th and the 19th centuries many were embellished with country mansions and improved scenically by planting clumps, single trees, avenues and boundary belts according to the vision of William Kent and other landscape designers. The natural pools and constructed fish ponds in some medieval parks were supplemented by tastefully curving lakes. Like forests and commons, parks were often compartmented, leaving only grassy launds and limited tracts of wood-pasture open

Chillingham Park, Northumberland, still contains an ancient herd of White Park cattle.

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Staverton Park, Suffolk, is a medieval deer park still in approximately its medieval condition. The Pedunculate Oaks are, however, no longer pollarded.

Moccas Park, Herefordshire, is an ancient expansion from a former wooded common. Efforts have been made to ensure a succession of oaks and other trees.

Ancient oaks in this part of Windsor Great Park, Berkshire, are now enveloped in recent birch-dominated woodland.

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History: how people have used woodland to grazing. The greater emphasis on pasturage and latterly the conventions of landscaping eventually reduced the trees to a scatter of veteran trees inherited from the 17th century or earlier and later ornamental plantings of Beech, oak and exotic species – this is now what we mean by ‘parkland’. Ancient wood-pastures survive, sometimes as small parts of much expanded landscape parks (such as at Blenheim Park in Oxfordshire).

Coppices Coppices were formed by enclosing portions of exploited natural woodland behind stock-proof barriers, usually banks with an external ditch surmounted by a hedge. The woodland within was felled at or near ground level and allowed to regenerate from the stumps. Seedlings established themselves between the stools and grew up with the new coppice shoots, but most were outpaced by stump sprouts. Once the new growth had reached the size that the local users required – usually after 7–25 years – it was cut again. Cattle and other herbivores were excluded from freshly cut coppices, then readmitted after 5–7 years to browse the foliage and graze the ground vegetation, by which time the new growth was tall enough to escape injury. Repeated cutting allowed the stumps to grow into everlarger stools that after several centuries reach diameters over 4m. That in a nutshell is simple coppice, which yielded poles and brushwood at the end of each rotation. Most coppices, however, also yielded timber by allowing selected trees to grow for several rotations as standards. Under this coppice-with-standards system, oaks and – far less often – other species were grown on multiples of the coppice rotation. Promising saplings grown from seed and vigorous stems grown from stools were spared when the coppice was cut and allowed to form a stratum of trees with branch-free trunks and spreading crowns above an ‘underwood’ of new coppice growth. When the underwood was next coppiced a proportion of the standards was felled too. Many standards lived on by generating new sprouts that formed part of the next crop of underwood poles. Individual oaks might thus alternate their roles: one can still find coppice grown from the stumps of standard oaks felled during the Second World War that had themselves been promoted from coppice to standards in the 19th century. Oak was by far the commonest standard because it yielded the strongest and most 187

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East Anglian traditional coppice BRADFIELD WOODS, Suffolk When a national list of potential nature reserves was compiled in 1947, the ancient coppices of East Anglia were ignored, save for Hales Wood (Essex), a small and unrepresentative example. When the richest of them, the contiguous Felshamhall and Monks’ Park Woods, came to our attention in 1970, they were threatened by clearance for agriculture. Amazingly, they were still coppiced in the traditional manner and much of the produce was used in the rake factory at Whelnetham. I still have a scythe snaith and one of their rakes from my first visit. Sadly, half of Monks’ Park was destroyed and is now just another arable field (Chapter 11). The rest survives as coppice-with-standards with a medieval laund and miles of flowerrich rides, maintained as a Suffolk Wildlife Trust reserve, where coppicing continues in the traditional style. Once the property of Bury St Edmunds Abbey, it is now a community asset where the produce has local uses, people learn woodland skills (Chapter 9), and the paths are trodden by hosts of visitors. Bradfield Woods were also a great stimulus to Oliver Rackham, who went on to document the history and ecology of the ancient East Anglian coppices in immense detail (Rackham 1980). His detailed analysis here found no sharp disjunctions in underwood composition and few patches of single-species dominance. Even the standards are mixed – mostly oak, Ash, birch and Alder. Numerical analysis revealed three broad assemblages: (a) Dogwood, Spindle and Midland Hawthorn on relatively dry and alkaline soil; (b) Alder, sallow and oak on relatively wet and light soils; and (c) oak and absence of Alder, sallow, Spindle and Field Maple on relatively acid, light and dry soil. Characteristically, ground flora assemblages could be more readily defined than underwood assemblages. Evidently, the factors determining tree and shrub distribution are either more subtle or more random than those determining herb distribution.

Traditional coppicing in Bradfield Woods for the Suffolk Wildlife Trust. Most standards are oaks, with a full range of age classes. Ash coppice dominates this part of the underwood.

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Fascines, cut from coppice and stacked by a ride in Hindolveston Wood, Norfolk, in May 1970. At the time, they were used as silt traps to stabilise river banks.

versatile timber and branchwood, but Ash was also chosen, birch too and occasionally other species, such as Wild Service. Beech was allowed only as ornament, because its shade killed the coppice stools below. In theory, large coppice woods would yield continuously if equal parts were coppiced each year – say 5% cut each year for a 20-year rotation – and the wood as a whole would remain in a steady state with all age groups present all the time, albeit with kaleidoscopically changing patterns of freshly cut coupes and mature growth. Successive cuts might be scattered around a large wood, or, by cutting next to the previous year’s coupe, progress like a wave. Either way, if the coppice was still grazed, each part would have to be fenced off separately – hence internal boundaries. In practice the size of the annual cut varied, partly because large coppices were usually divided into unequal parts and small coppices could not be cut in little bits each year. In fact, clusters of small coppices in a single ownership were often treated as a single rotation. Internal coupe boundaries remained fairly stable, and each coupe might have a separate name, like a field system. Standards could also be managed for a constant yield by felling, say, 25% of them whenever a coupe was cut: with a 20 year coppice rotation, they would all be felled at 80 years. They could also be thinned by felling some at 40 and 60 years to yield a range of sizes. The density of standards had to be limited to below 50% crown cover, lest the underwood growth be suppressed. Again, actual practice was 189

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right: Swanton Novers Great Wood, Norfolk, in the early 1970s with its unusual scatter of high-cut stools below oak standards; and in 2021 (below). The succession of standards has been resumed, albeit with birch, not oak.

usually irregular: there were often major fellings of standards to meet short-term needs, and their density would be varied according to the relative value of timber and poles. Coppice stems were best cut almost flush with the ground, for this wasted least material and enabled new growth to be firmly rooted. Ideally, the cut was slanted, thereby enabling the face to dry quickly and rot least. However, many coppice stools were cut higher, even though this reduced the value of the underwood. If Rabbits and hares were common, high cutting would generate mini-pollards or stubs, thus helping the regrowth. High cutting might also be 190

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History: how people have used woodland necessary to evade ground irregularities, which goes some way to explaining why some coppices are a mix of high- and low-cut stools. Repeated cutting generated ever-larger stools that became ‘hollow’ and eventually broke up into stool clusters. Growing like fairy rings, they kept their vigour and could live indefinitely: some giant Ash and oak stools may be medieval and some lime clusters may be much older. If stools died, ‘blanks’ were filled by natural regeneration, planting, heeling in acorns or pegging down retained shoots until they rooted (layering). Ancient coppices would have stools of all ages and sizes mixed together, but planted coppices with only one or two cuttings behind them were marked by even-sized stools. Boundaries took the form of hedges on banks which defined the wood margin and kept stock out, or sometimes in. Boundary trees were treated as pollards or stubs in order to protect regrowth from browsing, whereas boundary underwood was usually laid like a field hedge. Similar treatment was reserved for internal boundaries. Woodmen also required access to their coupes and routes for extracting timber. The rides we see today were cut in geometrical patterns in and since the 18th century, but surviving sinuous, named tracks remind us that earlier trackways were far less regular (see photo on page 77). Other open spaces were commonplace, notably launds and plains, which were pastures or meadows that presumably functioned as hubs for the ever-changing pattern of grazing. Rides were grazed with adjacent compartments or mown for hay. Coppicing and wood-pasturage generate completely different structures, respectively thickets and parkland. Species such as Hazel, which rely on perpetual resprouting, were much favoured by coppice and much reduced or eliminated by wood-pasturage. Individual limes, oaks, Beech, Ash and other species could grow to great ages in both, but with quite different structures, giant stools in coppice, pollards in wood-pasture. Woods could not quickly be changed from wood-pasture to coppice or vice versa, but such changes did happen: coppices in both the New Forest and Epping Forest reverted to wood-pasture.

Increasing the density of Hazel coppice in Pepper Wood, Worcestershire, by pegging a lateral stem to the ground, allowing new shoots and roots to grow along its length.

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Hewitt’s Meadow, a laund wholly within Monks’ Park Wood, Suffolk, now treated as pasture.

Wood-meadows These were combinations of coppice, pollards, shrubs, fruit trees and grassland in an intimate mosaic of stands and glades. The proportion of the different components varied, thereby forming coppice-meadows, pollard-meadows and orchard-meadows, plus everything in between. The grass was mown for hay annually and grazed intermittently, the coppice was cut every 20–30 years, and pollards were lopped regularly. The trees drew nutrients from deep down, which fertilised the meadow topsoil via the litter fall and enabled portions of it to be ploughed and cropped briefly to rejuvenate the grassland. This was the basic management system, which was practised for centuries throughout mainland Europe, but was particularly common around the Baltic. Like coppicing, it has largely fallen into disuse, but examples are maintained for nature conservation and cultural reasons. Strictly speaking, wood-meadows were unknown in Britain, but close approximations developed in various circumstances. If one allows that grassland grazed in late summer is a de facto meadow, then cattle-grazed medieval common woods were ecologically like woodmeadows and not so different from pre-Neolithic woodlands grazed by wild cattle. Medieval coppices sometimes contained small meadows,

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History: how people have used woodland either as banked enclosures amongst the coppice compartments (launds) or narrow open strips along stream sides within or on the edge of coppices. Commoners had rights to take hay from Chiltern woodpastures (Roden 1968). Simon Schama (1995) interpreted Rackham’s (1976) descriptions of the state of medieval coppices as ‘almost patchy, with swathes of grassy meadow and flowers blooming between pollard and truncated broadleaf trees’. In Scotland, woods were valued as a source of hay, as well as pasture (Smout et al. 2005). Some woods were browsed into low scrubs by year-round cattle grazing. Hay was mown from woodland rides and still is in the sense that ride margins of managed woods are today cut back to keep rides open.

Laelatu wood-meadow, Estonia. This combination of meadows, coppice, pollards, timber trees and fruit trees was not known in Britain, but many British coppices were associated with meadows.

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George Clausen (1852– 1944), Day Dreams, an English wood-meadow.

Sir George Clausen painted wood-meadows (possibly in Sussex) being scythed in Day Dreams (1883) and Noon in the Hayfield (1885). Today, nature reserves as diverse as Monks Wood (Cambridgeshire), Swanton Novers (Norfolk), Finemere (Buckinghamshire), Coedydd Aber (north Wales) and Orton Moss (Cumbria) contain glades in woodland that are treated as meadows. Patches of woodland have been allowed to colonise meadows with much the same result (e.g. Broadmoor Common, Herefordshire; Keltneyburn, Perthshire).

Improving traditional management (stage 4) Some of the traditional coppices continued to be managed on medieval lines until modern times. The great linked woods of Monks’ Park and Felshamhall in Bradfield St Clare and St George, Suffolk (see box on page 188), would have been completely recognisable to a medieval woodsman until 1971, when half of Monks’ Park Wood was destroyed by the local farmer. The rest survives still, a nature reserve managed on as close to traditional lines as modern conditions allow. Many other, less celebrated, coppices continued likewise well into the 20th century and survive today under various management regimes as reserves and Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs). Change, however, transformed many coppices and wood-pastures. Just as farming was overtaken by the spirit of improvement from the 17th century onwards, so too woodland management. Reorganisation of farmland and commons by parliamentary and private enclosure 194

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History: how people have used woodland threw up opportunities to plant new woods on open ground. Country houses and their landscaped parks were embellished with shelterbelts and new groves carefully positioned to enhance the view. The landowners’ enthusiasm for the chase caused fox coverts to be scattered across the landscape. The hallmarks of ‘improvement’ are changes in silvicultural regime, composition, or both to bring the products more into line with expected uses. Pollarding was prohibited in the New Forest from 1698 onwards. Changing silvicultural regime means in practice changing from traditional practices to high forest. Composition can be changed by planting, sowing seed or weeding out unwanted species. Planting and sowing also offer the opportunity to create new woodland on open ground. The degree of change in composition depends on what is planted. Here we consider both subtle and wholesale alterations in the native species of coppices and wood-pastures. The great changes achieved by planting non-native, evergreen conifers in place of native, deciduous broadleaves will be covered as stage 5, below. Tree planting around buildings goes back at least to Roman times. The 10th-century laws of Hywel Dda accorded a value of 24 pence to ‘every tree planted for shelter … whether in a garden or as shelter to [a] house’ (Linnard 2000). Tree planting in and as woodland is largely post-medieval, but William Linnard also notes that the king of Gwynedd improved the husbandry in his kingdom in the early 12th century by ‘planting old woods’; and that the state of woods belonging to Cistercian monasteries at the Dissolution indicated careful management as coppice, coppice-with-standards and high forest for at least the previous century. In Rockingham Forest in 1565, Roger Taverner recorded one small high forest stand in 127 Crown woods, but this could have been naturally regenerated, so the earliest recorded tree planting as woodland in Northamptonshire is a belt of oak on the perimeter of Althorp Park, which was commemorated with a 1567–68 date stone (Steane 1974). The earliest record Rackham (1980) found for tree planting into woodland was from South Hawe Wood, Norfolk, where sallows were planted into vacant places in 1612. At about the same time ‘farmers and country people’ in Scotland destroyed early plantations because they thought they would ‘spoil the ground’ and ‘eat the heart out of the soil’ (Anderson 1967). The earliest instance of planting in the Forest of Dean came in 1650s, when acorns and Beech mast were collected and sown in ‘enclosed coppices and waste grounds’ and seedling oak and Beech 195

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Chestnut coppice near Rye, Kent, recently cut in the foreground, awaiting cutting in the background.

were also gathered from the Lea Bailey and planted (Hart 1966). Chestnuts were planted at Felbrigg Park, Norfolk, in 1676, and by 1703 the medieval Bentley coppices in the New Forest had been refenced and sown with Sessile Oak acorns (Tubbs 2001). By the late 18th century, trees were commonly planted in woods and on farmland. In half the woods recorded by Boys (1794) in Kent, the owners sought ‘extra from improvements’ by planting mainly Sweet Chestnut, Ash and willows. Most of the Chestnut coppices of the Blean and elsewhere were planted about this time. Oaks were sown and planted into the coppices of many woods, such as Bedford Purlieus (Rixon, in Peterken and Welch 1975), the forests of Hazelborough and Salcey (Northamptonshire), Highmeadow (Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire) and Alice Holt (Hampshire). One suspects planting in, for example, Clouts Wood, Wiltshire, where the older standard oaks had been promoted from coppice but the younger oaks were maidens. Subtle improvements may have been a routine, if unrecorded, part of a woodman’s repertoire, a pocket full of acorns carefully broadcast here and ‘heeled in’ there. Certainly, in recent centuries, ‘blanks’ in Midlands coppices might be filled with Ash saplings. In the Dorset coppices, wands of Hazel were bent over and pegged to the ground (‘plashed’) in order to increase the density of Hazel stools and thus the

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productivity of hurdles and the like – these woods are almost Hazel monocultures now. Plashing was still common in southern England until the early 20th century. Coppices could also be improved by cutting out unwanted species – bundles of, say, shrubs and birch could usefully fill ruts in roads, for example. In Cornwall in 1972, I came across a woodman stripping bark from a Duchy oak coppice for the tannery at Grampound, who explained that he also cut out the Hazel in order to increase the proportion of oak. The Board of Agriculture reports on each county, 1790–1813, gave equal weight to accounts of ‘woodlands’ and ‘plantations’, which, translated into modern terms, were respectively ancient woods and secondary woods established by planting. Even so, ‘plantations’ were still very much in the minority at the time: when we assessed three districts of eastern England we found that plantations represented only 1% of the land area or 11% of all woodland by the 1820s (Peterken 1976). Soon, planting accelerated, especially on recently enclosed heaths in southern England and in sparsely wooded districts of northern England and central and eastern Scotland ( Jones 1961). Few trees from this early planting remain today: by 1947 the census of woodlands recorded just 58 acres (23ha) of pre-1827 stands in England and 23 acres (9ha) in Wales, almost all of which was Scots Pine.

Wyeseal Wood, Gloucestershire, formerly a coppice containing Small-leaved Lime, which was planted to oak high forest in the 1880s.

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Trees and Woodlands The coppices of the south-east lowlands were widely improved by the methods exemplified by Kent, which explains why coppice monocultures in general and Chestnut coppices in particular are commoner here than in the rest of England. A particular form of improvement related to what we now know as Beech woods in the Chilterns and other chalklands. During the Middle Ages, these were mixed coppices and wood-pastures containing some Beech (Roden 1968), but they were subsequently converted to a form of selection forest dominated by Beech to supply the factories making Windsor chairs in High Wycombe and London (Mansfield 1952). For example, the well-named Reverend St John Priest in his 1813 report to the Board of Agriculture noted that ‘Lord George Cavendish regularly draws, that is, thins his woods at Latimers, by certain portions every year, cutting out large timber, and leaving the young trees to grow up in their stead’. The reality of this system was revealed when a Beech high forest stand at Aston Rowant, Buckinghamshire, was clear-felled in the 1970s. An afternoon spent counting growth rings showed that the wood had indeed been managed by selection. By 1851 it contained trees dating back to 1760 and groups of younger Beech of 29–41, 42, and 51–85 years old. Heavy thinning permitted natural Beech regeneration until 1876, and another heavy thinning in 1940 allowed in Ash, birch and more Beech. The other focus of coppice improvement was in the oceanic west. Here native woodland survived as mixed coppices on slopes and extensive open wood-pastures in which oak was a component, but not an overwhelming dominant. In the 18th and 19th centuries, these woods became valuable as sources of bark for tanning leather and charcoal for smelting iron ore, which gave owners an incentive to improve their composition and stocking by enclosure, cutting out less valuable species and bulking up the oak content by heeling in acorns or planting young oaks. On Loch Lomondside, the ‘barren timber’ of birch, Hazel, Aspen, Alder, Crab Apple, Blackthorn and willow was replaced by oaks using acorns collected in England (Tittensor 1970). Much the same history played out in the oakwoods beside Loch Awe (Sansom 2004), and in Sunart the open wood-pastures of scattered Holly, Ash, spreading oaks, and coppice Alders mixed with groves of birch was partially replaced by Sessile Oak plantations (Kirby 2001). In Snowdonia the four woods examined by Edwards (1986) had all been opened up in historical times by coppicing, grazing, clear-felling, planting or some combination of these, but had become oak-dominated 198

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fairly recently, in some cases by planting. In Borrowdale, the oakdominated woods are again the result of weeding, felling and planting, again with some of the stock being imported from southern England. Today’s ancient semi-natural woods are a mixed bag. Some are plantations, albeit incorporating some remnants of older woodpastures and a modicum of self-sown trees. In others only the overstorey was planted, while the underwood remained as unimproved coppice. Some were improved by plashing, cleaning and patchy planting until they too approached monoculture. Others remain ‘what nature provided’ or ‘the natural growth of the soil’, where little or no attempt has been made to change the composition. In some of these a stock of oak standards remains, some of which may have been planted, whilst in others the removal of oak standards and subsequent lack of management has restored an essentially natural mixture. Today, the least natural of the woods we call ‘semi-natural’ must be the oak coppices of the western uplands, the near-monoculture coppices of the south-east lowlands and the Beech woods of the southern chalk and limestone, leaving the coppices of the rest of the lowlands and the adjacent ‘Borderlands’ (see Chapter 7) as the ancient woods whose composition has been least modified.

above: Oak woodland by

the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond. From a distance (inset) the woods look natural, but they were actually planted.

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High forest and plantations (stage 5) Long before Arthur Standish and John Evelyn asked landowners to plant trees (Chapter 1), there were plantations and woods with a high forest structure, but both medieval plantations and dense stands of tall timber grown from seed were rare. The great change from coppice and wood-pasture to high forest gathered pace in the 18th century, when new shelterbelts and coverts were being planted, then became a flood in the 20th century with large-scale afforestation, and conversion o coppices to plantations managed by a cohort of foresters who sometimes gave the impression that trees will only grow if they have been planted. Plantations reached their apotheosis in the vast conifer plantings of the 20th century. They had their precedents in early 19th-century plantings, but after the First World War they expanded rapidly. Now, they are far more extensive than native woodland and Sitka Spruce has become the commonest British tree. Early afforestation o Thetford Chase and other lowland districts was eventually overtaken by the great Borders forests. It culminated in the widespread drainage of peat in northern Scotland, shortly before we realised the need to sequester carbon. George Ryle (1969) recorded the early decades o this heroic enterprise. Trees grown as high forest produce tall, straight trunks and few, small branches, which makes them eminently suited to machine processing. Most plantations are even-aged, planted at regular spacing in straight lines on open ground or clear-felled woodland. Some have been thinned by removing whole lines of planted trees, irrespective of quality of growth, but many destined for low-grade uses were left unthinned. Through much of the 20th century, mature plantations were generally clear-felled, thereby creating ‘vacant ground’ on which replanting would initiate another rotation. A few foresters described themselves as tree farmers, reasonably enough. There is, however, a lot more to high forestry than this. Even-aged plantation forestry is just the simplest of several silvicultural systems designed by European foresters to manage trees for timber. The standard work in English has long been Robert Troup’s Silvicultural Systems (1928), which was later revised by Eustace Jones and John Matthews (1989). My second-hand copy is signed by Richard St Barbe Baker, another forestry luminary, who studied forestry at Cambridge and later founded Men of the Trees (now the International Tree Federation). Troup’s book systematically describes each system 200

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with European examples, laced with asides on Indian forestry, which Troup studied under Walter Schlich, his predecessor as head of Oxford forestry. As shown in the table below, silvicultural systems can be defined by the proportion of a stand that is felled at the start of the harvesting cycle, the pattern of this felling, the proportion of the stock that is retained, and the sources of new growth. Simple coppice and coppice-with-standards count as silvicultural systems, though the term usually refers to high forest systems regenerated from planted or naturally regenerated seedlings.

Oakhill Wood, Gloucestershire: incomplete conversion of an ancient coppice to conifer high forest.

The characteristics of silvicultural systems. Pattern of felling Partial initial fellings Main source of new growth

Clear-felling

Seedling

Clear-cut, evenaged high forest

Vegetative

Simple coppice

No eventual retentions

Some retentions through next rotation

Group, uniform and irregular shelterwood

Two-storeyed high forest; high forest with standards

Selection forest

Coppice with standards

Selection coppice

Perpetual thinning

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Trees and Woodlands Clear-cutting became almost synonymous with forestry because it is simple to operate and economically efficient, but it risks erosion, a rising water table, excessive growth of ground vegetation, insect attacks and windthrow on the margins. All trees are felled at a predetermined age, known as the rotation, though nowadays a scatter of self-sown broadleaves may be retained in conifer clear-fells and dead trees may be left standing. The size, shape and location of coupes is determined partly by local topography with the aim of minimising frost and wind damage. Coupes were once severely rectilinear, but since the 1970s felling patterns have been shaped to blend with the local contours. Unwanted foliage and branchwood is left in piles strewn over the ground. Lacking seed trees, coupes are usually restocked by planting, which generates an even-aged stand. The polar opposite of clear-cutting is the selection system, which can be summed up as perpetual thinning. Felling and regeneration takes place every few years throughout the forest when foresters remove single trees or small groups of trees, preferably weak and defective stems. The result is an uneven-aged forest in which all age classes intermix throughout. Selection forestry is suited to shade-tolerant species, such as Beech, but a variant in which groups of trees are felled can be used for light-demanders. In Britain the Beech high forest woods of the Chilterns were treated to a form of selection forestry with a felling cycle of 6–12 years because chairmaking required trees of different sizes. Selection forestry, known in German as Plenterwald and in French as jardinage, maintains fertility, protects against erosion, protects seedlings from sun and frost, and is held by some to mimic natural woodland dynamics and patterns, but it is costly to operate, demands great skill, and produces timber that is said to be inferior to that from even-aged systems. It maintains amenity in the sense that the woodland appears to be unchanging, and protects against wind, avalanches and erosion, but it has often been mis-applied by felling too many of the largest and best trees. Between the clear-cutting and selection systems are various shelterwood systems, which leave some trees standing when harvesting commences. In the uniform variant, the mature stand is thinned evenly, leaving an open overstorey which acts as a seed source and inhibits growth of ground vegetation. The overstorey is later removed in one or more stages when a stock of seedlings has become established and, once it has all gone, the new stand becomes an evenaged mix of species. The developing stand is thinned periodically 202

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History: how people have used woodland to generate good form and remove both unwanted species and the over-vigorous ‘wolf trees’ that would dominate and deform their neighbours if they were retained. In Tronҫais, Bercé and other great French oak forests, thinning admits a Beech understorey which keeps the ground clean by suppressing herbaceous growth. In mainland Europe, this system has been applied to Beech, oak, Norway Spruce, Silver Fir and combinations thereof, where it generates high-quality timber without planting, but at the cost of long rotations, difficult forestry operations, constant supervision and a need for great skill and judgement. It is also limited to restocking with the species in the overstorey, whereas replanting after a clear-fell allows a complete change. It has rarely been attempted in Britain, where seedling regeneration is less certain and brambles more vigorous, but not ignored. I have seen it in operation with Scots Pine in the New Forest and oaks in the Forest of Dean. The main shelterwood variant is the group system, where the mature stand is initially opened by felling in groups, selected to release clusters of already-established saplings. These groups are subsequently enlarged until the whole overstorey has been removed. Another variant is the two-storeyed high forest or high forestwith-standards, where some of the seed trees are retained throughout the second rotation. Yet other variants are designed to minimise wind

Natural regeneration of oak under a shelterwood in the New Forest, November 2015.

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Douglas Fir plantation in Coed-y-Brenin, planted 1928, thinned and now regenerating to Beech, Douglas Fir and other species, both conifer and broadleaved.

damage by felling in wedges pointing towards the prevailing wind, or in strips starting on the leeward side of the forest. All these systems can be operated at various scales. In fact, there comes a point where very small-scale clear-cutting is tantamount to group selection. Ideally, foresters seek continuous, even production from the whole forest estate, though this ideal has usually been honoured in the breach because the harvesting date is more likely to be determined by the timber market, the owner’s financial needs or the demands of war. Today, shelterwood and selection systems have returned in the form of continuous cover forestry (CCF), which the Welsh Assembly has decided should eventually make up 50% of Welsh forests, partly because this avoids the abrupt changes to the landscape associated with clear-felling. It also delivers spectacular stands, such as the 1928 Douglas Fir plantations in Coed-y-Brenin (Gwynedd). 204

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Conservation management (stage 6) Conservation management in the modern sense started in the 19th century as part of the movement to preserve commons as recreational amenities for the burgeoning urban population. Initially, the impulse was to protect what was seen as natural woodland by limiting silvicultural interventions to necessary safety measures, but by the 1960s the emphasis had shifted towards nature conservation (Ovington 1964). Common woodlands that were the initial focus of attention, such as Berkhamsted Frith and the New Forest, were still left to develop naturally, but nature conservation had broadened into other woodland types and other approaches to management. Forestry was then entering its single-minded, timber-growing phase, but it has since become multi-purpose, these purposes including amenity, recreation and nature conservation, all of which were central to the 19th-century commons preservation movement. Now there is a complete spectrum from commercial timber production with basic environmental measures to management purely for one of the conservation interests. In practice, it has become difficult to assign a single purpose to individual woods, for most are simultaneously nature reserves, recreational assets, important elements in the landscape, protectors of the environment and potential sources of timber. All woods do, or could, contribute to all objectives, but the first consideration of management will differ from wood to wood. One has only to stroll round, say, Richmond Park to recognise that a wood and the other associated habitats can simultaneously be an important nature reserve, a fine public amenity, a vital green lung in the heart of a conurbation, and, if need be, a source of useful timber. The skill in management is to assess the relative importance of each target and optimise the mix of actions required to achieve them. Nevertheless, despite the multiple objectives, it is possible to speak of conservation management as a new stage in which wood and herbage production is not a primary aim but a means to achieving other ends.

Woodland nature reserves In the 1950s and 1960s, some woodland National Nature Reserves (such as Yarner Wood on the edge of Dartmoor) were established primarily for research, but were not distinguished by a separate designation, such as ‘research natural areas’. Today, even these 205

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Moccas Park, Herefordshire, is a National Nature Reserve by agreement with the private owner. Its many veteran oaks and Chestnuts are enclosed by split oak paling, as tradition dictates.

woodland nature reserves exist mainly to protect wildlife and natural features. Within them, managers face a choice between overlapping options: (a) continuing or restoring traditional management, (b) allowing a wood to grow naturally with little or no intervention, (c) managing for the benefit of the most important species or group of species present, or (d) managing for habitat diversity. The first is a ‘safety play’ for already-rich habitats, or the conservation counterpart of ‘don’t change a winning team’. The second assumes in broad terms that allowing nature to take its course ought to be good for native species and natural features, though sometimes it is a default choice made because resources are not available to do otherwise. The third depends on knowing which species take priority and what they require, but it also assumes that the measures adopted will be good for other species. The fourth assumes that a diverse habitat will benefit the largest number of species. Each option has advantages and disadvantages, so, in all but the smallest reserves, two or more options can be combined.

Public open spaces Woods have been acquired or preserved as public open spaces at least since the mid-19th century, when the Commons and Footpaths Preservation Society saved Burnham Beeches, Berkhamsted Common, Epping Forest and the New Forest from enclosure and clearance for agriculture and housing. Since then, other celebrated woods have been acquired by the National Trust, the Woodland Trust and local authorities, as well as more ordinary places. With the unfortunate exception of some National Trust woodlands, they acted as a restraint on conifer reforestation through Rackham’s ‘locust years’ and now stand as fine public amenities and de facto nature reserves. Londoners, for example, have numerous public open space woodlands. In addition to the original successes of commons preservation, Ken Wood and Highgate Woods are available in inner London. Lesnes Abbey Woods were bought by London County Council in 1930 after prolonged pressure from natural historians (Marriott 1925). Ruislip Woods followed in 1931 after the First 206

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World War saved most of them from developers, who would have replaced them with Metroland housing estates. With the expansion of London, councils of the Home Counties acquired numerous woods for access, such as Staffhurst Wood, Surrey, and Whippendell Woods, Hertfordshire. Elsewhere, Sutton Park’s ancient woods and heathlands are managed by Birmingham City Council as a miniature New Forest within the city. The world-famous Coalbrookdale is embellished by numerous woods under the management of Severn Gorge Countryside Trust.

Burnham Beeches, one of the woods within easy reach of London, preserved in the 19th century for public recreation.

Expansion of native woodland Since 1985 there has been an increasingly strong move towards expanding the area of broadleaved, deciduous woodland (mostly with native species) and restoring and extending Scots Pine woodland in Scotland. The aims are conservation, broadly speaking, as well as timber production. Three main processes have been involved: natural succession on abandoned farmland, restoring native species on former plantations, and planting native species. Woodland has been recreating itself naturally on abandoned farmland since the Neolithic, but the process became a major trend 207

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Natural expansion of native woodland over downland at Kingley Vale, West Sussex. The main species are Yew and Ash, with a scatter of hawthorns in flower.

in land use during the 20th century as farming became increasingly mechanised, farms became more specialised and rights to pasture lapsed on many commons. Large tracts of steep downland, commons and other land that became marginal to modern farming have developed into woodland. At the same time, urban expansion and general disruption of land-use patterns by infrastructure development left many parcels of land isolated and unused, at least temporarily. The result has been scrubby edgelands developing into woodland, such as the Gunnersbury Triangle in west London and miles of railway embankments shedding the ‘wrong’ kinds of leaves. The vast expansion of plantation forests in the 20th century did include some native trees, such as Beech on the chalklands, oak on clays and Scots Pine in the Highlands, but it became almost exclusively a matter of non-native conifers. As these plantations have matured and passed into second and third rotations, so birch, Rowan, Grey Willow and other native broadleaves have seeded back in and have been welcomed in moderation by foresters keen to improve the plantation forests for wildlife and make them look more attractive. Woods of native trees were first planted centuries ago and were quite common in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the scale of new plantings in recent decades has been on a new and larger scale.

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In the 1950s Peter Wormell started an extensive planting project on the treeless island of Rum for explicitly nature conservation reasons. Elsewhere, motorway embankments are replete with plantations which reduce noise and visual intrusion at the cost of obscuring views for motorway users. Belts of woodland were planted along the boulevards of Milton Keynes and some stretches of floodplain were afforested. Most ambitiously, the New National Forest, originally promoted by the Countryside Commission, has created a substantial new forest in the north Midlands which has been followed by several similar schemes on urban edges, such as Swindon. The Woodland Trust promotes increasingly extensive woodland creation schemes, while individual contributions include both numerous small plots on farmland and the substantial Heart of England Forest, near Stratford-upon-Avon, the brainchild of the publisher Felix Dennis. Most of these are destined to be managed as conventional plantations, but some are integral parts of rewilding schemes, notably the Carrifran Wildwood in the Southern Uplands of Scotland and several schemes sponsored by Trees for Life. The aims have been land restoration, linking small woods into habitat networks and providing constructive activity for volunteer enthusiasts, but increasingly the focus is on carbon sequestration.

above: Planted native

woodland on Rum National Nature Reserve, photographed in 1988. This pioneering project was started by Peter Wormell (inset) in the 1950s.

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Restoring native woodland

Cadora Woods, Gloucestershire, was converted to conifer high forest about 1970, using enough herbicide to burn my nose. Since acquired by the Woodland Trust, it is being converted back to native broadleaves in stages. The photo shows the first stage of conversion in May 2006.

During what Rackham called the locust years of the 1960s and 1970s, many ancient woods were felled, dosed with herbicide and replanted, often with conifers; these woods are now known as PAWS (plantations on ancient woodland sites). The herbicide treatments were unprecedented and the scale of the replacement of native woodland was greater than hitherto. In some woods, the broadleaves fought back and the conifers failed, sometimes after several attempts at replanting. In others, a scatter of native broadleaves was retained as a shelterwood or as marginal fringes. Thankfully, policy changed with the adoption of the Broadleaves Policy in 1985. After that, the Forestry Commission decided to revert some conifered woods to broadleaves and encourage private woodland owners to do the same, a process that became known as PAWS restoration, and after 1989 this was reinforced by the fall in the timber market. A fine example is the historically important Chalkney Wood, Essex, which has been completely restored (Leatherdale 2016). Backed by the policy change and substantial grants from the National Lottery, the Woodland Trust bought many ancient woods and set about a long-term programme of replacing the plantations with site-native trees. Radical transformations like this could not be completed quickly, because the market for timber was poor and the result would have been another even-aged stand. Rightly, the changes will take place over decades, starting with fellings that relieve residual mature broadleaves from conifer competition. Some of the most immediately successful restorations took place in upland oakwoods that had been underplanted with conifers. A few years after the removal of conifers from Dalavich oakwood, Argyll, I could hardly detect that conifers had ever been present.

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Minimum intervention (stage 7) Intervening as little as possible beyond maintaining paths has been widely adopted in the Highlands, but less so in the English lowlands, where woodland reserves are usually island habitats in a matrix of farmland and the rides may well be the only herb-rich grasslands remaining in the parish. In some woods, such as Lady Park Wood, this course is adopted for clearly stated reasons; in others it simply reflects limited resources for management; and in many a virtue is made of necessity by justifying leaving portions of a wood unmanaged. Whatever the reason, if woods are left to themselves, rides and other open spaces fill with trees, habitat diversity is greatly reduced, and the wildlife-important interfaces between grassland and tree-covered ground are lost. In the lowlands, therefore, most woodland reserves are managed, at least to the extent that rides are kept open. Now that rewilding is increasingly established as an approach to woodland creation and management, it seems worth recognising a nascent minimum-intervention stage. Such treatment is nothing new, but now it is explicit and underpinned by a clear rationale.

d People have used Britain’s woods for millennia. All have been modified in some way, except perhaps cliff-face scrubs such as Yew Cogar Scar in the Yorkshire Dales, Corrieshalloch Gorge in Wester Ross and the Geary Ravine on Skye. Utilisation in the distant past is often described as exploitation, and more recent usage is generally described as management, but some of the ancient forms of utilisation proved to be sustainable into modern times, and some recent management has been as brutal and short-term as anything in history and prehistory. Individual woods each have their own history. Some have passed through all my stages in orderly sequence; others have missed out stages; and some remain close to an earlier stage. The outcome today is a palimpsest. We can explore woods where different components embody several eras of woodland history in their structure and composition.

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Woodland types and their distribution

chapter seven

M

uch of my work for the Nature Conservancy involved surveying and describing woods. I walked the ground, made notes, listed plant species, sampled soils,

described trees, estimated their ages and mapped banks and other artefacts. Always under pressure, I needed succinct, intelligible records from which reports could quickly be compiled. Quite the most challenging element of these surveys was to describe and map how the trees combined into distinctive kinds of woodland. It was all very well to leave it at ‘beechwood’ in the Chilterns, ‘pinewood’ around the Cairngorms or ‘oakwood’ on the hillsides of west Wales, for these tended to be simple woods in which one species predominated. But elsewhere, the woods were mixtures of several tree and shrub species in which the combinations of species changed subtly as one moved through the wood. If I had called these ‘oakwoods’ or ‘oak–Ash woods’ like the early ecologists, that would have lumped together a fascinating variety of clearly different woodland types.

Nevertheless, characterising woods by their main tree has a long pedigree. Medieval land surveyors recorded Alder-dominated, poplar-dominated and oak-dominated woods as ‘alnetum’, ‘populetum’ and ‘quercetum’ respectively. Foresters’ stock maps show a patchwork of mainly single-species stands, reasonably enough, for most stands were planted as monocultures and only one species is valuable as timber. Even here, however, this is a simplification. Some plantations were planted as mixtures or include trees retained from the previous stand, and all acquire self-sown trees as they develop. Some ‘weed’ species may even be retained after the plantation has been cleaned, especially if they grow on the margin. Some plantations are opened up by wind, but not enough to justify salvage logging and replanting, in which case native trees may seed into the gaps. Even stands planted as monocultures often develop a thin underwood of native trees and

opposite page:

Oceanic oakwoods line an Exmoor valley.

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Trees and Woodlands shrubs by the end of the rotation, and this will develop further if the plantation is allowed to grow on. In all these circumstances, the planted trees still dominate the canopy, and forestry stock maps will indicate only the planted species and the year of planting. The distribution of planted tree species reflects foresters’ experience, guesswork, forestry fashions, opinions on which species grow best on particular sites, personal favouritism, advice from experts and their assumptions about future timber markets. If the planted trees grow well, plantations stand as impressive monuments to foresters’ skills, good planning and luck. Semi-natural woods, however, are usually mixtures and thus more difficult to classify. Some combinations of species are widespread and predictable: the ‘western oakwood’ combination of Sessile Oak, Downy Birch, Rowan and Hazel is common to the point of tedium. Others are rare and unexpected. Where, for example, would you find a combination of Sessile Oak, Large-leaved Lime, Field Maple, Ash and Yew, and what would you call it? This chapter tries to convey some of the variety in woodlands composed mainly of native and naturalised trees. Some are unequivocally distinctive, notably the pine-dominated woods in the Scottish Highlands and the woods of wet ground everywhere, but most are mixtures of broadleaved, deciduous trees whose composition varies subtly within individual woods and throughout the range of any woodland type we might care to recognise. Some of this variation can be explained by soil, topography, drainage, climate and the history of events, modified sometimes by selective actions by the woodmen, but much cannot, for an irreducible element of chance underlies which trees grow where.

Woodland classifications The first ecological classification of British woodlands by Moss, Rankin and Tansley (1910) adopted the customary designations such as beechwood, ashwood, oakwood, and these were retained when Tansley completed his landmark description of The British Islands and Their Vegetation (1939). Mixed woodlands were accommodated, but as simple combinations, such as Ash–oak woods and oak–Hornbeam woods. Published descriptions confirm that these were simple labels for much richer mixtures of trees and shrubs. Tansley’s classification remained in general use until the 1980s, but by then the woods had changed and methods for classification had 214

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Woodland types and their distribution developed. The decline of coppice management, together with wartime felling of standard oaks and other timber, ensured that woods that had long been described as oakwoods were now dominated by other species that had grown up from the underwood. The need for a new classification was amply demonstrated when I first took an interest in the woods of central Lincolnshire in the late 1960s: reports on file told me they were oakwoods, even though few oaks had survived wartime felling and the woods were actually dominated by Small-leaved Lime. In 1975 I needed a more credible set of woodland types for a staff training course, so I used my own field records to create a new classification of what I called ‘stand types’. This was based on correlations in the occurrence of tree species in the coppice of ancient semi-natural woodlands, refined in various ways by site conditions, but excluding any consideration of ground vegetation (Peterken 1981). Independently, Oliver Rackham did the same in order to structure his monumental Ancient Woodland (1980). Fortunately, we hit upon similar classifications. At the same time, the Nature Conservancy Council commissioned leading ecologists to devise a National Vegetation Classification (NVC). Based on new field sampling, this eventually recognised 18 woodland communities and 5 scrub communities, most of which were further subdivided into two or more sub-communities. Their characteristics were described in considerable detail and great clarity by John Rodwell (1991), and thenceforward the NVC became the official classification. Communities were based on the full range of vascular plants and bryophytes, but their names gave prominence to the trees. Professionals now refer to woodland communities by numbers – W18 corresponds with the Highland Scots Pine woods, for example – but informally they are still known as beechwoods, oakwoods, pinewoods, and so on. Somewhat to my disappointment, Hornbeam woods, limewoods, Ash–Field Maple– Hazel woods and other mixtures were subsumed within Ash and oak communities (W8, W10), much like the types in the 1910 classification. The number of communities and their subdivisions broadly corresponded with the number of types recognised by

The memorial for Sir Arthur Tansley erected at the head of Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve, West Sussex. Tansley was co-author of the first classification of Britain’s semi-natural woodlands.

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Trees and Woodlands Rackham and myself, so at least we all agreed on the level of detail at which it is useful to discriminate. These classifications give the impression that woods fall into discrete types separated by sharp boundaries, but reality on the ground frequently generates intermediate stands and a few that are quite unclassifiable. They work because types are based around commonly occurring combinations of species and site conditions and we accept that there will always be transitions and unusual combinations. Any classification tends to break down as one looks further from the region for which it was developed. Thus, the natural mixture of Pedunculate Oak, Small-leaved Lime, Aspen, Norway Maple and Norway Spruce that we found in the island woods of Lake Mälaren, Sweden, could not be described within any British-based classification.

Dividing Britain into zones

opposite page:

The woodland zones of Britain.

Most national woodland descriptions recognise the contrast between the uplands and lowlands. Traditionally, the uplands are northern and western, hilly, based on hard Palaeozoic rocks, withstand an oceanic climate and support mainly pastoral farming, whereas the lowlands are southern and eastern, flat, based on younger, softer strata, receive a more continental climate and enable intensive cultivation. This simple division glosses over the concentration of boreal forest types in Scotland; ignores the significant distinction between the woods of south-east England and the rest of the lowlands; and conceals a distinctive zone between the uplands and lowlands where woods are species-rich like lowland woods, but grow on hard Palaeozoic rocks like upland woods. These distinctions can be recognised by partitioning Britain into five zones, as shown in the map opposite. The Oceanic zone takes in the western Highlands, Galloway, Cumbria, north and much of west Wales, and the distal parts of south-west England. East of this is the Borderland, which runs from north-east Scotland to south-west Wales and south-west England, broadly occupying the eastern, less oceanic outcrops of Palaeozoic rocks. Between these two in north-east Scotland we must insert a Boreal zone, which covers the concentrations of boreal forest types, mostly pine and birch woods. South and east of the Borderland, the Lowlands cover a large part of eastern England, the Midlands and East Anglia, extending south to the coast of east Devon, and north into the Lancashire Plain and the Vale of Pickering. This

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Woodland types and their distribution

N

Oceanic zone Borderland Lowlands South-east Lowlands Boreal

0

100

200km

scale

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Trees and Woodlands zone is separated from the South-east Lowlands along the foot of the Chilterns scarp and a vague boundary running eastwards through Essex and south-westwards to east Dorset. In the South-east Lowlands, Hornbeam and Beech are common and limes are rare, whereas in the Lowlands, Hornbeam and Beech are rare, but Smallleaved Lime is better represented and locally abundant. In addition to these five zones, I recognise floodplain and wet woodland as a separate, azonal group of woods subject to distinctive hydrological and geomorphological conditions. These occur in all five zones. The map delineates zones as if they have hard boundaries, but in fact their boundaries are fuzzy. Oceanic and Borderland woods intermingle with Boreal woods throughout the Highlands. Further south, the Borderland mixes with Oceanic and Lowland woods. Thus, woods that have more in common with Borderland types can be found on base-rich soils in western Wales and the western Highlands; on hard rocks in Charnwood Forest (Leicestershire); and in the hanging woods of the North York Moors, which geologically form part of the lowlands. The zones should be regarded, not as sharp divisions where one step might carry you over the boundary, but as concentrations of particular woodland types without hard edges.

Classifying the woods by their trees I could have adopted the now-familiar and widely used communities defined by the NVC, but instead I have adapted the stand types developed by Rackham and myself. Defined by their principal trees rather than the herbs and bryophytes that played a large part in defining the NVC communities and sub-communities, they seem more appropriate to a book on trees and woodland. NVC communities are named after trees, but the name species are not always dominant, nor even common, in their community. Beech, for example, can be almost absent from NVC Beech woods, though it generally occupies more than 25% of the canopy, and oaks can be almost absent from NVC oak woods. The dominant species in W10 oak woods is just as likely to be Hazel, Small-leaved Lime, Hornbeam or Sweet Chestnut. Woods dominated by Small-leaved Lime fall within woodland communities named after Ash–Field Maple or Pedunculate Oak. Woodland types are defined here by the presence of particular species and the absence of others, as explained in Peterken (1981). Samples with Alder, Beech, Hornbeam, limes, suckering elms or Scots 218

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Woodland types and their distribution Pine were placed in separate groups. The remaining samples were then grouped by separating out, in sequence, those containing Wych Elm, Field Maple, Ash and Hazel, leaving samples which contained none of the foregoing species to be grouped under oak and birch. Each group was then partitioned into types. To these I have added three units which were not recognised in the original stand types. The table overleaf indicates the distribution of stand types between the five zones. For each, I give the main trees and the median soil characteristics. These have been derived mainly from the 850 30m × 30m samples of ancient semi-natural woodlands I recorded in the 1970s and 1980s. Each was chosen to represent a combination of tree species and site conditions in the woods I surveyed in the course of work for the Nature Conservancy (latterly the Nature Conservancy Council). Collectively, they were reasonably representative, despite a moderate over-representation of woods in central Lincolnshire. Malcolm Wilson (1911) said in one of the earliest descriptive accounts of semi-natural woodlands, ‘it is usually difficult to distinguish certain species as characteristic of particular soils when trees only are considered. The occurrence of herbaceous plants is a much better guide.’ I agree, and so did Oliver Rackham (2003) after trying to classify mixtures in the Bradfield Woods. When surveying, the combination of herbs told me what I would find in the soil pit, but not so with trees, which spread over a wider range of conditions.

My classification of stand types was based on samples throughout Britain. Here, Paul Harding (left) helps me record a sample in Nocton Wood, Lincolnshire, in 1973.

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Trees and Woodlands Regional/zonal distribution of woodland types in long-established native woodland. Zone Principal species

Stand Main associates type

Median soil pH, texture, drainage

Oceanic Borderlands Boreal

Lowlands Southeast Lowlands

5.4, loam, impeded 6.3, organic, wet 5.2, sandy loam, poor 5.4, sandy loam, free

+++

+++

++

+++

+++

++

++

++

+++

+++

+

+

++

++

ALDER WOODLAND

Valley Alder on 7A mineral soils Valley Alder on 7B wet soils

Ash, Downy Birch, Hazel, Elder, Pedunculate Oak, Holly Ash, Grey Willow, Downy Birch, Hazel

Plateau Alder woods

7C

Slope Alder woods

7D

Alder, Bird Cherry Grey Willow, Downy Birch

7E

Ash, Hazel, Field Maple, Downy Birch, Pedunculate Oak, hawthorn Ash, Hazel, Downy Birch, Rowan, Holly, Common Hawthorn Ash, Pedunculate Oak, Hazel

NVC Ash, Common Hawthorn, W1-4 Bay Willow, Rowan, Alder Buckthorn, Guelder Rose depending on community

+++

5.5, loamy sand, free Various, +++ valley, wet

+

+

++

++

+

++

++

++

BEECH WOODLAND

Beech, Sessile Oak

8A

Holly, Rowan, Downy Birch, Silver Birch, Hazel, Sweet Chestnut, Common Hawthorn

4.3, loam, free

+

Beech, Pedunculate Oak Beech, Ash, Pedunculate Oak

8B

Holly, Silver Birch, Rowan, Downy Birch, Hazel

8C

Hazel, Yew, Field Maple, Common Hawthorn, Elder, Holly, Sycamore, whitebeam, Dogwood, Goat Willow, Small-leaved Lime, Wych Elm, Wild Cherry

4.0, loamy sand, impeded 7.7, clay loam, free

Beech, Ash, Pedunculate Oak Beech, Ash, Sessile Oak

8D

Hazel, Holly, Downy Birch

4.5, loam, impeded

++

++

8E

Hazel, Wych Elm, Holly, Yew, Common Hawthorn, whitebeam, limes, Field Maple

6.7, loam, free

++

++

Alkaline, clay loam, free

+

+

++

+++

+

++++

++

+++

YEW WOODLAND

NVC Elder, whitebeam 13 HORNBEAM WOODLAND

Hornbeam, Pedunculate Oak

9A

Hazel, Downy Birch, Ash, Common Hawthorn, Field Maple, Midland Hawthorn, Aspen

4.4, sandy clay loam, impeded

Hornbeam, Sessile Oak

9Ba

Downy Birch, Hazel, Ash, Common Hawthorn, Holly

3.7, loam, poor

++

+

++++

++

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Woodland types and their distribution Zone Principal species

Stand Main associates type

Hornbeam, 9Bb Sessile Oak on base-rich soil

Median soil pH, texture, drainage

Birches, Field Maple, Ash, Elder, Common Hawthorn, Spindle

7.6, loam, impeded

Oceanic Borderlands Boreal

Lowlands Southeast Lowlands +

LIME WOODLAND

Small-leaved Lime, Ash, birch, Pedunculate Oak Limes, Ash, Field Maple, Pedunculate Oak Limes, Ash, Sessile Oak

4A

Hazel, Common Hawthorn, Downy Birch, Goat Willow, Crab Apple, Aspen, Silver Birch, Midland Hawthorn

5.1, sandy clay loam, poor

4B

Hazel, Common Hawthorn, Field Maple, Dogwood, Spindle, Silver Birch

7.2, loam, free

++

+

4C

+

5A

6.7, clay loam, impeded 4.7, sandy loam, impeded

++

Smallleaved Lime, Pedunculate Oak Small-leaved Lime, Sessile Oak

Hazel, Field Maple, Silver Birch, Common Hawthorn, Holly, Yew, Dogwood Downy Birch, Hazel, Common Hawthorn, Silver Birch, Rowan, Holly, Sweet Chestnut

++

+++

+

Hazel, Downy Birch, Silver Birch, Holly, Rowan

4.3, loamy + sand, free

++

++

+

++++

+

++++

++

++

+

++

+

+++

+

+

5B

++++

SUCKERING ELM WOODLAND

Suckering elms 10

Ash, Field Maple, Common Hawthorn, Elder, Midland Hawthorn

7.2, mediumheavy, poor

+

SCOTS PINE WOODLAND

Scots Pine, birch

11A

Rowan, Juniper

Scots Pine, oak 11B

Juniper, Rowan

Scots Pine on base-rich soil

Juniper, Goat Willow, Hazel, 5.5, loamy Grey Willow, Elder, hawthorn, sand, free Downy Birch

11C

4.3, + organic coarse, free 4.4, coarse, free

++++

+ +

+

ASH-WYCH ELM WOODLAND

Ash, Wych Elm, Pedunculate Oak Ash, Wych Elm, Pedunculate Oak Ash, Wych Elm, Sessile Oak

1A

Hazel, Field Maple, Common Hawthorn, Holly, Rowan, Wild Cherry

1B

Hazel, Common Hawthorn, Midland Hawthorn, Field Maple

1C

Hazel, Common Hawthorn, Silver Birch, Yew, Elder, Holly, Field Maple

6.8, clay loam, freelydrained 5.7, clay loam, poorlydrained 7.0, clay loam, freelydrained

+

+

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Trees and Woodlands Zone Principal species

Stand Main associates type

Ash, Wych Elm, Sessile Oak

1D

Median soil pH, texture, drainage

Hazel, Rowan, Holly, Common 5.5, loam, Hawthorn, Sycamore, Downy freelyBirch drained

Oceanic Borderlands Boreal

++++

Lowlands Southeast Lowlands

++

ASH-FIELD MAPLE WOODLAND

Ash, Field Maple, Hazel, Pedunculate Oak Ash, Field Maple, Hazel Ash, Field Maple, Hazel

2A

2B 2C

Common Hawthorn, Midland Hawthorn, Elder, Blackthorn, Dogwood, Goat Willow, Crab Apple Elder, Silver Birch, Guelder Rose, Dogwood Common Hawthorn, Dogwood, Spindle

6.2, clay loam, poor

+

+++++

++

6.3, loam, impeded 7.8, clay loam, free

+

++

+

++

++

+

ASH-HAZEL WOODLAND

Ash, Hazel, Pedunculate Oak

3A

Common Hawthorn, Downy Birch, Guelder Rose, Blackthorn, Goat Willow, Aspen

4.9, clay loam, poor

+

++

+++++

+++

Ash, Hazel

3B

Common Hawthorn, Elder, Spindle, Wayfaring-tree Common Hawthorn, Rowan, Downy Birch, Yew, Sycamore

6.6, loam, free 6.9, loam, free

+

++

++

+

++

+++

Downy Birch, Common Hawthorn, Holly Downy Birch

4.6, loam, +++ free Loam, ++ free, often shallow

Ash, Hazel, 3C Sessile Oak on base-rich soil Ash, Hazel, 3D Sessile Oak Hazel

++

+

BIRCH-OAK WOODLAND

Sessile Oak, Hazel, birch

6Ac 6Cc

Downy Birch, Rowan, Holly, Common Hawthorn, Silver Birch

4.5, loam, free

+++++ ++

+

+

+++

Sessile Oak, birch Pedunculate Oak, Hazel, birch Pedunculate Oak, birch

6Ab 6Cb 6Bc 6Dc

Downy Birch, Rowan, Holly, Silver Birch Downy Birch, Common Hawthorn, Rowan

4.2, sandy loam, free 4.3, loam, impeded

+++++ ++

+

+

++

++

++

+

+++

++

6Bb 6Db

Downy Birch, Rowan, Holly, Silver Birch

4.0, sandy loam, free

++

+

+

+++

+++

++

++++

CHESTNUT WOODLAND

Sweet Chestnut

Birches, Hazel, Common Hawthorn, oaks

4.3, loam, impeded

+

4.5, loamy ++ sand, free 5.2, sandy ++ clay loam, free

++

+++++ +

+

+

+++

+

BIRCH WOODLAND

Birch

12A

Rowan, Juniper, Aspen

Birch, Hazel

12B

Rowan, Goat Willow, Aspen, Bird Cherry

+

Stand types from Peterken (1981). Increasing importance of a type within a zone is indicated by increasing number of plus symbols.

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Woodland types and their distribution However you define them, woodland types are heterogeneous. Soils under birch–Hazel woodland (12B), for example, ranged from pH 4.2 at Oxenber Wood, North Yorkshire, and pH 4.8 at Craigroy Burn, Cromarty, to pH 6.6 on clay loam near Bearreraig Bay, Skye, and loamy sand with impeded profile drainage in Crathie Woods, Upper Deeside. Such heterogeneity within types looks like a failure to classify stands properly, but the fact is that similar soils do not generate exactly the same type of woodland everywhere. To take an extreme example, the woodland types growing on alkaline clay included a Scottish Alder wood in a ravine, a Monmouthshire beechwood on an exposed slope and a Cambridgeshire suckering elm wood on flat ground. Climate and history also influence composition, and there must also be a measure of random chance. Woodland composition is a multidimensional continuum both in theory and on the ground. Whatever units are defined, there will always be intermediates, transitions between two types and finescale mosaics of different types. We can also find additional, if rare, woodland types, such as Box woods in the Cotswolds, Chilterns and North Downs, and Holly woods in the New Forest. Then again, secondary woodland, such as the Ash groves on calcareous soils that have not yet acquired the Hazel, Field Maple and Spindle that inhabit ancient woods on similar sites, is often distinct.

Zones in more detail Oceanic zone

Artro Valley, west of the Rhinogs, north Wales, with oceanic oakwoods both on the slopes and on the rocky lower ground.

The western seaboard from north-west Scotland to the tip of Cornwall is warm, wet and windy. Replete with hills and mountains, it is often called ‘the uplands’, though there is plenty of low ground in wide valleys and on coastal plains. Built on Palaeozoic rocks, many of which generate base-poor soils, it is diversified by limestone outcrops in north-west Scotland. Seepages, subsoil drainage and erosion of steep ground maintain patches of relatively rich soil even on inherently base-poor strata. Substantial tracts of both high ground and 223

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Trees and Woodlands floodplains have developed into peaty mires. Throughout, farming is largely pastoral. Woods mostly occupy steep slopes and rocky ground where the soil is generally well drained and cultivation is impossible. Most include glades and irregular margins associated with mires and outcrops. Trees were once mixed intimately with pasture; latterly most were enclosed by walls to protect young plantations. The mossy oakwoods of the western hills fascinated the early ecologists. Tansley (1939) devoted many pages to descriptions of high-altitude oakwoods on Dartmoor and in Cumbria, the Sessile oakwoods of the Rheidol Gorge in Wales, the woods of the Great Glen across Scotland, and the scattered oakwoods around Killarney. Other concentrations of oak woodland can be found in the south-west along the Helford River (Rackham 2019), on Dartmoor fringes and in the Exmoor valleys around Watersmeet; in Wales around the Maentwrog Valley and the arms of Milford Haven; in Borrowdale and around Windermere in Cumbria; in Scotland by Loch Lomond, in Knapdale, other parts of Argyll and Bute and around Loch Maree. The oakwoods are part of a series which can often be found as a zonation from the moorland fringe down to the valley bottom. Birch–oak–Hazel occupies the thin, dry, often stony soils of the upper slopes; Ash–Wych Elm grows on the deeper and often flushed soils of the lower slopes; Alder enters along streams flowing down the slope, concavities in the slope, and a narrow band at the base of the slope, and extends onto valley swamps and stream sides; while Grey Willow and Downy Birch combine on mires and dune slacks. On base-poor bedrock, oak–birch woodland occupies the whole slope with a few Ash and Hazel joining the mix lower down. On base-rich bedrock, in contrast, Ash–Wych Elm woodland can occupy most of the slope and any oak woodland will include Hazel with few birch. In extremely oceanic districts on slopes with strong flushing, Alder–Hazel and Ash can be as dominant as slope Alder woods (e.g. overlooking Ballachulish). The moorland above is rarely treeless: scattered trees cling to rock outcrops, and new birch, Rowan, Grey Willow scrub develops in moorland conifer plantations. The nearest woodland to a mountain summit is not the famous Wistman’s Wood on Dartmoor, but the wooded tor in Ty-Canol Wood, Pembrokeshire. Historically, most of the Oceanic zone was wood-pasture. Much of this was replaced by plantations of oaks in the 18th and 19th centuries, but many fragments of woodland-pasture can still be found in, for 224

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Woodland types and their distribution example, Glen Finglas, Rassal Ashwood and the Sunart peninsula. Enduring grazing has defined many features: trees confined to rock outcrops; woodland clinging to the sides of Dundonnell Gorge and the Geary Ravine; many woods in which the highest diversity of trees is found on cliffs and rocky riversides; and the small island woods with unusually diverse tree mixtures. It is also perhaps seen in the extreme restriction of two slow-colonising trees, Wild Service-tree, found in, for example, Lawrenny Wood, Pembrokeshire, and the Dizzard cliff woodland, Cornwall; and the rarity of Small-leaved Lime, found in Holne Chase, Dartmoor, along streams in above: Inside Wistman’s Wood, the high-altitude Cumbria, and in several woods in mid-Wales Pedunculate oakwood on Dartmoor. below: Lawrenny Wood, Pembrokeshire, by the innernear Machynlleth and Dolgellau. most reaches of Milford Haven. Dominated by Sessile Towards the northern end of the range, the Oak, it nevertheless includes several Wild Service-trees. oaks, Ash and Wych Elm thin out, leaving increasingly frequent birch and birch– Hazel woodlands, but the latter nevertheless usually include a scatter of Alder, Aspen, Bird Cherry, Hazel, Holly, Rowan and Wych Elm, even occasional Ash and oak. The distribution of tree and shrub species is broadly natural, albeit depleted by grazing, with the exception of oak, which has been widely planted. In Borrowdale, the oakdominated Great Wood and Johnny’s Wood were probably more mixed, like Seatoller Wood at the head of the valley. Likewise on Loch Lomondside, the oakwoods are plantations that appear to have displaced more diverse woodland (Tittensor 1970). Whilst Sessile Oaks predominate throughout the Oceanic zone, Pedunculate Oak is a frequent constituent. In 44 samples, I found Pedunculate Oak in eight, including Allt y Wern, Carmarthenshire; Glen Nant, Argyll; Coille Mhor, Lochalsh; Talladale, by Loch Maree; and Coed Dolgarrog, Gwynedd. Not all these will be imports: the high-altitude Dartmoor oakwoods may seem like an anomaly, but they are matched by the 225

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Trees and Woodlands Pedunculate Oaks at Loch A’ Mhuilinn, almost the northern extremity of oakwoods. In addition, outlying patches of woodland types and species that are more appropriate to other zones can be found. Thus, we find Strawberry-tree, a species of oceanic oakwoods in France and Spain, in the oceanic extremities of western Ireland, while Yew woodland near Killarney and on Inchlonaig in Loch Lomond comes as a surprise. Small suckering elm woods have developed, especially on the Lizard and other margins of Cornwall. In Pengelli Forest, Pembrokeshire, Ash–Hazel–oak woodland can be found with Midland Hawthorn. The westernmost above: Wych Elm in Hazel–Pedunculate Oak–Ash woodland near Tokavaig, Skye. In this mixed woodland, Scots Pine woods at Barrisdale and Sheildaig Wych Elms are concentrated along ravines. survive in a markedly oceanic climate. The below: Alder woodland on steep slopes at Torboll, Ash and Hazel woods on limestone relate Sutherland. closely to Borderland woods, though in this case they grade into the hyperoceanic Hazel woods of the Hebrides (Coppins and Coppins 2012). The scattered Beech–oak woods on acid ground and Beech–Ash woods on baserich soils, familiar enough in the southern Borderlands and South-east Lowlands, have developed from planted stock, but, given the uncertain status of Beech in the Oceanic zone, they can now be counted as a natural part of the mix. Despite recent attempts to bring them into management, notably in Wales, oceanic woods are largely unmanaged. Coppices have grown into high forest with multistemmed trees. Oaks are increasingly dominant as birches reach their allotted span. Taller and older than they once were, they seem more vulnerable to wind: individual trees have tipped over in most woods. Sycamore has liberally infiltrated Ash–Wych Elm and Hazel– oak woodland. Rhododendron has so choked heathy oakwoods in Killarney, Snowdonia and parts of the western Highlands that millions have been spent trying to control it. 226

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Woodland types and their distribution

Borderland The Borderland is not usually recognised in regional divisions of Britain, but, living and working in its core in the Lower Wye Valley, I am convinced it usefully distinguishes the eastern, less oceanic part of the geographical ‘Highlands’ from the more oceanic regions to the west. Occupying Palaeozoic rocks, including various limestones, it extends from south Devon to the Black Isle, taking in the Peak District and Pennines, south-east Scotland, Angus and much of Perthshire. In Wales, it covers much of the east, extending west into Carmarthenshire and Denbigh. In England it mixes with the northern lowlands to include Charnwood Forest. Some districts that technically fall within the lowlands have strong affinities with Borderland woods, notably the North York Moors. The Borderlands are where strong north–south trends in composition can be seen and lowland woods mix and merge with upland and western woods to generate a very wide range of mixtures. Borderland woods on neutral to alkaline soils are the main location for Large-leaved Lime in Britain, which is frequent in the southern Welsh borderland, the White Peak and the Magnesian Limestone woods of north-east England. They include the main concentration of Sessile Oak on limestone, a counterintuitive feature for those who see Sessile Oak mainly in the ‘western oakwoods’. Many of the whitebeam microspecies are concentrated in Borderland limestone woods, where they form hybrids with Wild Service-tree, as well as the locations for the true Service-tree on cliffs and crags around the Severn. The limestone crags support a distinctive mix of Yew, whitebeams, Large-leaved Lime and, in the Welsh Borderland, Beech, but also small shrubs such as Dog Rose that can thrive in drought-limited woodlands. Yew in particular is prominent on dry sites, forming dense underwoods at Ledbury, Piercefield in the Lower Wye Valley and the steep woodland on Magnesian Limestone in Castle Eden Dene. And we can find scattered, enigmatic populations of Hornbeam in, for example, the Mendips and around Morecambe Bay. The core district is the Lower Wye Valley and south-east Wales, where the acknowledged east–west native range of Beech crosses the Borderland running north–south. Here the ancient woods on limestone comprise a great diversity of tree species, and similar, but less diverse, combinations are found on the acid soils of the Devonian sandstone. The Beech–Ash woodlands form the zenith of borderland 227

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Mixed woodland of Beech, Sessile Oak, Ash, Small-leaved Lime on Carboniferous limestone in Lady Park Wood, Monmouthshire.

diversity (Peterken and Mountford 2017). Beech dominates in combination with Ash, oak (Sessile Oak in the Wye Valley, mostly Pedunculate Oak elsewhere), Small-leaved Lime, Large-leaved Lime, Field Maple and Wych Elm, with both birches, Wild Cherry, Goat Willow and occasionally Aspen colonising gaps, above an underwood of Hazel with Common Hawthorn, Holly and Yew and a scatter of whitebeam, Wild Service-tree, Rowan, Elder, Dogwood, Spindle and Dog Rose. Similar stands can be found elsewhere on the English and Welsh limestones, but in these instances Beech is assumed to be an introduction. To the west of the core area Beech continues into Carmarthenshire and Field Maple reaches its limits a little further west. Large-leaved Lime is absent, but Small-leaved Lime maintains a sparse presence in, for example, woods at Dinas Powys, Vale of Glamorgan. To the south-west, Large-leaved Lime is again absent, but Small-leaved Lime is found in several Mendip woods and around Chudleigh Rocks, Devon. Whilst Wych Elm and Field Maple remain part of the mix, Ash is usually dominant, together with Pedunculate Oak. Borderland woods to the north of the core area contain a great variety of mixtures, but their composition attenuates to the north. Large-leaved Lime continues sparsely into north-east England; Small-leaved Lime and Field Maple reach only to the

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Woodland types and their distribution Scottish borders; north of Inverness Wych Elm and Ash become sparse; and the status of Beech is uncertain. The most widespread type is Ash–Wych Elm woodland, which, within the range of Beech–Ash woodland, occurs on deeper and moister soils on lower slopes, but elsewhere extends onto much shallower, drier and more acid soils. Either or both Pedunculate and Sessile Oak are prominent in many woods, the latter forming a clear majority in the Welsh borderland and the north-west in Cumbria. This mixture is well represented in the woods of steep valley sides in the Middle Clyde Valley, Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles and the Angus Glens. Ash– above: Birch and Aspen emerge from a thicket of Hazel Wych Elm woodland varies across this wide at Torboll, Sutherland. geographical range, but remains reasonably below: Ash woodland on limestone pavement at Colt coherent: the version with Pedunculate Oak Park Wood, Ribblesdale. Movement within the wood requires care, lest one fall into a deep gryke concealed by at Drummondreach on the Black Isle would lush herbage. not look out of place in Herefordshire. Birches are frequent throughout; Silver Birch seems to associate with Sessile Oak, whereas Downy Birch associates more with Pedunculate Oak. However, to the north of Inverness, the woods become increasingly simplified to birch–Hazel woodland with Aspen and Rowan. Perhaps the best-known group of Borderland woods outside the core area are those of the White Peak and Yorkshire Dales. In the White Peak, the Ash–lime woods are ancient, whereas the Ash–Hazel and Ash–Wych Elm woods lacking limes are more likely to be secondary (Pigott 1969, Merton 1970). Woods like those Borderland woods on base-rich soils are found to the east and west. The woods of the North York Moors, such as those around Rievaulx, are largely Ash–Wych Elm. The woods of northern Rockingham Forest on oolitic limestone, notably Bedford Purlieus and Easton Hornstocks, are largely Ash with tracts of Ash–lime and long-term residence of Beech. Benglog Wood in mid-Wales, which 229

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Hudnalls, Gloucestershire. Beech, Small-leaved Lime, Sessile Oak and Pedunculate Oak grow together on acid soils in the Lower Wye Valley.

includes scattered Small-leaved Lime amongst the dominant Ash, was the subject of an early study (Tansley 1939). Some of the South Downs scarp woods have similarities to those in the core Borderland woods and even include Large-leaved Lime occasionally. To the north, Atlantic Hazel woods are wetter versions of the north-eastern Hazel woods. Whilst woods on hard limestones are the stand-out feature, Borderland also includes a full range of woods on acid and strongly acid soils, and these have many counterparts to east and west. On strongly acid soils, the core area includes mixtures of Beech, Smallleaved Lime and both oak species in various combinations with both birches (Hudnalls). Oak–Small-leaved Lime woods are found in Swithland and Buddon Woods on the outlying fragment of Borderland in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire. Some of these stands would not seem out of place amongst the acid beechwoods of the south-east, the oak–Small-leaved Lime woods of the Midlands (e.g. Shrawley Wood) or dry, acid oakwoods almost anywhere. Neither would the Ash-Large-leaved Lime stands amongst beech woods on the South Downs be exceptional in the core area. One even finds small stands of Hornbeam woodland in, for example, a remote corner of Chaddesley Wood, Worcestershire, whose counterparts characterise parts of the south-east. The intermixing of Borderland woods even extends to the Boreal zone. Scots Pine woodland on limestone is widespread in mainland Europe, but unfamiliar in Britain. However, the surviving native pine stand on the Burren in western Ireland grows on limestone, 230

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Woodland types and their distribution and there is pollen evidence that pinewoods once occupied limestone near Malham Tarn (Pigott and Pigott 1959). Within the mixed Hazel woods of the Moniack Burn, near Inverness, there is a small patch of Scots Pine on dry, base-rich ground accompanied by whitebeam, Juniper and a herb-rich flora including Wood Vetch.

Boreal zone The characteristic pine, birch and Alder woods of the Boreal zone are centred on the Scottish Highlands and further north, particularly in the glens running west rom Inverness, Statharrar and Affric, and around the Cairngorms along the middle Spey valley (Abernethy, Rothiemurchus (Chapter 3), Glenmore, Glen Feshie), Upper Deeside (Glen Tanar, Ballochbuie, Mar); elsewhere they are isolated. Their relationships with the Oceanic and northern Borderland woods are particularly intricate. One can boat across from Skye to the remote ancient pine wood of Barrisdale close to the oceanic west coast of the mainland. By Loch Maree, the pinewoods of Coille na Glas-Leitire look north to the oceanic oakwoods of Letterewe and run westward into the oakwoods of Talladale. In and to the north of the Cairngorms, several oak–pine mixtures can be found. This fine-pattern mixing of

Scots Pine–birch– Juniper woodland in Rothiemurchus Forest.

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Old Wood of Meggernie, Glen Lyon, Perthshire. Like most central and western native pinewoods, it is small and isolated.

boreal and temperate is characteristic of the Highlands, but boreal woods generally grow at higher altitude, on poorer soils and on cooler (north-facing) sites than the broadleaved woods of other zones. Complicating the picture further, birchwoods form almost throughout Scotland when oak and other broadleaved woodlands are felled. As emblems of the Scottish Highlands, the ‘Caledonian’ pinewoods have received considerable attention from ecologists. The conspectus of 37 woods featured in The Native Pinewoods of Scotland (Steven and Carlisle 1959) has formed the basis of discussion and conservation action ever since, though there are many other lesser fragments. Prehistorically, pinewoods were found further south and may have been continuously present in Cumbria, the Pennines and the Southern Uplands of Scotland; there are pines there now, but no certainty that they are survivors. A small surviving pinewood has been identified on the Burren, western Ireland, and some of the New Forest Scots Pines may be descendants of populations that survived on the wet heaths. The birch–Scots Pine woodlands include both the widespread birches and a distinct subspecies of Downy Birch. They grow on coarse-grained, freely drained soils, mostly leached and often with accumulations of peat. Pinewoods with a slightly richer than usual ground flora can be found at Sheildaig on the west coast, Crathie in Upper Deeside and the Ryvoan Pass between Glenmore and Abernethy Forests on Speyside. The other major constituent is Juniper, especially in parts of the pinewoods around the Cairngorms. Rowan is a widespread minor associate, along with occasional groups of Aspen

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and, to the west, Holly. Scattered Alders are often found along burns with a scatter of Grey and Eared Willows. Otherwise, the occasional presence of oak, Hazel, Goat Willow and Bird Cherry shows that temperate woodland is close, ecologically and geographically. McVean and Ratcliffe (1962) in their reconstruction of natural woodland patterns show a substantial district to the north and east of the Cairngorms where pine and oak were thought to overlap, and on that basis it seems worthwhile to recognise such mixtures as oak– Scots Pine woodland. The three examples I have sampled were on strongly acid soils, one on a rock outcrop and unstable scree in Glen Tanar, where both species were regenerating; another as pine–oak parkland on Torr Alvie, Speyside, which had been invaded by Aspen; and a third as a 200-year-old mixture of Scots Pine, Juniper and both oaks in Darnaway Forest. Whilst pinewoods attract the publicity, the commonest woods of the Boreal zone are birchwoods, which generally occupy slightly more fertile soils than the pines. The problem in summarising them is that they have at least five origins. They may be the remains of a formerly mixed wood from which timber trees were cut; secondary woods formed by colonisation onto treeless ground; plantations of birch; one part of the dynamic mosaic of vegetation that links moorland with birch–pine and birch–oak woodlands; or what we used to call ‘climax’ birchwoods, growing where other timber trees would not grow. Birch–Rowan woods could have originated by any of the five routes, but most seem to be secondary. They are best described as

Birch woodland near Feshie Bridge, Speyside. The Juniper understorey would be more familiar to a visitor from Norway than to an English ecologist.

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The essence of remoteness STRATHBEG BIRCHWOOD, Sutherland Apart from the pinewood in Barrisdale, which I reached by boating over the sea from Skye, the birchwood overlooking the Strathbeg bothy that I visited in 1974 must be the most remote wood I have reached. Showing more tolerance than I deserved, my wife agreed to wait with our young sons by the road at the head of Loch Eriboll while I hiked 3km into the distance along the Allt Srath Coille na Fearna to find out what kind of woodland could survive this far north. The wood was always visible, for it is largely confined to the steep north- and west-facing slopes of Creag Shomhairle. There on the cliffs, rock outcrops and stream banks, I found a core of surprisingly dense woodland with up to 90% canopy cover dominated by mostly old Downy Birch, punctuated by glades over rock outcrops and acid flushes. Grazed throughout, regeneration had been limited for at least the previous 40 years, but a few birch and Rowan seedlings were established and ready to take their chance. My hunch was that much of the woodland was secondary, but a core of woodland must have survived here permanently, for the scattered Rowan, Grey Willow, Alder, Holly, Hazel and Bird Cherry had the makings of a truly mixed woodland and the ground flora included species such as Sanicle, Primrose and Wild Garlic that I associate with base-rich woods in southern England. Jeanette Hall and Valerie Wilson tell me that grazing still prevents regeneration, the wood is more open and the woodland herbs are largely restricted to less accessible areas. However, help is at hand. A single Wych Elm survives by a small cataract and the wood is part of land acquired by Wildland Estates with the aim of rewilding, a process that has started with an 80% cull of Red Deer. As the woodland regenerates, our successors may discover that this is fundamentally a mixed woodland in which birch has been the most resilient species in the face of prolonged pasturage.

Birch woodland in northernmost Sutherland at Strathbeg.

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Woodland types and their distribution heathy birchwoods in which Downy Birch dominates more often than Silver Birch, and Aspen and Rowan are frequent and locally dominant. Juniper is often abundant in birchwoods in Speyside and Upper Deeside. Pollen analysis in Morrone Birkwood, near Braemar, has demonstrated an extremely long birch pedigree (Huntley 1994). The species-rich Birch–Hazel woodland growing in Caithness, Sutherland, the northern Highlands and near Rackwick Bay on Hoy on neutral and mildly acid soils is where Boreal, Borderland and western Oceanic woods become indistinguishable.

Lowlands The Lowland zone includes the Midlands, Lincolnshire, most of East Anglia, Dorset, much of Gloucestershire and the West Midlands extending to the Cheshire and Lancashire plains and the southeastern parts of Yorkshire. The land is low-lying, gently undulating or flat and sinks below sea level in the Fens. Tracts of light, well-drained soils can be found in Nottinghamshire, the Breckland of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the Sandlings in Suffolk, but for the most part soils are heavy and poorly drained. Most of the rural land is cultivated. Rainfall in the East Midlands and East Anglia is low, frosts can be severe and summer temperatures are high enough to generate soil moisture deficits rivalled only in the South-east Lowlands. Technically, the North York Moors are part of the Lowlands, though some of their woods are more at home in the Borderlands. Until recently, ancient woods were generally treated as coppicewith-standards. The Lowlands are significant as the zone in which coppicing was widely recorded in 1086 and the place where Oliver Rackham first developed his ideas. Depending on whose classification you use, Lowland woods span either a limited range of woodland types or a great diversity. If we follow the NVC we find nine sub-communities spread across three communities, W8, W10 and W16, plus W2 and other wet woodland types. Rackham (2003) on the other hand lists at least 27 woodland types. Like me, he preferred to acknowledge the greater variety of stand types that emerged from the 20th-century demise of coppice management. However they are defined, types often merge and mix intimately in the most diverse woods. Most Lowland ancient woods fall within a core spectrum that runs from Ash–Field Maple–Hazel–Pedunculate Oak woodland on neutral 235

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Pedunculate Oak–Hazel woodland with some Ash in Finemere Wood, Buckinghamshire, derived from coppice-withstandards management.

Narrow-leaved Elm woodland in Overhall Grove, Cambridgeshire.

to alkaline soils (Rackham 1975), through Ash–Hazel–Pedunculate Oak woodland on moderately acid and neutral soils, and Hazel– Pedunculate Oak woodland on acid soils, to birch–Pedunculate Oak woodland and birch woodland lacking oak and Hazel on light acid soils. Several localised variants can be found within this spectrum. For example, the proportions of Ash, Hazel and Field Maple vary so widely that Rackham recognised seven different variants of Ash– Field Maple–Hazel woodland. Most of these woods grow on poorly drained clays, clay loams and silty clay loams, sometimes with a superficial sandy fraction that is 236

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Woodland types and their distribution most prominent under birch–oak woods. Treated as coppice-withstandards, oaks were the main standard, whereas Hazel, Ash and Field Maple were almost always cut as coppice. Oaks were also coppiced, and, as the coppice system faded away, Ash increasingly grew as maiden trees infiltrating neglected coppice. Birches are found throughout the spectrum but become especially prominent on lighter, acid soils. Most are Downy Birch, but either or both species may be found indiscriminately. Aspen, too, can be found as scattered clonal clusters throughout the range of types. All stands are diversified by several species of shrub and small tree, the most characteristic of which is Midland Hawthorn. Any one of them can be abundant in small patches, but usually they survive as minor components in the underwood or on the margins. This core spectrum of types is diversified by the patchy addition of other trees to the ordinary mixtures to produce some diverse and unusual combinations of woodland types. Briefly: •  Wych Elm enters mainly at the alkaline end of the range, mostly on well-drained soils. •  Suckering elms have invaded principally on heavy, neutral and alkaline soils. Most stands are essentially Ash–Field Maple– Hazel woodland mixed with, or displaced by, English or Narrowleaved Elms.

Chalkney Wood, Essex, where the Hornbeam and Small-leaved Lime coppice is intimately mixed.

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Sessile Oak – birch woodland in the ancient coppice of Swanton Novers Great Wood, Norfolk. Now that the deeply shaded thicket stage has passed, Holly is colonising the underwood.

•  Small-leaved Lime is also found across a wide range, but is mainly associated with acid and neutral soils. •  Hornbeam locally supplements Ash–Hazel and Hazel– Pedunculate Oak woodland on moderately acid soils. •  Sessile Oak is scattered through lowland woods, even in East Anglia and Lincolnshire, where it is associated with the lighter, acid soils. Combinations with Small-leaved Lime can be found in the western Lowlands, for example in Collinpark Wood, Gloucestershire. Alder joins the mixtures where a high water table is maintained within well-drained soils on shallow plateaus. Without the Alder, most of these stands would fall within the Ash–Field Maple–Hazel and Ash–Hazel types, and less often the Hazel–Pedunculate Oak type. The main associate is Grey Willow. In shallow headwater valleys on sandy, neutral soils in some Norfolk woods, a distinctive variant of Ash–Hazel–Pedunculate Oak is found with Bird Cherry and Grey Willow. This leaves three ‘additional’ tree species of uncertain status. Beech is mainly a species of the South-east Lowlands and Borderland, but

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Woodland types and their distribution planted trees are frequent; it dominates the central Cotswolds, and can be found as outposts of its main populations in the Midlands and East Anglia. Medieval records suggest that it has actually retreated from some outposts in Suffolk and Norfolk, possibly because it is less vigorous as coppice than its competitors. Sweet Chestnut is associated with the acid end of the soil range. Many of the Chestnut coppices are fairly recent plantations, but the species has been naturalising for a millennium in southern East Anglia and the West Midlands. Over the last century, Sycamore has infiltrated Lowland ancient woods of all kinds indiscriminately, but unlike suckering elms it does not achieve absolute dominance.

South-east Lowlands The South-east Lowlands broadly correspond with the London commuter catchment of the late 1970s. In its middle portion, its boundary is the base of the Chilterns scarp but it continues east into Essex and south-west into Dorset. It takes in the New Forest, Epping Forest and many other famously well-wooded districts and wood-pastures, as well as the always well-wooded Weald. Extensive suburban sprawl and London overspill generate broad edgelands, extensive public open spaces and much hobby landowning. Its London-centred social and economic circumstances have influenced woodland management away from the purely commercial and more towards recreation and landscaping – which partly explains why the impact of the great storm of October 1987 was particularly shocking. The chalk outcrops of the South Downs, North Downs and Chilterns, with their strongly alkaline rendzina soils on the scarp slopes, separate the London and Hampshire basins from the Weald. The soils in the Weald and on the dip slopes of the chalk are a mixture of sands and gravels generating heaths contrasting with loams and stiff, poorly drained clays. Being free of boulder-clay deposits, they faithfully reflect the underlying strata. This zone receives more rainfall than the Lowlands, but is just as hot and dry in summer. Britain’s Beech and Hornbeam woods are concentrated here, but conversely limes are notably rare. Chestnut coppice is commoner than in other regions, and this helped the region to remain the last bastion of traditional coppicing.

Beech–Pedunculate Oak woodland with Box in the underwood at Box Hill, Surrey. Yew and Holly are also abundant nearby. Few mature Beech survived the October 1987 storm on this exposed chalk scarp.

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Yew woodland on the chalk of Kingley Vale, West Sussex. As the nearest approach to an absolute monoculture in British native woodlands, it makes the Caledonian pinewoods look diverse.

Compared with the Lowlands and Borderlands, composition is more often dominated by a single tree species. Historically, wood-pastures were extensive, and many still survive as commons, parks and forests. The woodlands of the chalk are perhaps the most famous amongst ecologists, not least because Selborne Hanger formed the backdrop to Gilbert White’s ministry, and because the South Downs and Chiltern woods were studied in detail by the early ecologists R. S. Adamson (1922) and Alex Watt (1925, 1934). They range from Ash–Beech– Pedunculate Oak woodland on the exposed chalk to rather more acid Beech–Pedunculate Oak woodland with less Ash on the clays of the dip slope. Some of the steepest scarp beechwoods have an underwood of yew. Many are beautiful in spring with carpets of Bluebells, but tediously uniform at other times of the year. Box is locally abundant around Box Hill; Wych Elm is found occasionally on deeper, moister soils at the base of slopes and in gulleys running down the slopes; and on the South Downs a scatter of Large-leaved Limes represents a memory of past times when beechwoods were mixtures. Where pastures have been abandoned, mixed scrub studded with the pale foliage of whitebeams and the dark outlines of Yews has developed. Famously, Kingley Vale has extensive, almost pure Yew woodland, some of great age (Williamson 1978).

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Woodland types and their distribution Otherwise, the woods of the South-east Lowlands can best be described against the same spectrum of woodland types found in the Lowlands. From strongly alkaline to fiercely acid, these are Ash–Wych Elm–Pedunculate Oak woodland, Ash–Field Maple–Pedunculate Oak woodland, Ash–Hazel–Pedunculate Oak woodland, Hazel–oak woodland and birch–oak woodland. Birches (mainly Downy Birch) are present across the range but become commoner at the acid end; Aspen and Wild Cherry are likewise scattered indiscriminately; Sessile Oak is found mainly at the acid end; Field Maple and Ash grow mainly at the alkaline end; and a wide variety of shrubs and small trees can be found in the stands and on the margins. The range of soils on which any combination occurs is wide; this scatter may be due to planting, but planting does not explain why several minor species also verge on the indiscriminate in their choices of soil. Ash–Field Maple woodland – almost always with Pedunculate Oak – illustrates the wide range of circumstances in which any particular combination of species can be found. It grows on the gentler slopes of the chalk, such as Sladden Wood in the Alkham Valley and Yockletts Bank, Kent, and the Hazel-dominated coppices around King’s Somborne, Hampshire; the Gault Clay (e.g. Asholt Wood, Kent); and on the lower, flushed slopes of woods on more acid strata, such as Scords Wood, Kent, and Pamber Forest, Hampshire. On superficial deposits on the chalk plateau, the mixture is more likely to lack Field Maple. It is frequent on the deeper soils of lower slopes of ravines and hangers; some of the richest, for example in Selborne and Noar Hill Hangers (Hampshire), Shillingridge Wood (Oxfordshire), Colyears Hanger (Surrey) and Fairlight Glen (East Sussex), include Wych Elm in the mixture, which takes them close to woodland types in the Borderland. Approximately the same mixtures can be found on heavy soils on floodplains and around springs in otherwise base-poor woods, such as Ebernoe Common (Sussex) and Royden Woods (New Forest). Pedunculate Oak is the main oak of neutral and alkaline woods, but towards the acid end of the range Sessile Oak is just as likely to dominate. In Westerham Wood (Kent) it is part of Ash–Hazel woodland; at Ham Street (Kent) it grows with Pedunculate Oak as standards within Hazel coppice; in Dock Copse (Hampshire) it forms Sessile Oak–Small-leaved Lime woodland; and it is mixed with Pedunculate Oak in the drier parts of the sandstone ravine at Wakehurst, Kent. Otherwise, we find Sessile Oak–birch woodland 241

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Trees and Woodlands as actual or former coppice (Blean, Ellenden Wood, Joydens Wood, Kent; Sherrardspark Wood, Hertfordshire), high forest (Scords Wood, Kent; Banstead Wood, Surrey), old plantations (South Bentley Inclosure, New Forest) or as wood-pasture (several New Forest woods). Evidently, the vanished Great North Wood near the Crystal Palace was also dominated by this species. In all these woods, birch quickly becomes abundant after disturbance and Holly tends to invade below a mature, closed canopy. Although the south-east is deficient in limes, both species can be found sparingly. Large-leaved Lime has been judged native in the South Downs, notably in the wooded combe of Rook Clift, West Sussex, where it dominates with Ash and Beech. Small populations of Small-leaved Lime are scattered throughout the south-east as coppice in ancient woodland. In some woods they form lime–oak woodland with Sessile Oak (Dock Copse, Hampshire; Enbourne Copse, Berkshire) or Pedunculate Oak (Kilnwood Copse, West Sussex). In Wick Hill Hanger (Hampshire), Glover’s Wood (Surrey), Boulsbury Wood (Dorset/Hampshire) and Langley Wood (Wiltshire) it forms Ash–lime woodland. Hornbeam woodland with Pedunculate Oak is widely spread through Hertfordshire, Surrey, Sussex and Kent mainly on heavy, poorly drained, acid soils, where it tends to be as dominant as Beech. Fine examples of Hornbeam woodland with Sessile Oak can also be found on strongly acid soils in Ruislip Woods (Hillingdon) and Hertfordshire (Wormley and Sherrardspark Woods), where they were the subject of early studies by Sir Edward Salisbury (1918), and a few places in Kent and Sussex. In Farningham Wood, Covert Wood (Kent) and Kilnwood Copse (West Sussex) Hornbeam overlaps with lime woodland. Hornbeam–Sessile Oak woodland occurs on calcareous soils at Darenth Wood (Kent) and further east at Perry Wood, each with lime-loving shrubs, such as Dogwood, Spindle, whitebeam and Wayfaring-tree. The Darenth Wood example carries with it a suspicion that the soil has been enriched with chalky dust from a nearby quarry, but there are chalk nodules in the soil and no such suspicion attaches to Perry Wood. Both, though, could be the result of planting Hornbeam on soil it naturally shuns. Sweet Chestnut occurs both as Chestnut-dominated coppices and as scattered individuals in woods dominated by other species. In both circumstances, it is strongly associated with acid soils, but, like Hornbeam, it is occasionally found on calcareous soils, including as it 242

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happens, Darenth and Perry Woods. As a minor constituent, Chestnut usually occurs in oak–birch woods and Beech–oak woods, associated with either or both oaks. Large parts of the extensive Blean Woods, Kent, comprise Chestnut coppice with Sessile Oak standards. On the dip slope of the chalk, Chestnut grows in Ash–Hazel–Pedunculate Oak woodland. In Stour Wood, Essex, Chestnut coppice is mixed with Hornbeam and Small-leaved Lime.

Hornbeam dominates the underwood below standards of both oak species in Park Wood, Ruislip.

Floodplains and wet woodland All five zones also contain woodlands on valley bottoms and permanently wet ground elsewhere. Broadly, we can distinguish swamp from floodplain woodland, though the categories overlap and neither label is perfect. Swamp woodland grows where water accumulates. The water table is permanently high but only the wettest, like Herons Carr by Barton Broad in Norfolk, are truly treacherous to walk through. Floodplain woodland occupies land that may be flooded and which, under natural conditions, could be undermined as channels move. For much of the year, the water table falls well below the surface, but remains permanently high in seasonal channels and swamps formed at the base of marginal slopes. 243

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Trees and Woodlands British floodplains have long since been cleared of their woodland and used for haymaking and as rich pasture. Floodplain woodland survives in mainland Europe, especially along the Rhine, Danube and other major rivers, in places where some channel movement is still just possible. Here one can see the pioneer poplars and willows on newly deposited shoals; maturing oak, Ash, elm, tree-willow woodland on levees and older terraces; and Alder swamps along extinct and intermittently active back channels. Most now take the form of dense and impressively fast-growing high forest, but in the past some, perhaps many, were treated as wood-meadows and wood-pastures. Unlike major Continental rivers, which drain high mountains that deliver an annual snow-melt surge and a cargo of ice blocks that routinely tear into banks and move channels, ours were prehistorically gentle. Floodplains were covered with Alder-dominated woodland and perhaps pervaded by multiple narrow channels like the Gearagh in south-west Ireland. Channels nevertheless moved slowly and deposited shingle and alluvium on which tree-willows, Black Poplar and Ash–Pedunculate Oak woodland could grow, whilst wet Alder woodland developed in extinct channels. Vestiges remain as scattered trees along river banks and field boundaries. Indeed, in the Oceanic and Borderland zones strips of Alder–Ash woodland line the banks for miles. Suckering elms may also have been present, for they are constituents of floodplain forests in mainland Europe: the suckering elm woodland along the narrow stream running through Bedford Purlieus may have been a survival. Today, what were once braided rivers with moving channels have been civilised into single, fixed channels confined by banks designed to protect the floodplains from floods. Of course, high flows are still allowed to spread over floodplains such as the Wye below Hereford, and there are still a few places where channels move, for example on the Usk at Talybont and the Severn at Llandinam, but the general point remains – floodplains and the woods on them are not what they were. Nevertheless, Britain still has some real ancient floodplain woodlands, notably the tree-lined Beaulieu River. Elsewhere in the New Forest, swamp ashwoods line the Highland Water and there are other patches of mature oak–Beech woodland by other small rivers. North-east Scotland has several fine fragments. The remarkably wide floodplain of the lower 7km of the Spey carries multiple braided 244

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Floodplain woodland along the Beaulieu River, New Forest.

Floodplain and riparian woodland BEAULIEU RIVER WOODLANDS, New Forest, Hampshire Floodplain forest has almost disappeared from Britain, but survives, or has developed again, along a few rivers. Arguably the most complete riparian woodland lines the Beaulieu River from its sources around Lyndhurst to its mouth at Lymington, where it flows into the Solent past Bucklers Hard, the boatyard where New Forest oaks were once made into warships. The upper reaches flow in wide valleys through grassy lawns into almost continuous Alder woodland. At its margins, the Alder woodland grades through fringes of bog myrtle into wet heath and heather moor. Apart from the Matley Brook tributary that flows past ancient oak–Beech–Holly woodlands fringed by Bracken, the whole system seems from a distance like a miniature version of Midwestern riverine woodland flowing through the prairies. The Alders grow strongly on the river banks and swampy ground, where they are frequently flooded and constantly irrigated by base-rich water, but on the margins, where they are increasingly influenced by the base-poor flows from the surrounding heaths, their growth is weaker and they compete poorly with Grey Willow. Formerly coppiced, allegedly for making gunpowder, the Alders now form part of a fine tract of natural wet woodland. Pedunculate Oak, Holly and occasionally Downy Birch and Yew occupy the drier terraces. Below Ipley Bridge, the meandering channel, with its eroding banks, accumulating shoals, deep pools and branchwood dams, winds through old-growth Pedunculate Oak, Ash, Beech and Alder stands. In floods, the river breaks out into overflow channels which mix with small streams entering from the surrounding heaths to create a complex patchwork of swampy Alder woodland and towering mixed broadleaved stands. The scatter of large, spreading oak and Beech dating from the 18th century or earlier shows that the woodland was once more open, and that the dense stands we now find regenerated naturally in the 19th century. 245

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Wet Alder woodland in Cwm Coed-y-Cerrig, Monmouthshire, developed on bottom land swamps.

Grey Willows forming carr on the margins of a valley mire, Bishop of Winchester’s Purlieu, New Forest.

channels, many mobile enough to destroy woodland in one place while depositing shoals elsewhere on which new woodland develops. Higher up the catchment, pinewoods occupy the braided fan of deposits where the Feshie drains into the Spey. On the north side of Loch Ness at Urquhart Bay, Alder wood spreads out over the floodplain of the Enrick just before it enters the loch. The middle Tay also has floodplain woodland where the river is constantly eroding its banks, back channels isolate wooded islands and one can appreciate the meaning of gallery forest. These examples combined with evidence of prehistoric floodplains to confirm that floodplain woodland comprised a range of types within which Alder and other forms of wet woodland were a substantial part of the mosaic. Some were swamp woodlands, and these have tended to be the ones that survived or could re-form, for their land was the hardest to farm. As the Beaulieu River indicates, wet Alder woodland is naturally more prevalent around the headwaters. Likewise, it forms part of ancient woodland where these woods incorporate headwaters. Otherwise, the vast majority of woodland now on floodplains is secondary. Valley Alder woods are found in all zones. They include the famous Alder swamps by the Norfolk Broads, several ancient woods in East

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Trees and Woodlands Anglia, such as Foxley Wood (Norfolk), oceanic woods at Llanerch Alder Carr (Pembrokeshire) and Coed Elernion (Gwynedd); and Alder woods in Perthshire, such as Milton of Drimmie. In the Southeast Lowlands, where Alder woods seem more strongly associated with valleys (rather than slopes and plateaus) than elsewhere, we find Ash–Alder in Ham Street woods (Kent); Alder carr in Scords Wood; Alder–Ash–Field Maple–Hazel along valleys in Asholt Wood; Alder by streams and flushes on slopes in Saxonbury Hill; Ash–Alder on bottom land in the gill woods of the Tunbridge Wells sandstone in Wakehurst and Chiddingley Wood; Alder carr on springlines on Iping Common; Alder carr by streams on acidic clays and sands in Pamber Forest; and riverine woods on Lower Greensand where the Rother and Wey valleys are enriched by calcium-rich springs (Rose 1996). Ash is usually present and often co-dominant. Other frequent constituents are Downy Birch, Grey Willow and Hazel, all of which can sometimes aspire to co-dominance. Valley Alder woods also grow on mineral soils. Often peripheral to wet Alder woods, their composition is similar, but more diverse, Hazel being present throughout and sycamore, Pedunculate Oak, Common Hawthorn and holly far more frequent. Bird Cherry is prominent in such woods in the borderlands from south-east Wales (e.g. Cwm Coed-y-Cerrig) to the Black Isle (e.g. Drummondreach) and in an outlying group of ancient woods in Norfolk, such as Swanton Novers and Wayland Woods. In the Boreal pine–birch woods, Alder is found along watercourses within the birch and pine woods, together with Rowan and Grey, Eared and Bay Willows, but probably less so than formerly owing to removal of Alder as a competitor with pine (Steven and Carlisle 1959).

Wood-pastures The wood-pastures we have today are a small residue of the great wood-pastures of the past. Centuries of grazing have discriminated against short-lived and palatable trees and shrubs, leaving a narrow selection of long-lived species. Most characteristic are ancient oaks, mostly Pedunculate Oak, some of which are survivors from the Middle Ages. Windsor Great Park, Staverton Park, the ancient trees in Savernake Forest, Gregynog Great Wood, Blenheim High Park, Hamilton High Park and Dalkeith Old Wood are almost exclusively oak wood-pastures. 248

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Ancient parks often have shadowy versions of the tree assemblages found in nearby ancient coppices. For example, Beech is frequent within its native range at Ashburnham, Eridge, Parham and Felbrigg Parks. Melbury Park, Dorset, has ancient oaks, Ash and Beech with Alder, birch and willow on boggy ground. The Hatfield Forest plains have Hornbeam, Field Maple, oak, Ash, Beech, Lineage elm, Crab Apple and a large number of hawthorns. In the Welsh borderlands, Brampton Bryan Park has oaks with Sweet Chestnut, Beech, Ash and Holly; Moccas Park has ancient oaks with some Chestnut, both limes, Wych Elm, Field Maple, Holly, Beech, Yew and Ash; Kentchurch Park, Herefordshire, has magnificent ancient Pedunculate Oak, Yew and Field Maple; and Downton Park, Herefordshire, has Large-leaved Limes. Ancient Small-leaved Limes are also present at Duncombe Park, North Yorkshire, and Gowbarrow Park, Cumbria. Parks have been supplemented with planted trees, the most spectacular of which are the contorted Chestnuts of, for example, Croft Castle, Herefordshire, and Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex. Many wood-pastures on commons and in forests have also been reduced to the long-lived dominants or stripped of trees altogether, but have latterly filled with new trees as grazing rights have lapsed. This history has biased composition against short-lived, palatable and slow-colonising species, such as Hazel and especially limes, but

Hatfield Forest, Essex, where the ancient pollards are mainly Pedunculate Oak and Hornbeam, but the associated coppices are thick with Hazel.

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Wood-pasture in Glen Finglas, Stirlingshire. The main constituents are Hazel, Alder, Downy Birch and Rowan.

not invariably so. The New Forest wood-pastures lost both these species and emerged as combinations of mainly Beech, oaks, Holly and birches, whereas the several remnants of common woods in my home parishes of St Briavels and Hewelsfield (Gloucestershire) have strong populations of Small-leaved Lime amongst the Beech, oaks and Holly. In the western Oceanic zone most wood-pastures have either been grazed out or replanted as oakwoods, but some survive on open hill pastures or as trees within fields and boundaries. They are frequent in the western Highlands (Quelch 2010), where ancient Alder, Hazel, Ash, Wych Elm and birch survive as scattered low pollards representing extremely open forms of most of the range of types. For example, ancient Alder, Ash and oak wood-pasture survives on the Sunart peninsula alongside the oak plantations of the 18th and 19th centuries, and many of the pinewoods are essentially Scots Pine wood-pastures that have filled with younger generations of pine.

Plantations Throughout the country there are plantations that resemble the woodland types in ancient, semi-natural woodlands. Indeed, many of the woods we label ‘semi-natural’ are in fact plantations of native species that acquired an additional complement of native species as they 250

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Woodland types and their distribution matured. Ancient, semi-natural woods have also been supplemented by planting timber trees, mainly oaks and Beech. Coppice has also been planted, especially in the South-east Lowlands and the Oceanic zone (Chapters 1, 5). Many of the ancient woods planted with conifers in the 20th century have been restored to native woodland in which gap-phase species, such as willows, birches and Ash, dominate.

Secondary woodland Secondary woodland develops when trees are planted or regenerate naturally on unwooded ground. Oaks, Scots Pine, pioneer trees and bird-distributed shrubs such as Common Hawthorn are particularly quick to occupy newly suitable sites and naturally dominate the early stages of succession on open ground, whereas trees and shrubs with some degree of shade tolerance, such as Holly, Rowan and Elder, enter maturing plantations. Spindle, Hazel, Midland Hawthorn, Wych Elm, Beech and the clonal species Aspen and Wild Cherry are generally slow out of the traps, whilst the two limes and Wild Service-tree are particularly reluctant to colonise. Much depends on context: Smallleaved Lime will colonise new woodland near mature trees, whereas even birch may have difficulty reaching ungrazed ground on treeless moorland. In lowland secondary woods originating in the last two centuries on former agricultural land, Ash is often absolutely dominant. Founding ecologists, notably A. S. Watt and Sir Arthur Tansley, studied the pathways to Beech woodland on various soil types in the South-east Lowlands, which were widespread before 1939, but are more difficult to observe now. All can be completed in a century i Beech becomes established within the early scrub; or they can be arrested for centuries if Yew or Holly become established in large numbers before Beech arrives: hence the Yew woods on the South Downs and the Holly woods o the New Forest. Successions are oten diversified by non-native trees, such as Scots Pine on heathland and Sycamore with Ash. They can be altered by disease – Sycamore replacing Ash, for example – and pests, such as Grey Squirrels, which can retard the advance of Beech. Beyond the range of Beech, succession on similar soils generates different results, oten Ash woodland with Sycamore on alkaline sites and birch–oak woodland on acid sites. Differences in composition between ancient and recent woodland on the same ground are predictably substantial where the ancient woods include many slow 251

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Successions leading to Beech woodland Summarised from Tansley (1939)

• On shallow, calcareous soils, chalk grassland developed into Juniper or hawthorn scrub with many calcicole (lime-loving) shrubs, which eventually developed into Ash woodland and then Beech woodland with Sanicle or Dog’s Mercury. • On somewhat deeper loam over chalk, grassland with some calcicoles developed into hawthorn and Blackthorn scrub and thence into Ash–oak woodland and finally Beech woodland with bramble.

• On deep, mildly acid loams, grassland with calcifuge (lime-hating) species developed first into scrub with Gorse, hawthorn, Blackthorn, then Ash–oak woodland, next Pedunculate Oak woodland and eventually Beech woodland with bramble. • On sand, gravel and strongly acid loam, heathland developed into birch woodland (either or both species), then oak woodland (either or both species) and in due course Beech woodland with a bare, mossy ground vegetation.

colonists, but negligible where the ancient woods are mainly composed of good colonists. Indeed, in the Boreal forests, where the constituent species are all good colonists (except perhaps Aspen), new and ancient woodland are much the same. Likewise, the combinations of Alder, Ash and Grey Willow that colonise wet ground differ little from the mixtures found in ancient woods. My former colleague Lena Ward recognised many other scrub types (Duffey e t a l. 1974), including Broom scrub on light, generally acid soils and Sea-buckthorn scrub on calcareous dunes. It is worth remembering that the old ideas of succession to a climax woodland were a way of classifying vegetation, not necessarily a description of what had happened or would in future. Beechwoods can form by natural succession, but this is not how most mature beechwoods in southern England have actually developed. Those that were not planted on ‘bare ground’ are usually ancient woods that have developed by Beech enrichment of mixed woodland types that may once have contained a good deal of the two lime species (Chapter 6). In any case, Beech dominance is not a culmination of succession. After all, mature Beech stands can be devastated by drought or storms and replaced by birch or Ash woodland. Secondary woods are enduringly different from ancient woods where woods are isolated within a largely unwooded landscape and 252

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cannot be easily reached by slow-colonising species. In the distant past, long-established woodland was always close at hand, and woodland had a dynamic relationship with other habitats. Vestiges of the original conditions survive. In the Lower Wye valley, where small 19th-century assarts in ancient limewoods reverted to woodland in the 20th century, limes colonised the new woodland long before the recent climate warming made it easier. Likewise, they occasionally colonised neglected rides in the central Lincolnshire limewoods.

Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, with scrub developing towards Ash woodland on Carboniferous limestone. Ancient woods in the vicinity contain Smallleaved Lime.

Novel woodland types Naturalised species enter woodland, but rarely exclude the native trees; such woodland can readily be described in terms of the foregoing woodland types. The most widespread and versatile naturalised species is Sycamore, now well established in most types of woodland. In some Borderland woods it has achieved co-dominance with Ash and Wych Elm and has come to dominate such contrasting places as the north Cornwall ravines and woods on the Derbyshire limestones. Less commonly, Sweet Chestnut has also naturalised in many woods, for example Bedford Purlieus. Beech has long naturalised throughout the Oceanic woods, forming oak–Beech mixtures well beyond its accredited native range. 253

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Pennine ashwoods GRASS AND BASTOW WOODS, Upper Wharfedale Grass Wood may never have been a typical Pennine ashwood like Skoska and Hawkswick Woods in Littondale. Even now, one can still see Pedunculate Oaks dominating some of the ground, but Beech and Sycamore were planted along with some larch and now grow thoroughly naturalised within a matrix of Ash, Wych Elm, Hazel, Downy Birch, Goat Willow and a multitude of shrubs. The wood rises in steps from the floodplain over Carboniferous limestone rubble to shallow cliffs from which the bright green pastures of Upper Wharfedale spread to the horizon. Above and beyond a wall is Bastow Wood, an unusually open mix of Hazel and birch, that in summer resembles a wood-meadow. Grass and Bastow Woods stand out for me because I chanced to find a charming book entitled Silva Gars by John Crowther, once Grassington’s chemist and the founder of its small museum. It describes the history, natural history and antiquities of the wood and its setting, with photographs of 1920s visitors, complete with waistcoats, moustaches, helmet hairstyles and ankle-length skirts. Crowther describes both the rich flora, including the sorry tale of the once-common Lady’s-slipper orchid, and the long history of human occupation, which is still obvious in extensive earthworks between the town and the wood. Before the Enclosure Acts, Grass Wood belonged to Grassington, but successive Dukes of Devonshire enclosed it and attempted to restrict the traditional rights of access. The community objected: it was then, as now, a place for walkers, permeated by an extensive network of dry, but ankle-turning tracks, where strolls are enlivened by carpets of Lily-of-the-valley, Rock-roses and Bloody Cranesbills in the openings and Jacob’s Ladder in secluded corners. After a spell of Forestry Commission management, the wood became a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserve and thus a secure public amenity. The Trust now has the difficult task of managing the rapid advance of ash dieback disease, securing public safety whilst hoping for resistance to develop. Meanwhile, in parts of the wood we witness the interesting spectacle of Sycamore over Hazel coppice-with-standards.

Sycamore dominates what would otherwise be oak–Ash woodland in Grass Wood, North Yorkshire.

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Some naturalised species have established new forms of naturally regenerated secondary woodland. One thinks here of the Rhododendron scrubs in Snowdonia and the western Highlands and the Holm Oak woods along the southern coastline. The ancient Oxwich Wood on the Gower peninsula has become a mature mixture of naturalised broadleaves. Some species from other continents, such as Douglas Fir and Western Hemlock, hold their own by natural regeneration in managed woodland and may persist in unmanaged woodland.

Holm Oak woodland developing on eroding, south-facing cliffs overlooking the Severn estuary at Sedbury, where the scrub woodland also includes true Service-tree.

d However confidently ecologists classify woodlands into types, it is worth remembering that they are reference points we construct for our convenience. The woods themselves do their best to muddle the distinctions.

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Trees and woodland as habitats

chapter eight

T

he defining characteristics of woodland as habitat are shade, shelter, structure, seclusion and stability. To be fair, with the exception of the last, the same would

be said of meadows if one were speaking from the standpoint of a ground beetle, but from the human perspective woods are, like water, habitats we can be in, not on. Woodland trees create an environment in which light intensity is an order of magnitude less than outside, wind speeds are reduced and temperature and humidity fluctuations are dampened to the point where in some respects the equable oceanic climate of western Britain extends to the east. Deciduous woodland exaggerates and displaces the seasons: the contrast between winter and summer is enlarged and spring is the period of maximum light at ground level. Structurally diverse, woods generate unique niches in and on large trees and in large pieces of decaying wood. Collectively, they provide the seclusion in which even large animals can hide and surprise other animals when hunting. Woodland is usually said to be the richest habitat for wild species. This is partly because what is green on the map is rarely wall-to-wall trees, but incorporates other habitats, such as grassland, marsh or heath. The variety of structure and composition offered by woodland provides a wide range of conditions and an immense diversity of niches. Many wildlife species depend on the trees, either directly by feeding on particular tree species or indirectly by preferring the woodland environment. But wildlife can reciprocally influence the structure and composition of the woodland. Trees require mycorrhizae – the fungi linked to roots that help trees to draw on nutrients otherwise beyond their reach. Particular species in the ground vegetation will inhibit tree regeneration and so, even more obviously, will deer. Birds and mammals carry the fruits of some species to new woodland.

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Foxglove, which flowers in clearings and recently felled coppice after germinating from the bank of dormant seed in the soil.

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Trees and Woodlands Below the upper limit of trees on mountains, woodlands cover almost the same ecological range as all other habitat types collectively. We have woodland equivalents of heathland, marsh, pasture, meadow and, on rare occasions, sea cliffs, sand dunes and shingle banks. Woodlands form constantly changing habitat mixtures with heathland, grassland and riparian marshes and shingle banks, mediated by fire, herbivores and river channel movement respectively. Trees form hybrid land types with grassland as wood-pastures and wood-meadows. Woodland is also the natural matrix for pools and rivers. And they share boundaries with most other habitats, even the sea: on the tidal inlets of the Helford River one can witness jellyfish pulsing below overhanging oaks, and on the tidal banks of the Wye Sea Aster struggles in the shade of Small-leaved Lime. This chapter will illustrate the diversity of links between species, trees and woodland by concentrating on a select range of groups. There are many authoritative texts, notably Charles Elton’s Pattern of Animal Communities (1966), which is based around his studies in Wytham Woods overlooking Oxford. He was one of a stellar community of ecologists and biologists who developed some of the fundamental concepts in population biology within these woods (Savill et al. 2010).

Diversity How many species can a wood support? The short answer is that nobody knows, though we have estimates and for some groups in some woods we have lists that must be approaching completion. When I was studying the vascular flora of woods in central Lincolnshire, local botanists helped me compile lists of species in individual woods by the usual methods involving ground survey and collecting old records, but, when four of us tested their completeness by what would now be called a botanical bioblitz, the result was salutary: the lists were no more than 90% complete. In Hayley Wood, Downy Birch was first recorded as a tree in 1968, long after the woods had first been studied. In Monks Wood, I secreted Wood Fescue beside a ride for a few years, but it was never noticed by ecologists passing from the adjacent research station. Ecologists at Monks Wood Experimental Station filled a substantial book by listing the many thousands of species recorded in the large coppice wood on their doorstep (Steele and Welch 1973), 258

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but, apart from the butterflies and vascular plants, the lists were far from complete. For example, the book lists 334 fungi, yet by 2005 the number had climbed to 644 (Collins et al. 2005). Not that any list can ever be complete and final because species are for ever colonising and dying out. By the time Phyllida Rixon listed the 462 vascular plant species that had been recorded in Bedford Purlieus, a large ancient woods with wide rides (Peterken and Welch 1975), she was reasonably sure that 30 of these had already died out. Both the Monks Wood compilation and Charles Elton’s work at Wytham Woods demonstrated that, though the vascular plants, butterflies and vertebrates are generally the best-recorded groups, the diversity of fungi and invertebrates in any wood is far greater. This was confirmed in a compilation from the wood-pasture of Moccas Park, where 266 species of vascular plants (including several introduced tree species), 98 mosses, 30 liverworts, 199 lichens, 649 fungi, 919 beetles (Coleoptera) and 596 species of two-winged flies (Diptera) had been recorded by the time of publication (Harding and Wall 2000). Such lists set standards: they show what is possible in large, diverse sites with a long history of woodland. Smaller, more uniform and recently originated woods hold fewer species. Well-wooded districts always seem biologically rich, but it is difficult to quantify this. The New Forest, for example, is outstanding

Over 370 vascular plant species had been recorded in Monks Wood by 1973. Much of the diversity of flowering plants was associated with rides.

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Trees and Woodlands for vascular plants, lichens, butterflies, birds, beetles and almost any other group one cares to mention. Perhaps the best recent illustration of diversity in a woodland district is the colourful volume on the Wyre Forest (Westwood et al. 2015), which demonstrates a general truth, that it is not just the actual woodland that it is biologically rich, but the orchards, grasslands and streams within it, shielded from the dominance of intensive agriculture. Similar diversity can be seen in parts of the Weald, the southern fringes of the North York Moors, Silverdale (Lancashire) and the well-wooded districts of the Scottish Highlands.

Lichens Trees act as substrate and support for epiphytes, the wild species that depend on rainfall for their water. Lichens are the main group, capable of covering the surface of the stoutest trunks and the smallest twigs, especially in the oceanic west. Bryophytes also grow on trees, but more at the base of trunks. Vascular plants sometimes grow lodged in the crotches of pollards, and polypody can be abundant on the lateral branches of oaks in the western uplands, but only Mistletoe is wholly epiphytic, growing especially on poplars, limes and orchard trees. Lichens start to grow on bark as soon as the tree grows beyond the sapling stage. As the tree ascends, trunks become large, bark starts to fissure and a succession of lichens develops. As the trees reach full size, the succession reaches its zenith in the Lobarion, a community of large, foliose lichens, including Lobaria lateavirens, L. pulmonaria and Sticta limbata, that can be so luxuriant that it completely obscures the bark. Taking time to develop, it is largely confined to large, old trees, which are found in parks and old forests, and as mature trees in farmland. Today, this community is best developed in the western Oceanic zone and in the wood-pastures of the South-east Lowlands, but in the 19th century, when hedges and wood-pastures were still well stocked with large trees and before pollution was rife, it was far more widespread. In strongly oceanic climates it also grows on smaller growth, but even in the Hazel woods of north and west Scotland it is best developed on large trunks. Francis Rose (1993) recognised four late-succession lichen assemblages, including the Lobarion, in a wide-ranging survey of British and European woodlands, and came to some significant conclusions about their ecological status and what they implied about 260

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Trees and woodland as habitats the woodland habitats. The Lobarion was interpreted as an indicator of ecological continuity, implying that it was a relict community, best developed in woods that not only had the necessary large, old trees now, but had also retained them continuously since at least the Middle Ages. In fact, he saw them as relicts of the wildwood. The component lichens are not, however, totally incapable of colonising newly suitable woodland nearby: in the New Forest, Lobarion species have spread 200m in 300 years from Anses Wood into South Bentley Inclosure, which was planted with oak in about 1700. Other types of woodland are lichenologically inferior by comparison because they lack large, old trees or continuity thereof. Rose (1993) provided a measure of the difference with his New Index of Ecological Continuity, based on 70 species of his Lobarion and Lecanactidetum assemblages, plus 30 bonus species which are rare but not particularly faithful to ancient woodland. Almost by definition the highest scores are in ancient pasture woods. Expressed as the number of species in 1km2, ancient wood-pasture in the western uplands scored 117–227 (Camasine Woods, Sunart, was then the richest), New Forest ancient woods 103–178, other old royal forests 38–165, relatively intact medieval deer parks 131–218 (Melbury Park, Dorset, was then the richest), 18th-century oak plantations 16–82, medieval wooded commons with old pollards 75–111, and ancient coppice-with-standards woods scored just 15–54.

The assemblage of lichens known as the Lobarion, developed on an ancient Hazel trunk in open woodlands growing in an extremely oceanic climate at Tokavaig, Skye.

Bryophytes Mosses and liverworts grow on trees, stumps, rocks and soil. On trees and rocks they face competition from lichens, but on soil they must compete with vascular plants and low shrubs and are liable to be excluded altogether below bramble thickets and in depressions where leaf litter accumulates. In lowland woods their presence is often 261

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Trees and Woodlands obscured by taller herbaceous growth, but they frequently pick out the tops of low banks. They come into their own in grazed and rocky oceanic woods, where soils and exposed rocks and stones can all be carpeted with mossy blankets. As epiphytes they clothe the base of trunks, where they subsist on rainwater and nutrients leaching from the bark. They will also grow on crown branches and twigs in the oceanic west, where they depend on rainwater and must therefore be able to resist droughts. In less oceanic regions, they are – as every Boy Scout and Girl Guide is taught – commoner on the north side of trees where scorching is impossible and there is less risk of desiccation. Once a tree falls, bryophytes often colonise the prostrate trunk as it rots away and form seed beds for Wood Sorrel. As both epiphytes and ground vegetation, bryophyte assemblages have been modified and probably impoverished by the exposure brought about by coppicing and wood-pasturage. Each tree species and woodland type has its characteristic suite of species, but the woods that really capture the bryological imagination are the oceanic woods, especially those of the north-west Highlands and south-west Ireland, where bryophytes ‘grow with abandon on every available surface, creating an environment reminiscent of tropical cloud forest’ (Porley and Hodgetts 2005). Indeed, many of the characteristic ‘Atlantic bryophytes’ evidently originated in the tropics, yet somehow survived glacial advances. Atlantic bryophytes are particularly well developed in ravines, by waterfalls and along watercourses, which reinforces the inferences from their distribution that they need high humidity, moisture, freedom from desiccation and absence of frosts. Whether they also need continuity of woodland cover seems to be moot: in Coed Ganllwyd, Callaghan (2015) found that Drepanolejeunea hamatifolia and Harpalejeunea molleri were confined to the ravine, whereas the slightly less exacting Jamesoniella autumnalis was widely scattered through the oak woodland that was clear-felled about 1850. They do grow outside woodland, and some at least have survived clear-felling, but they are poorly represented in secondary, planted oakwoods. However, there are several subsets of Atlantic bryophytes with different distributions and requirements (Ratcliffe 1968). Some are not confined to the west, but grow also in ancient wood-pastures in the New Forest and in the humid environment of the Wealden ghylls. They may once have been more frequent in the lowlands, but coppicing and exposure to industrial pollution has presumably reduced them. 262

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Welsh oakwood COED GANLLWYD, Gwynedd This western oceanic oakwood in the Meirionnydd part of the Snowdonia National Park was for many years a favourite destination for woodlands courses run by the Plas Tan y Bwlch training centre. At first sight, it looks like any other Welsh Sessile oakwood, but it has long been famous for the Rhaeadr Du, a cataract on the Afon Gamlan, where the Atlantic bryophytes cluster along its course. As a teaching aid, it demonstrated several important points. The oaks are uniformly mature because the original woodland had been replanted about 1850 after felling. The sensitive bryophytes survived because the spray, constantly rising from the cataract, maintained the high humidity they require. Small-leaved Lime survived along the river bank, where felling must have been less complete. Latterly, natural regeneration has been limited by sheep, but a storm blew down a small part of the wood and allowed in limited new growth from seedlings protected by branchwood and fallen oaks. Above the wood, large Ash around an abandoned farmstead are clothed in Lobaria and other lichens, perhaps a relic of the former upland wood-pastures. The National Trust and Natural Resources Wales have introduced cattle in a bid to restore wood-pasture habitats. Many, perhaps most, oceanic oakwoods are, like Coed Ganllwyd, more artificial than they seem, but here, through research by Mary Edwards (1986), we know what the wood has been through. It has always been wooded, but the amount of tree cover and the balance between oak and birch has fluctuated. For most of its history, it was more open and less dominated by oak. Further north in Snowdonia, Coed-y-Rhygen, Coed Cymerau and Coed Llenyrch have likewise been more open in the past and have more oak now than they have ever had. Much the same has been found in other western oak woods from north-west Scotland to nethermost Cornwall.

Rhaeadr Ddu, the cataract in Coed Ganllwyd, where Atlantic bryophytes have survived in the constantly high humidity.

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Vascular plants

Primrose, Dog’s Mercury, Wood Violet, Hart’stongue fern, Wavy Hair-grass and one of the bramble microspecies growing in a moist Beech woodland on Carboniferous limestone.

Most of the vascular plant species in a wood are herbs and ferns forming the ‘field layer’. Tree and shrub seedlings are also part of the field layer, but later form part of the environment that shapes it. Field-layer species under trees must either grow at low light intensity or find means of evading shade, either by growing mainly in late winter and spring or by surviving as dormant seed that springs to life when a tree falls, disturbs the soil and lets light in. The first strategy, which takes advantage of the short period in March and April when solar radiation approaches midsummer intensity before tree foliage has developed, gives us the famed spring carpets of Bluebells, Wood Anemones, Wild Garlic and Oxlips. The second seizes the window of opportunity presented by the two or three years of high light intensity after a tree falls and before the canopy gap is filled with brambles, Bracken and shrubs. The gap beneficiaries are species already present in the soil as dormant seed, such as rushes; and species that disperse rapidly and establish themselves quickly, such as Rosebay Willowherb. Most shade-tolerant species also grow and flower more vigorously in the increased light available after felling, so why do they not grow

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Trees and woodland as habitats outside woodlands? In some cases they do: Wood Anemone, for example, grows in some types of meadow and heathland, and many woodland species grow in tall herb communities on inaccessible mountain ledges, sea cliffs and railway embankments. Under trees their reduced vigour is amply compensated for by reduced competition from light-demanding competitors and freedom from both ploughing and defoliation by cattle and sheep during the growing season. Ride edges, where many tall herb species find their optimum, offer a compromise where light is stronger than under trees but shady enough to weaken light-demanders. The occasional disturbance when scrub is cut back also promotes diversity. This brings us to another characteristic of life in woodland – stability. As in meadows, many of the constituent plants are long-lived and potentially immortal. Some – for example Dog’s Mercury and Wood Anemone – rarely reproduce by seed, but spread vegetatively, forming clones each subtly distinctive in leaf shape, sex or flower colour. In recent secondary woods, these clones tend to be small and separate, but in ancient woods they can be huge and mixed together (Peterken and Game 1981). This habit of clonal expansion generates large patches dominated by a single species which Tansley (1939) and his contemporaries labelled ‘societies’. Nevertheless, there is also a place for annuals and biennials, mainly in clearings and other disturbed patches. Herbs thus reflect the character of natural woodland: mostly stable, but occasionally greatly disturbed. Each woodland type has its particular suite of species: indeed, the combination of vascular plants and bryophytes is how woodland types are usually defined. Many years spent examining soil profiles in woodland samples convinced me that the ground flora at any particular point is largely determined by site conditions: I could accurately predict the pH, depth of the organic horizon, soil texture and drainage conditions before digging the pit. The assemblage is

Pignut and Betony border a ride in Bradfield Woods, Suffolk. In large ancient woods about half the total flora is associated with rides and other open spaces.

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Trees and Woodlands modified by other factors, such as the degree of shade and intensity of grazing, and the available pool of species differs regionally, but mostly ‘the answer lies in the soil’. For more detail, read Keith Kirby’s (2020) Woodland Flowers in the present series. Larger woods generally contain more species than smaller woods because they encompass a wider range of site conditions and the populations of each species, being larger, are not so vulnerable to local extinction. In central Lincolnshire, this species–area relationship applies both to herbs and to trees and shrubs (Peterken and Game 1984, Peterken 1998). Further, the relative importance of plants that depend on rides and other open spaces increases with woodland size because larger woods, being valuable properties and more costeffective to manage than smaller woods, have always been more likely to have been kept open by regular forestry operations (Peterken and Francis 1999). The flora of lowland woods has changed in my professional lifetime. They have become poorer below the trees, even when the woods remain semi-natural, owing to deep litter accumulations, nutrient enhancement, possibly acid precipitation and the spread of deer. Without the soil disturbance and pulse of full daylight that comes with felling operations, fewer seeds have been produced and populations of dormant seeds in the soil have declined. Indeed, the woodland floras throughout temperate Europe are being homogenised, because the species that suffer most have been the local species with narrow site tolerances, and the beneficiaries are already common and widespread (Keith et al. 2009). Many woods have been liberally sprayed with herbicides and planted with evergreen conifers, which obliterate surviving flora for 20–30 years. Once-rich ride floras declined during periods of neglect and do not fully restore themselves when forest operations resume. For instance, in our local woods Harebell, Betony and Saw-wort have ceased to be woodland species, even where the rides are again open (Peterken and Wood 2020). In the western uplands and many Borderland woods, prolonged grazing by sheep in the 20th century must have impoverished the vascular plants, for many herbs are now restricted to stream sides and inaccessible places. In a few favoured places, we can still see rich floras, most obviously in limestone pavements and on lightly grazed, irregular ground.

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Fungi Fungi are more important than they seem. They not only decompose organic matter and thus circulate nutrients, but also form symbiotic relationships that allow trees to grow. They operate out of sight most of the time as the mycelia that Alan Rayner (1993) likened to the invisible electrical cables and wires that enable a city to function: the mushrooms, brackets and other forms of fruiting body that we call fungi are equivalent to the machines that plug into the electrical network. Reed (1984) also mentioned that mycelia ‘may enable adult plants to “nurse” seedlings, feeding them through fungal “umbilical cords” until they have developed sufficiently to become established in their own right’, and this has lately been enthusiastically publicised as the ‘wood wide web’ (e.g. Macfarlane 2019). These mycorrhizal links between trees via mycelia were discovered by David Read and reviewed by Edward Newman in the early 1980s. Their rise to the status of a revelation was initiated by Suzanne Simard’s (2020) research in the Pacific Northwest, where she demonstrated that large, strong trees (‘mother trees’) provide resources for smaller, weaker trees through the mycelial network. The very existence of these associations challenges my simplistic definition of a tree in Chapter 2 (Merryweather 2020). Fungi ‘attain their greatest diversity in woodland’ (Spooner and Roberts 2005). We can see ungi when they ruit, find them under bark as ‘bootlaces’ o Honey Fungus, as fine webs o white threads when we brush the surface layers of leaf litter aside, and as sharp boundaries in the sawn surfaces of rotting logs where two decay species have met and formed an ‘armistice line’. Every wood contains an unknown yet large number of species, but the richest tend to be unmanaged woods that have developed a closed, humid structure with deep litter and plenty of rotting wood. Coppicing seemingly impaired fungal diversity. It regularly dried out the soil and reduced ruiting. It also confined dead wood to large stools, boundary pollards and occasional deformed standards. Whether it actually extinguished sensitive species seems doubtful; perhaps they just ceased to produce mushrooms. Many species are closely associated with particular tree genera. Even I have noticed Birch Polypore on almost all birch snags, the shiny black globes of Daldinia concentrica on Ash, and Ganoderma brackets on Beech. Specialists are often found to be mycorrhizal 267

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The Dean Fungus Group has so far found over 450 species of fungi in Lady Park Wood.

species, which associate themselves with particular tree species, often oak or Beech. Spooner and Roberts (2005) review the fungal assemblages associated with the main trees in British woods and note the richness associated with oak, Beech, Scots Pine and birch and the relative poverty associated with Hornbeam, limes, Hazel and Field Maple. Predictably, most non-native trees, including Chestnut, have few specific associates, but spruces have acquired several. In Lady Park Wood, where the Dean Fungus Group noted the associated tree of each of the 450 species they found, we confirmed that Beech ‘produced’ the greatest variety of fungi, but only in proportion to its quantity in the stand. As Peter Marren (2012) stressed, whilst much is known about fungi, many important facets remain speculative. One such question concerns indicators: are the species that are closely associated with ancient woods inherently slow colonists, or do they simply have to wait for centuries until the trees grow large, old and rotten in large numbers? Certainly, some of the richest habitats for fungi are ancient wood-pastures, such as Windsor Forest and Great Park and the New Forest, where large trees with decaying heartwood and branches have been present for hundreds of years at least. Martin Ainsworth’s (2017) list of 16 species of fungi found entirely or mainly on the wood of veteran oaks is sometimes listed under ‘ancient woodland indicators’.

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Mammals People have altered the complement of large mammals and smaller carnivores in woodlands so much that their presence or absence today reflects this history more than their habitat preferences. Those we notice – Grey Squirrels and Fallow Deer – were both introduced, though the latter was native to Britain in a previous interglacial. Who knows which large mammals would now roam British woods if people and habitat change had not long ago driven Woolly Mammoth, Wolf, Lynx, Brown Bear, Aurochs and Wild Boar to extinction? We still have large mammals in woodlands, but not truly threatening ones, the recently released Wild Boar hybrids in the Dean notwithstanding. The native Red and Roe Deer and the long-naturalised Fallow Deer have recently been supplemented by Sika, Muntjac and Chinese Water Deer. White Park cattle of ancient lineage remain at Chillingham and Dinefwr, but most wood-pastures are stocked with free-ranging domestic cattle, horses, sheep, goats and pigs. Even some smaller carnivores have been trapped to the brink – Wild Cat, Polecat, Pine Marten and perhaps Beech Marten – and the rest – Fox, Badger, Stoat, Weasel – have hardly been left in peace. A few mammals make direct use of trees or have a direct impact on woodland composition and structure. According to the Bat Conservation Trust, all bat species can be found ‘in or around’ trees and woodland, and several, such as Barbastelle, Bechstein’s, Brown Long-eared, Noctule and Natterer’s, prefer to roost in trees. Dormice

Fallow Deer. Exciting to see, but a menace to woodlands when their populations grow too large to allow woodlands to regenerate.

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Wild Boar in Lady Park Wood. While six piglets crouched behind the fallen log on the right, their mother led the way through the fallen Beech trees.

live in the underwood and need hedges to move between woodlands. Red and Grey Squirrels take to the trees at a hint of danger and repay the protection by stripping bark, which often kills leaders, causes crown branches to break early and damages timber values. Deer eat saplings and fray them when cleaning velvet from new antlers: their dietary preferences determine which tree species can regenerate. They also browse low growth and can ring-bark small trees. Voles and mice eat seedlings and ring-bark saplings: in Lady Park a peak year for voles in the 1980s eliminated an established cohort of Beech. Squirrels and rodents collect and store acorns and other tree seeds, thereby facilitating dispersal. In riparian woodland, Beavers are returning to fell trees, build dams and create pools fringed by trees. Most visitors to woods see only Grey Squirrels and, if they are quiet, glimpse deer as they move away. Stay still for a while and we may see Bank Voles and Wood Mice. The rest pass incognito. Two local species, Yellow-necked Mouse and Dormouse, seem to be slow to spread. Yellow-necked Mouse, a species of mature deciduous woodland in the English lowlands, Welsh borderlands and outposts in south-west England, is ‘possibly associated with long-established woodland’ (Corbet and Harris 1991). Dormice are likewise restricted to southern and south-west England and the Welsh borders, with outposts in north-west England and west Wales, where most occupy species-rich hedges and deciduous woodland with plenty of coppice and scrub. Apart from these and the complementary tendencies of Grey Squirrels to inhabit deciduous woodland and Red Squirrels to survive in conifer woodland, the small mammal complement seems much the same in all woods.

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Trees and woodland as habitats Few mammals are actually confined to woodland. Many make use of open spaces within woods and edges and open country beyond woods. Hedgehogs prefer woodland edges. Deer are quite capable of grazing and browsing the woodland undergrowth to the point where they reduce ground vegetation to a grassy pasture, but they also feed in rides and the surrounding farmland, using the woodland as cover. Bats, too, forage well beyond woods. In the Dean, Wild Boar are notorious for ranging out of the woods into fields and onto lawns.

Birds With few exceptions, British woods support substantial breeding populations of Wrens, Blue Tits, Blackbirds, Woodpigeons, Willow Warblers, Robins, Great Tits, Chaffinches, Song Thrushes and Coal Tits, with a few breeding Treecreepers, Mistle Thrushes and Great Spotted Woodpeckers (Fuller 1995). This standard fare of woodland birdwatching becomes exciting when we spot a regionally characteristic species, such as Redstarts or Pied Flycatchers in a Welsh oakwood or Crested Tits and Capercaillie in a Highland pinewood;

Sapsucking holes left in Small-leaved Lime by Great Spotted Woodpeckers (inset).

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Tawny Owl, frequently heard, but only occasionally spotted. We live surrounded by woodland, from which this particular individual emerged to sit staring at me through the patio doors for 10 minutes.

flush a Woodcock in the woodland interior; or hear a pair of Tawny Owls in conversation as they hunt after dusk. Within woodland, both growth stage and stand composition influence bird diversity. Stand composition matters most when evergreen conifers are added and provide opportunities for Firecrests, Siskins and Crossbills. Stand structure matters because bird diversity changes with stand age and birds are rather choosy about where they will nest – woodpeckers in holes drilled into mature trees, for example – and they differ in how they distribute themselves between woodland strata: Woodpigeons and Blue Tits spend most time in the canopy, while Blackbirds, Robins and Wrens stay close to the ground. Many species make use of pre-thicket stands, but diversity dips through the thicket stage and increases again in mature stands. At any stage, glades and rides add opportunities for additional species. Woodland birds depend partly on other habitats. Populations of migrants, such as Pied Flycatcher, are probably determined more by conditions on passage or in winter quarters than in British woods. Some of the most noticeable species, such as Buzzards, Rooks, Starlings and Grey Herons, nest in woods but range far and wide. In fact, most resident species use habitats outside woodland and may fail or prosper according to what they find there. The density of Robins in woodland may be reinforced by breeding success in the general neighbourhood. Nuthatches are hole-nesting woodland birds, but they still visit our garden bird feeder and nest in isolated field trees. This leads into the influence, if any, of woodland isolation on birds. Even though birds are individually mobile, it seems possible that some isolated woods are out of reach to species like Marsh Tit that do not disperse far. Nuthatch is another species that may be unlikely to disperse to isolated woods – it was unexpectedly absent from Northward Hill, Kent (Flegg and Bennett 1974). Studies in the small woods of the arable East Midlands found that the complement of species in individual woods was not the same from year to year: two species were lost and gained on average from one year to the next (Hinsley et al. 1995). Species absent in one year could clearly return from a distance.

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Trees and woodland as habitats Other things being equal, the number of breeding bird species in a wood increases with woodland area, and the complement of species changes more from year to year in smaller woods. Larger woods accommodate more of the available pool of species than smaller woods and support larger populations of each species, which are thereby buffered against fluctuations. Several species, such as Blackcap, Chaffinch and Dunnock, seem attracted to edges, both ride margins and external edges, where they find a greater density o shrubs. There are hints that Chiffchaff, Marsh Tit and Jay avoid the smallest woods, but no clear sign that any species avoids edges by breeding exclusively in the interior. How much have woodland bird populations changed since preNeolithic times? When Hinsley et al. (2015) considered this, they assumed that pre-Neolithic woodland took the form of wood-pasture, as Vera suggested (Chapter 5). Birds of grassland, including larks, pipits and Hoopoe, would have been well represented, depending on the size of glades. The habitat mosaic would also have been favourable to predators (such as Kestrel and shrikes), edge species (such as Black Grouse, Starling and Green Woodpecker) and species associated with large herbivores (such as Swallow and Cattle Egret). The species of dense cover and scrub (such as Dunnock and Garden Warbler) would have had their place, and so would species we associate with mature wood-pasture (such as Redstart and Pied Flycatcher). However, if pre-Neolithic woodland approximated to high forest with small gaps, the best available answer comes from the Białowieża National Park, where old-growth, multi-storey stands of oak–lime– Hornbeam, swampy Alder and mixed coniers grow up to 57m high and contain dead wood volumes averaging 130m3/ha (Wesołowski 2007). Here 111 orest and orest-edge species were recorded breeding. Much the same suite of species was found in all forest types. Indeed, o the main species – Chaffinch, Collared Flycatcher, Robin, Song Thrush, Wood Warbler, Blackcap, Hawfinch, Goldcrest, Coal Tit and Starling – most also inhabit British woodland. Many species were restricted to low population densities by high nest predation – and thus low productivity ofyoung. Compared with Białowieża, the bird fauna of British coppice and high forest woodlands lacks Goshawk (until recently), Hazel Grouse, Collared Flycatcher and several woodpeckers, but the birds that do occur do so at higher densities and produce more young, probably because they have access to rich resources in surrounding farmland and we have greatly 273

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Trees and Woodlands reduced predators. On the other hand, managed woodland limits the supply of nest holes and increases the opportunities for edge and scrub species.

Invertebrates The diversity of invertebrates in woods far exceeds that of plants, fungi and vertebrates, but apart from butterflies and perhaps midges in August they are little noticed. Charles Elton (1966) revealed the interdependence of species in woods, the importance of edges, glades, rides, temporary openings and micro-niches; stressed the crucial role of dead wood; and emphasised the importance of complexity for regulating predator–prey relationships. Morris (1974) reviewed ‘the bewildering variety of form, food, habits and behaviour of the several thousand insect species of oak in Britain’. Southwood’s (1961) much-cited review of the diversity of phytophagous invertebrates on Britain’s tree genera was later taken to be a league table of trees as food plants for insect species: it placed oak, willow and birch at the top and Holly and Yew in the relegation zone. A more wideranging assessment by Alexander et al. (2006), embracing fungi and epiphytes in addition to invertebrates, still put native oaks at the top, but emphasised the value of all species, including some introduced conifers. The wealth of invertebrate diversity and interactions within woodland cannot be fully expressed here. Instead, I will concentrate on three complementary groups: the butterflies, which are generally associated with open ground and young growth, the saproxylics, which utilise dead wood and mature, senescent trees, and slugs and snails, which dwell mainly in the litter and soil.

Butterflies One only has to read some of the butterfly literature (e.g. Thomas and Lewington 1991, Warren 2021) or note the reasons why some woods are nature reserves to recognise that woods are important places for butterflies. Some species are woodland specialists and others are generalists commonly seen in woodland (Asher et al. 2001), but all add to the pleasure of a woodland walk in summer. Yet woodland butterfly populations crashed during the 20th century, leaving us with a depleted residue. Why? 274

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Trees and woodland as habitats Several butterfly species depend directly on woodland habitats. Some feed as larvae on trees, shrubs or woodland flowers. In the canopy Purple Hairstreak feeds on oaks, White-letter Hairstreak and formerly Large Tortoiseshell on elms. Holly Blue feeds on Holly and Ivy, Brown and Black Hairstreaks on Blackthorn, Brimstone on Buckthorn and Alder Buckthorn, Purple Emperor on Goat Willow, White Admiral on Honeysuckle and formerly Black-veined White on Blackthorn and hawthorn. Many feed on woodland herbs: Speckled Wood on False Brome, Heath Fritillary on Common Cow-wheat, other fritillaries on violets and Duke of Burgundy on Primrose. Trees are also important in the behaviour of Purple Emperor and Purple Hairstreak, which spend much of their time in the canopy, concentrating their activities around prominent trees. Many more woodland butterflies feed on the herbs and grasses that reach full development in rides, clearings and recently felled woodland. Some, such as the Large Skipper, are outright grassland associates that treat glades for what they are, sheltered, warm and relatively humid strips of meadowlike grassland in close association with well-lit shrubs and trees. Many seem to find their optimum in the mix of trees, shrubs and open grassland in managed woodland, wood-pastures, Bracken-ridden grassland, green lanes, prominent hedges with trees and railway embankments. Only Speckled Wood and Brimstone regularly venture beneath the stand. In the past, young regrowth in coppice plots was thronged with butterflies making use of the sudden increase in flowers. Each coupe was only temporarily suitable, but when large woods and clusters of small woods were coppiced in rotation, 30–40% of the woodland area was taken up by rides or coppice cut in the last five years, and newly suitable ground was always available within flying distance. With the end of widespread coppicing and the steady loss of open-space

from top: Purple Emperor

chrysalis on Goat Willow at Knepp Wildland, Sussex, and a well-worn adult butterfly on a path.

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above: A ride in Haugh Wood, Herefordshire. Conifer reforestation of this large former coppice enabled species such as Wood White, Pearlbordered Fritillary and Silver-washed Fritillary to survive until management could be agreed with Butterfly Conservation. inset: White Admiral, a woodland specialist that lays its eggs on shaded Honeysuckle lianas.

habitats and young growth, the dependent butterflies disappeared. The woodland specialists survived where coppicing was maintained, such as Blean Woods, Kent, or restored before they had completely disappeared. They also survived where woods were converted to timber plantations, such as in Bernwood Forest, near Oxford. Plantations, however, were far from ideal, being even-aged, managed on longer rotations and usually dominated by conifers that suppressed the herbs, but they tided many butterfly populations over until special ride management regimes could be introduced and the plantation age structure could be diversified, as in Haugh Wood, near Hereford. The consequence now is that woodland specialists, such as Wood White, Silver-washed Fritillary, High Brown Fritillary and Duke of Burgundy survive as widely scattered, isolated populations and Purple Emperor prospers where managers are careful to maintain the combination of sallows and large-crowned oaks. Only White Admiral has made a substantial comeback, helped by its predilection for Honeysuckle in shade and nectar from brambles. Monks Wood provides an example made all the more poignant because it became a National Nature Reserve on the strength of its butterflies. Traditional woodmen and Canadian lumberjacks did more for butterflies than nature reserve management plans.

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Midlands Ash–oak wood MONKS WOOD, Cambridgeshire, formerly Huntingdonshire This famous wood on the east Midlands clays was owned by the monks of Sawtry Abbey until the Dissolution. By the time I first visited, it was a National Nature Reserve and the backdrop to the Nature Conservancy’s Monks Wood Experimental Station. Eventually I joined the staff myself, one of a large group of young ecologists with young families and a career to build, all fraught with enthusiasm, whose impact was strong enough to attract visits from Prince Charles and the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson. The wood was a place of experiment and refreshment, its network of straight rides dating from the 18th century being ideal for a lunchtime stroll. Today, sadly, though the buildings remain the ecologists have gone and the wood is rife with ash dieback disease. Like so many ancient woods in the region, this is an Ash–Pedunculate Oak–Field Maple wood with an underwood of Hazel and patches of Aspen and suckering elms, with a tendency to generate groves of birch when compartments are felled. Centuries of coppicing ended about 1914 and the remaining standard oaks were felled by Canadian lumbermen shortly after, leaving ‘a desert of grey ashes’ (Steele and Welch 1973). During the Second World War, two large clearings were made to grow potatoes, and these remain as herb-rich meadows with scattered bushes and trees. Monks Wood was once renowned for its wealth of butterflies ( J. Heath in Steele and Welch 1973, Greatorex-Davies et al. 2005). By 1914, 43 butterfly species had been recorded. Some sense of butterfly abundance is preserved in a 1922 article in the Peterborough Advertiser by a keen collector, Major Stuart Maples, who noticed High Brown Fritillary and Dark Green Fritillary sharing the same bramble thicket with the ‘very abundant’ Silver-washed Fritillary (Barry Dickerson, personal communication). Four species had gone by 1920 – Black-veined White, Wood White, Marsh Fritillary, Large Blue – and a further three – Duke of Burgundy, Purple Emperor, Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary – before 1953, when the wood became a reserve. Since then, despite the combined efforts of resident site managers and research ecologists, eight more have died out, including High Brown and Dark Green Fritillaries. The decline set in with the ending of traditional coppicing in 1914–18 and continued steadily, despite extensive fellings in the 1920s, the formation of grassy clearings in 1943 and management to maintain open rides from the 1950s onwards. Once coppicing ended, so did the uninterrupted supply of open spaces and young regrowth. Later management, despite the best of intentions, did not restore this supply in the Silver-washed Fritillary, once abundant in Monks same form, nor so reliably and extensively. Wood, but now absent.

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Trees and Woodlands However, neglect and inexperienced nature reserve management were not solely to blame, for semi-natural habitats in the surrounding fields had been ploughed out, leaving the butterflies of open spaces no refuges outside the wood. Latterly, the wood has been overrun by Muntjac. The widespread increase in deer has brought a corresponding reduction in the tall herb nectar sources on which butterflies relied. The most striking example of this is the New Forest, where butterflies once thronged the woods in blinding clouds (Oates 1996). Grazing by ponies increased sharply in the 1960s, and increasingly they were allowed into enclosures. The rich flora I had observed as a schoolboy in the rides of Woodfidley Inclosure had vanished by the time I became a woodland specialist in 1969. The consequences for butterflies of these and other changes have been striking. Out of a list of 41 species that were mostly common and widespread before 1900, five were extinct by 1996, many became rare and local, 15 remained common in the private (largely ungrazed) woods and only one, Brimstone, was still common in the (grazed) enclosures.

Saproxylic invertebrates Saproxylic invertebrates complement Lepidoptera as denizens of woodland. Whereas Lepidoptera are predominantly creatures of open spaces and young growth, saproxylics are beetles, flies and other invertebrates that depend on dead wood and mature trees. Their larvae live under bark and within rotting timber, and make use of temporary pools in rot holes and other structures found in large, mature and senescent trees, particularly those found in woodpastures (Harding and Rose 1986, Kirby and Drake 1993). Invertebrates make use of all parts of mature and senescent trees, including twigs and small dead branches, but here our focus is on species that use large dead timber and rotten parts of living trees. Unlike the species of twigs and small structures, which tend to be rapid colonists and thus present in new woodland and plantations, the species of large senescent and dead elements are more likely to be slow colonists. Not only do large trees take time to develop, but also the niches they provide are long-lasting, which makes long-term residence advantageous compared with the risks of dispersal and reestablishment. The result is that many saproxylics are found only as relict populations in one or two sites, isolated within woods that not 278

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Trees and woodland as habitats only have the required mature habitats, but have had them continuously for a long time. The unmistakable Stag Beetle is probably the best-known example. The sheer diversity of conditions associated with large, old and mostly open-grown trees was outlined by Keith Alexander (1999). Some 1,700 invertebrate species depend on decaying wood, which amounts to 6% of the entire British invertebrate fauna. Decaying wood in living trees creates and constantly renews a succession of conditions which different species exploit. Few species apart from longhorn and bark beetles actually digest sound wood. Most rely on fungi to make it digestible, either as white rot, in which both cellulose and lignin have been digested, or as red rot, where the lignin remains undigested. Other species exploit particular niches, including small rot holes, fungal fruiting bodies, bark and rotting roots, and there are further species that depend on the epiphytic lichens that are often abundant on these trees. However, mature timber structures are necessary, but not sufficient. As adults, beetles also need nectar sources, which they find in the flowers of hawthorns, the tall inflorescences of umbellifers and thistles and other blooms that are concentrated in the open spaces between the trees. The combination of this and a long history of old, mature trees makes ancient wood-pastures in forests and parks almost ideal. These are indeed the prime habitat for saproxylics, but old countryside with a stock of old boundary and field trees, as well as ancient coppices with a stock of boundary pollards, are also suitable. The richest locations for saproxylic invertebrates have been ranked according to a Saproxylic Quality Index, built from weighed scores attached to each recorded species (Alexander 1999). Two ancient wood-pastures, the New Forest and Windsor Forest, head the table, followed by a tract of well-treed countryside at Bredon Hill. Other famous forests score well – Epping (17th place), Abernethy (18), Sherwood (29), Wyre (52), Dean (75). Likewise many parks, such as Richmond (5), Moccas (12) and Staverton (60). Ancient coppice

Male Stag Beetle in an old Suffolk orchard. Its larvae feed on decaying wood.

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Trees and Woodlands woods appear lower in the ranks, even Monks Wood (65), Langley Wood (79), Swanton Novers Wood (87), Bedford Purlieus (106) and the Lincolnshire limewoods (107). The best places are large woods, densely treed districts and small districts long famous for rare invertebrates, which reflects species–area relationships; the ability of key saproxylics to spread out into surrounding land if it possesses large, old trees; and the tendency of entomologists to search where they expect to be rewarded. Significantly, the richest coppice had an ecological research station nearby and the second stands on the very edge of the New Forest. Remains of beetles found in peat deposits have confirmed the status of rare species as relicts (Buckland and Dinnin 1993). In preNeolithic woodland, species associated with dead wood were very frequent, whereas species associated with dung and open spaces were rare, but present. From the Neolithic onwards, the former declined and the latter increased. Some of the species of dead wood became extinct, some so recently that living specimens were collected by early coleopterists. Others have become so reduced that they survive only in one or two sites. Their natural niches may have been wide-crowned trees in open woodland on wetlands (only hillocks are suitable for trees), floodplain forests (perpetually disturbed by channel movement) and forests kept open by herbivores, but they have survived mainly in wood-pastures and farmland with many old trees (Siitonen and Ranius 2015). These species are, however, trapped where they survive, partly because their ability to spread is limited.

Molluscs When I was developing ideas on ancient woodland indicator herbs, it was reassuring to discover an article by Boycott (1934) which set out parallel ideas. He recognised 49 ‘woodland species’ of slugs and snails that were found in woodland, hedges, scrub, sea cliffs, limestone screes and other sheltered, undisturbed, semi-natural habitats and noted that they had not colonised 18th-century secondary Beech woods on the South Downs, yet were present in the older Beech woods. Two slug species were widespread in Scotland, yet were found only in large woods that had ‘every appearance of being ancient’. He thought ‘their discovery is probably as good a piece of evidence as can be had that a wood is on a primaeval site’. Kerney and Stubbs (1980) endorsed this interpretation, listing nine species indicative of primary 280

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Lemon Slug, one of the molluscs identified as a ‘woodland species’ by Boycott (1934) and now regarded as an ancient woodland species.

woodland, two of which, the Mountain Bulin and the Ash-black Slug, can sometimes be seen climbing Ash and Beech trees in wet weather. Some sense of the diversity of woodland molluscs emerges from a study of four groups of woodland on calcareous soils in southern Britain (Cameron et al. 2006). By sieving soil in 400m2 samples of woodland in the South Downs, Chilterns, Cotswolds and Wye Valley, these investigators found 378–1,029 individuals of 27–44 species in each sample. The mix of species was similar in all districts, but the Chiltern woods were relatively poor and the Cotswolds somewhat richer. Most samples had one or two species that were markedly more abundant than others, usually Carychium tridentatum and Discus rotundatus. Only five of the nine ‘ancient woodland indicators’ showed up. Calcareous soils are advantageous for shell-forming snails, but acid woods in the west can still support a diverse mix of molluscs because the woods are moist.

Managed woodland as a substitute for natural woodland These brief reviews indicate that the flora and fauna in our woods today may still perpetuate features and species derived from preNeolithic woodlands even though they have been strongly influenced by us and our forebears. Here I will try to summarise these influences and consider how managed woodlands differ as habitats from their natural precursors.

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Permanent, natural openings in the woods of the Wye Valley. The face and summit of a rock tower remains open, because trees never grow strongly in the face of periodic droughts and deer use them as vantage points. The openings provide niches for rare microspecies of whitebeam and small, isolated populations of Bloody Cranesbill and other herbs.

Stand structure and open spaces In managed woodland the frequency and kind of silvicultural operations determine stand structure and age-class distribution, and these in turn influence the wildlife content. Rides and forest roads are required for access in woods managed for timber and in many woodland nature reserves. Since some species specialise in young stands and others in old growth, management that maintains both tends to generate the greatest diversity. These broad generalisations have been demonstrated in several studies of birds and butterflies in both lowland semi-natural woods and upland plantation forests, but they must apply to woodland invertebrates generally. The comparison of stand structures in natural and managed stands shown in the table opposite is a simplification which presents median conditions and ignores the ranges. It omits managed wood-pasture, partly because Frans Vera and other protagonists used managed wood-pastures as models for natural wood-pasture. Managed woodlands are clearly very different from natural, except in the few broadleaved small-group selection stands and the Scots Pine woods, where felling patterns mimic fire and wind disturbances fairly closely. Dead wood volumes are very different, for the fundamental reason that the object of managing woodlands is to take out timber.

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Trees and woodland as habitats Comparison of stand structure in managed and natural woodland. Managed high forest

Coppice

Natural woodland as Natural woodland high forest (Tansley as wood-pasture hypothesis) (Vera hypothesis)

Felling; wind sometimes fells stands prematurely Mostly even-aged monoculture and 2-species plantations on 80–150-year rotation; increasing minority of continuous cover Narrow crowns, seedling origin

Felling; wind rarely affects standards

Wind, drought

Wind, drought

Simple or with standards Rotations 5–30 years for underwood; 60–100 years standards

Small-group selection in mixed stands with occasional larger falls generating even-aged stands

Mosaic of scrub, groves, parkland

Narrow crowns in underwood, spreading crowns; stools, boundary pollards Rectilinear, medium–large; usually progressive enlargement Ancient stools, heartwood of boundary pollards; 5m3/ha

Narrow crowns, seedling and vegetative origin

Narrow and spreading crowns; seedling origin

Small, irregular, limited progressive enlargement

Extensive, irregular, amoeboid

Snags, dead limbs on living trees, rotting heartwood of living trees, fallen wood; variable; can be well over 100m3/ha

Rotting heartwood in living trees, dead limbs on living trees, snags, fallen wood; perhaps 100m3/ha

BROADLEAVED

Main disturbances System

Tree forms

Gaps

Dead wood

Rectilinear, medium–large; often progressive enlargement Mainly stumps; 10m3/ha

SCOTS PINE

Main disturbances

Felling, wind

Fire, wind

Fire, wind

System

Even-aged plantations; sometimes shelterwood 60– 80-year rotations Narrow crowns

Fire-induced shelterwood; limited long-term retentions in protected sites

Fire-induced shelterwood; limited long-term retentions in protected sites Narrow and spreading crowns Irregular, large–very large, patchy Snags, fallen trees, dead limbs on living trees; volume unknown Irregular groups, mainly in open spaces

Tree forms Gaps Dead wood

Regeneration

Rectilinear, large, progressive Stumps; 5m3/ha

Planted at even spacing or naturally in irregular groups

Narrow and spreading crowns Irregular, large–very large, patchy Snags, fallen trees, dead limbs on living trees; over 100m3/ha Irregular groups, mainly in open spaces

Fauna, flora and fungi diversity in managed woodland also depends on open spaces. In managed woodland openings are both temporary (rides) and transient (felling coupes), but in natural woodland we must introduce an intermediate category of partial openings, where trees are thin on the ground and the openings are permanent, even if their 283

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Trees and Woodlands configuration changes when trees die and regeneration takes place. The comparisons shown in the table below again express median conditions. Open ground in managed woodland comes much closer to the conjectured open ground in the wood-pasture version of natural woodland than the high forest model. Clear-felling and shelterwood systems in conifer plantations generate structures that are close to those produced by fire in natural boreal forests and should therefore have similar wildlife associates. Natural fires produce either extensive even-aged stands on a relatively brisk rotation or two-storeyed high forest. Even stands retained near loch-side beauty spots on longer rotations have natural counterparts, the long-rotation stands in the vicinity of lakes, where the spread of fire is restricted. Open ground maintained in valleys and around wetlands within extensive plantation forests is also analogous to the pattern of open spaces in natural boreal forests. Comparison of the open-ground habitats in managed and natural woodland. Managed woodland

Natural woodland as high forest (Tansley hypothesis)

Natural woodland as wood-pasture (Vera hypothesis)

Permanent openings within limits of forest

Rides with some shading from Substantial rock outcrops; marginal stands; boundary strips; pools and rivers pools and substantial rock outcrops usually rare and marginal

Substantial rock outcrops; pools and rivers

Partial openings

Compartments under shelterwood regeneration

Mires on upland peat, lowland plateaus; mires on floodplains; reworked alluvium; Beaver swamps and clearings; droughtprone sites; impoverished soils

Mires on upland peat, lowland plateaus; mires on floodplains; reworked alluvium; Beaver swamps and clearings; droughtprone sites; impoverished soils

Temporary openings

Felling coupes

Gaps, blowdowns, burned patches

Some gaps in groves; ground kept open by herbivores

Gap creation rate and average extent of temporary gaps

20-year coppice rotation = 5%/year; 5 years to restock closed canopy; total temporary openings: 25%; 100 high forest rotation = 1%/year; 10 years to restock closed canopy; total temporary openings: 10%; progressive

1%/year, but highly variable; 10 years to restock closed canopy; total temporary openings: 10%; patchy

Degeneration of groves to glades would create gaps: rate unknown; total temporary openings: 25% (Kirby 2003); patchy

Short grassland in centre of rides, Scrub; shape irregular; Quality of temporary and analogous to pasture; tall herbs on distribution patchy ride margins, analogous to meadow; mosaic gaps shape linear and well-connected

Scrub; pasture and meadow-like grassland; shape irregular and wellconnected

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Woodland size

Percentage of flowering plants that depend on open spaces in woods

After laboriously examining 362 separate woods in central Lincolnshire in the 1970s, we found that woodland size influenced the character of management and thereby the wildlife content of a wood. The small woods (below 3ha) usually lacked rides and access tracks, so the few herbs associated with open spaces were confined to external margins. These tiny woods were mostly unmanaged or had been subjected to a feast and famine regime whereby the whole wood had been felled at once, which in turn ensured that they had passed through periods when they lacked open-space habitats. In large woods (more than 30ha), in contrast, at least 50% of the total flora was found on rides, partly because they had rarely been neglected completely, even through the 20th-century era of coppice neglect, and never for very long. Rides had been kept open by gamekeepers maintaining warm open spaces and foresters who needed roads and rides for felling, extraction and restocking. Had they stood untouched for decades they would have lost half of their flora. In woods between 3ha and 30ha, the probability that rides had been kept open steadily increased with area, and so in concert did the proportion of the total woodland flora that depended on rides. In the uplands, the relationship between size and management seems less clear. So many upland woods are ranged along steep slopes where felling, timber extraction and replanting are difficult and expensive. Many are full of sheep or deer, for which woodland represents shelter. Some have been surrounded by plantation forests and may have been

The relative importance of woods of different sizes in central Lincolnshire for flowering plants and ferns (from Peterken and Francis 1999). This graph applies to both ancient and secondary woods.

50%

Small woods lacking rides and other open spaces; usually unmanaged

30%

Mediumsized woods

Large woods with substantial rides, usually kept open by silvicultural operations

10%

0%

0 0.1

0.3

1

3 10 Woodland area in (ha)

30

100

300

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Trees and Woodlands underplanted with conifers, though latterly many of the conifers have been removed. Jeanette Hall of NatureScot tells me that many large woods in the Highlands have been compartmentalised, with small areas fenced and the rest left as shelter for deer or livestock. In large native woodlands, rotational fencing is popular amongst many land managers: small areas are fenced for 10–20 years to allow tree regeneration and then thrown open while other areas are fenced.

New woodland Woodland origins also influence both the particular species present in a wood and the overall diversity. Broadbalk Wilderness, which originated in 1880 at least 0.5km from an ancient wood, started with the herbs of the preceding land type and has only slowly accumulated shade-tolerant species (Harmer et al. 2001). A famous early study by the reverend Adrian Woodruffe-Peacock (1918) of the flora developing in a new and isolated fox covert in the Lincolnshire Wolds revealed the various means by which species colonise, including the now anachronistic process of turning out the fluff accumulated in trouser turn-ups. In general, if new woodland is physically linked to an ancient wood, species usually face no barrier to colonisation. If it is separate, but nearby, woodland species will commonly ‘make the jump’, even across hostile habitat. But if it is separated from ancient woods by hostile habitat and the distance between old and new woodland is larger than a species’ power of dispersal, colonisation will be unlikely, even if the new wood is suitable. A particular problem is that many woodland species have poor powers of dispersal. They evolved in what was naturally the predominant habitat, but this has long since been reduced and fragmented. Many woodland plants have heavy fruits, rely on transportation by ants, or otherwise lack long-distance dispersal mechanisms. Some, like Wood Anemone, rely on clonal spread for most reproduction. The species that spread easily are those adapted to rapid colonisation of gaps and other disturbed ground in woods, birddispersed fruits (e.g. acorns, hawthorns), or light seeds abundantly produced (e.g. birch, sallow). In practice, any species can be spread in soil stuck to paws and boots, so even inherently poor colonists will get about occasionally. And just as larger nets catch more fish, so larger secondary woods accumulate more species. Preceding land use also matters. New woodland established on 286

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heathland will retain some heathland species in its rides. On the Lincolnshire Wolds, limestone grassland species survive in foxcovert rides created two centuries ago. Residual fertility from earlier cultivation will promote rampant growth of brambles and nitrophilous perennials, such as Stinging Nettle, which leaves no room for latearriving slower colonists to become established. However, if the new woodland is managed, not only will some plants of the preceding land type survive in the rides, but also the dense ground vegetation formed by early arrivals under trees will be disrupted enough for late arrivals to gain a foothold. Colonisation by woodland fauna will be partly limited by how the woodland itself develops. Thus, any species dependent on a particular food plant must await the arrival of that plant. Saproxylic species must bide their time until trees have become large and old. Nevertheless, faunal diversity can build impressively even in the most difficult circumstances, such as the Hebridean island of Rum, which had been treeless from the 18th century. Planting by the Nature Conservancy started in 1957, and the plantations rapidly accumulated a respectable invertebrate fauna by colonisation from the mainland, or possibly from fragments of scrub remaining on the island (Wormell 1977).

Inside the Broadbalk Wilderness at Rothamsted Research, Hertfordshire. Even after almost 150 years, very few plant species have colonised.

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Trees and Woodlands opposite page:

Herbs which are associated with ancient woodland in at least part of their British range. Clockwise from top left: Herb Paris, Wood Anemone, Dog’s Mercury, Common Cow-wheat, Lady Orchid, Greater Butterfly-orchid, Wood Vetch.

Context is also important. Follow a watercourse downstream from a wood and you will find woodland plants on tree-lined banks. Adjacent land types determine which species are readily available to colonise. Thus, an adjacent meadow or pasture will be a seed source for new woodland rides and will usually ensure a richer externalmargin flora and fauna than adjacent arable, especially if the latter is liberally treated with herbicides and pesticides. The importance of nearby woodland and hedges linking woods was demonstrated by a study of dormice in scattered woods in Herefordshire (Bright et al. 1994). Size mattered: dormice occupied only a small minority of woods below 20ha but all woods above 100ha. Origin also mattered: dormice were more frequent in ancient than secondary woods. Isolation, or lack of it, was important: dormice were more likely to be present when there were other woods nearby and when a wood was linked by hedges to other woods. Further, they had colonised secondary woods close to ancient woods, but rarely reached secondary woods more than 1km from an ancient wood. As for management, dormice were counterintuitively more frequent in ancient woods converted to plantations than in the now-shaded and neglected Hazel in former coppices. The importance of linkages that this study revealed is general: hedges, green lanes and streams all offer conditions resembling woodland and, in the case of streams, actual transport of seed and organisms by water. If we want to know how quickly wild species colonise new woodland and how this is affected by the degree of isolation of new woodland from existing woodland, we can search for these species in secondary woods whose date and circumstances of origin are known from old maps dating back to the 16th century. In the 1970s, we used this approach to study how woodland origins and isolation influenced the flora of woods in central Lincolnshire, and it underlies Paul Bright’s dormouse study. The same approach is now being used in the comprehensive WrEN study, publicised in the spring 2020 edition of the Woodland Trust’s Wood Wise.

History and continuity Habitat continuity, crystallised in the concept of ancient woodland indicators, is another factor influencing species diversity. For me, this idea emerged from a claim by Beevor (1925) that the presence of Bluebells in a Norfolk wood indicated that the wood had descended 288

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Partially wooded limestone pavement at Gait Barrows, Silverdale, Lancashire. Even outside woodland these pavements support woodland plants in the grykes.

from a wood mentioned in Domesday Book. Boycott’s (1934) account of the occurrence of snails and slugs made it clear that the indicator idea also applied widely to woodland molluscs. Indicators have since become entrenched in accounts of woodland vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens, beetles, slugs, snails and possibly fungi. What counts as continuity? For some groups, it is not woodland continuity in general that matters but continuity of a particular niche. Thus, continuity of large trees determines lichen richness, and continuity of humid, moist conditions determines Atlantic bryophyte diversity (Ratcliffe 1968). There are many types of ‘semi-woodland habitat’ that may or do lack trees, yet harbour some species that also thrive in woodland ( just as Boycott implied by calling these habitats ‘woodland’). Hedges and limestone pavements are obvious examples, but so too are some coastal and tall herb communities, Bracken brakes and shady rock outcrops as well as meadows and other grassland not grazed in spring and early summer. Some species will survive the transition from these habitats to woodland, so that for them suitable habitat may have been present on site for much longer than the woodland, and may even link new woodland to remnants of pre-Neolithic woodland. If ancient woods do include relict populations surviving on or near

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Trees and woodland as habitats that site since it was part of pre-Neolithic woodland, it will be due to continuity of woodland and semi-woodland habitats. Interleaved with continuity is time. In secondary woodland, the measure is time since trees returned, in other words the duration of the opportunity for colonisation or for the habitat to become suitable. In ancient woodland – strictly, primary woodland – the measure is time since the wood became isolated from other woodlands or was reduced to its present size. The fragmentation that creates isolation leaves the remnant woods with many species represented by small populations which are more likely to fail: in the jargon, the wood carries an extinction debt which is paid off with local extinctions. Origin, preceding land type, woodland pattern, habitat linkages, adjacent habitats, time and the capacities of individual woodland species to disperse and flourish in non-woodland habitats all contribute to one general factor, known as isolation in space and time. This affects the diversity in individual woods and influences the distribution of each species across a landscape. Each wild species responds in its own way. The Herefordshire dormice provide an example of the complexities involved.

d Woodland is a rich habitat, partly because it incorporates other habitats. These other habitats are created and maintained artificially these days, but in some respects they reproduce a version of the habitat diversity of the original natural woodlands. However, no managed woodland exactly reproduces the conditions of wildwood, not even the ancient wood-pastures that support the richest saproxylic assemblages, nor the ancient coppice woods that perpetuate the most diverse herbage and tree mixtures. The woodland wildlife we see today has been influenced by each woodland’s history and circumstances.

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Utility and wellbeing

F

chapter nine

or a mercifully short post-war period, woods were valued officially only for the timber they might produce and the tax liabilities they might mitigate. Echoing

the Old Testament and Winston Churchill, Oliver Rackham called these ‘the locust years’, when 99% of the trees planted by the Forestry Commission were conifers and many ancient semi-natural woods were felled, liberally poisoned and replanted with spruce, pine, Douglas Fir and the like. Thankfully, that phase has passed and we have reverted to the earlier broader views of what forests and forestry should be. The benefits from woodland range from the material, practical and readily marketable values of timber to recreation, education, wellbeing and cultural associations that cannot be easily monetised. Fungi, for example, were not only used as food, to stop bleeding, tranquillise bees, strop razors, dye fibres, test acidity, make paper and ink, manufacture perfumes, make clothes, decorate woodwork and manufacture snuff and intoxicants, all of which might be marketed, but also to start fires, dress wells and conduct religious rituals (Spooner and Roberts 2005). Much the same could be said of other components, and of woodland as a whole. Here we look at the material and practical end of the spectrum, leaving cultural associations to the next chapter.

Traditional uses of native trees Woodmen and their products Now that ancient woods and native trees are regarded as habitat, scenery and repositories of history and culture, we easily forget that they were a critical material resource for both rural and urban

opposite page:

The restored 13thcentury Grange Barn, Coggeshall, Essex, supported by oaks drawn from nearby ancient woods.

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Trees and Woodlands communities, satisfying both specialist and general needs. Particular trees and shapes of timber were used for building, tools, fencing and drains, whilst any species might contribute to firewood and other general needs. Woods generated employment and supported a variety of woodland-based skills. The woodmen who felled the trees, cut the coppice and worked the material were craftsmen, not labourers. Not only did they need real and obvious skills to tend the woods and fashion timber frames, wattle hurdles and bowls, but they also developed the noless-important skill of working efficiently enough to make a living. Nevertheless, traditional woodland trades and crafts were dying out fast during the 19th and 20th centuries as markets changed and easier and more profitable jobs were found elsewhere. Fortunately, enough of them survived into modern times to be recorded and appreciated. Herbert Edlin’s Woodland Crafts in Britain (1949) provides an important, profusely illustrated, eyewitness account of the men and their mode of working compiled when traditional craftsmen were still active. From the same late period, FitzRandolph and Hay (1926) and Woods (1949) recorded the state of the rural crafts. Ray Tabor’s Traditional Woodland Crafts (1994) bridges the transition from declining tradition to modern revival. The Green Wood Centre in Coalbrookdale maintains the revival. And we can always read about The Woodlanders (Hardy 1887) playing out their dramas against a background of spar making, shrouding, bark stripping, hurdlemaking and timber auctions in Hintock Woods. Together with wood books and other estate records, these eyewitness accounts confirm that, while some native tree and shrub species were more versatile than others, all were used, if only as firewood. Put another way, each need could be satisfied by a range of species, but some species were better than others. Oak, to take one of the three species traditionally regarded as timber, was the main structural timber for buildings and provided most of the timber from which battleships were once built, but it was also used as food (mast for swine), as fencing (paling, hurdles and gates), for transport (spokes of wooden wheels, keys for stabilising railway tracks), for storage (barrel staves), in agriculture (spelk baskets from which seeds were broadcast, rungs of ladders used to build ricks), in the tanning of leather goods (footwear, clothing, harnesses), and for much else. Hazel was made into wattle hurdles (used as fences and as walls in houses), hoops (to bind barrels, etc.), crates (for all kinds of carriage 294

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Utility and wellbeing and storage), ethers (for tying down laid hedges), faggots (bundles of brushwood used to heat ovens) and a variety of specialist uses, such as catapults, pheasant and mole traps, spars for thatching, binding for straw bee skips, fenders for ships, putchers to catch salmon along the Severn estuary and cradles attached to scythes so that mown grass and cereals would settle into orderly swaths. Both species also contributed to non-specific uses, such as fuel wood. Equivalent lists can be constructed for other tree and shrub species. The corollary of this was that ancient woods of mixed species would supply material for a variety of needs and markets. The chance find of a discarded manuscript, Report on Forest of Dean and Tintern Woods, by E. S. Lord (1934), in a second-hand bookshop in Edinburgh, showed just how discriminating traditional woodmen were. In Caswell Wood, the backdrop to most photos of Tintern Abbey, Ash coppice was best quality, because it grew on limestone. The first 3m of the trunks fetched top price as timber. Smaller logs were made into shafts of ‘agricultural instruments’, presumably carts. Older coppice of at least 15cm diameter was made into axe handles and the like, for which they were much better than wood from maiden trees. Short, slender material became chisel rods in iron foundries; the next size up went for spile rods for barrels; and still larger material became crate rods. Long coppice was used as bean sticks and rake handles; shorter, thicker material as slats for crates. Poles 2.5–4m long of equal diameter throughout were used for barrel hoops if they were knot-free. If they tapered, they became putt rods used for making salmon traps. Larger poles were used by turners and smaller poles were burned as firewood. Dimensions were precisely specified in feet and inches. The importance of woodland for the local community is well illustrated by Shrawley Wood, Worcestershire, a famous Small-leaved Lime wood (Green et al. 2022). In 1841 the wood was still being coppiced on a 17-year rotation. The head woodman was William Jones, who was then 60 years old and had worked there for 38 years. He worked with a team of four woodmen, one of whom was his son. Between them they worked 700 man-days in the wood, mainly cutting lime for hop-poles. The national census recorded other woodland craftsmen in the local community: a sawyer, carpenter, cooper, wheelwright, basket maker, wood turner, lath cleaver and a blacksmith who sometimes helped peel bark. Wood accounts record that, in addition to hop-poles, the wood yielded wood for crates, charcoal, ash hop-poles, stakes, lapps, 295

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Trees and Woodlands headrings, kidbands, thatching, besoms, poles, laths, cordwood, pump trees, rails, gubbins (oak or Ash billets for cleaving into barrel and bucket staves), heatherings, faggots and birch rails. Some oak timber trees were also felled, yielding bark and cordwood in addition to the timber. Amazingly, decayed Ash wood was repurposed as yellow powder to tint the locks of young men. At other times, wood was used for clogs and as pitwood in mines. Demand was, however, declining in 1841 – there were only three buyers of hop-poles that year, a far cry from the 23 in 1770 – and in 1846 William Jones died, the man-days worked plummeted, and by 1851 Thomas Jones was unemployed. The owners, who employed a gamekeeper, now regarded the wood more as a pleasure ground than as a productive resource. The domestic importance of woods is brought home by Edlin’s list of needs and the species that satisfied them. Farm implements were made mainly of oak, though other species contributed. Oak was even used to sharpen scythes by coating offcuts in tallow and sand. Plough beams were made from oak or Ash, whereas mould boards were made from apple, pear or Beech, all woods that are soft enough to become smooth with use. Ox-yokes were carved from oak, Beech or Hornbeam, with curved Ash bows used to secure the oxen’s heads. Beech was used for the screws and threads of cider presses. In the house, furniture was constructed largely from oak, with Beech, Ash and elm for chairs, birch besoms were used to sweep the floor, and a wide variety of species were turned into household utensils. Some of the food on the table came directly as fruit from apples, pears and Wild Service-tree, whilst indirectly oak fattened the swine, some of the fish were caught with traps made of Hazel and nets made from lime bast. Lime also provided a nectar source for honey. The clog soles on the cottagers’ feet were carved from Alder and the leather was tanned by oak bark. Even some of the rough clothing on their backs was fashioned from lime bast. Within this multifarious matrix of species and uses were some specialist applications. I was told that Dogwood was ideal as thin, steady rods for oiling the inner workings of large machines, and that is backed by Edlin’s note that it was used for goads, skewers, ramrods and arrows. Spindle, to quote Edlin, ‘really was used for spindles in the far-off days before the spinning wheel had been invented’. Elder could be fashioned into blow-pipes, Rowan berries were used to bait birds, and bird lime was made from Holly. Elm is so durable under water that it was used for village pump barrels and water pipes, 296

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Utility and wellbeing including the pipes that supplied London via New River Head. And many species contributed dyes and herbal remedies. Specialisation also accentuated differences between districts and regions. Concentrations of a particular species led to concentrations of craft specialists, who then had an incentive to adapt the woods to grow more of their preferred species. The example usually cited is bodging for chairs made in High Wycombe, which developed around the Beech-rich woods in the Chilterns and then converted the woods from mixed woods with Beech to Beech-dominated selection forest. Similar feedbacks promoted other regionally dominant, simplified woods, notably the western oceanic oakwoods for tanbark and charcoal, the Kentish Chestnut coppices for hop-poles and fencing, the Hazel coppices of Dorset for wattle hurdles, and Alder planted and coppiced for clog soles along the river banks of Wales and northern England. Not all markets for coppice wood were specific. Before road surfaces were metalled, they developed ruts and pot holes which became treacherous in wet weather. These could be filled with bundles of brushwood – the lop and top of felled coppice – which would fill the depression immediately and bind in soil as longer-term filler. A specialised form of such ‘roading’ with rolls of Chestnut stakes allowed tanks to cross ditches in wartime. The most important general use was as fuel. Domestically, firewood was used for cooking and heating, which required a supply of logs, kindling to build the fire and matches to get it started. According to an old rhyme that Edlin quotes with approval, Ash was by far the best, burning green or seasoned. Beech, Hornbeam, oak, Chestnut, pine and Yew formed the second rank, but birch, Holly, elm and Alder were problematic. Birch for example burns too fast and Alder ‘not at all’, though this does not stop Scandinavians making full use of birch, almost the only tree available (Mytting 2015). In practice, anything would do, up to a point, so the fuel market provided a chance to sell otherwise useless branchwood and offcuts. Kindling took the form of brushwood, preferably of birch or even gorse, but Hazel twigs and other species would suffice. Matches and matchboxes were

Bark being peeled from freshly felled oak coppice in a Cornish Sessile Oak wood in 1973. The tanbark was to be used in Groggan’s tannery at Grampound.

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Charcoal burner, sketched at Lydbrook by J. W. King and reproduced in The Forest of Dean by Arthur O. Cooke (1913). By the early 20th century, the once widespread practice of charcoal burning had largely died out elsewhere.

made from Aspen or other poplars. Prehistorically, birch bark, dry tree leaves and woodland fungi were ignited by striking sparks or by friction between pieces of wood. Fuel was also needed in the manufacture of bricks, pottery, glass, iron, steel and lime. Kilns and foundries were fuelled by charcoal ignited with bundles of brushwood, known as bavins or faggots, and the wood ash was used as fertiliser and for making soap. Charcoal was made by specialist ‘colliers’ out in the woods, often in mixed coppices, where a variety of species must have been used, but especially in western oakwoods, which were often planted for this purpose. Colliers constructed hearths in the woods by notching flat, circular platforms into the slope, whereon small logs were carefully stacked with a central chimney, covered in soil, ignited by pouring glowing embers into the chimney, then left to smoulder. As the stack smoked, the supply of oxygen to the core was carefully regulated in order to maintain the smoulder without causing the burn to fade out or the whole stack to flare into ashes. In Lady Park Wood, where mixed coppice was coaled for the metal industries, the hearths were concentrated towards the lower levels of the wood, indicating that the woodsmen sensibly carted their wood downhill to the hearths.

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Utility and wellbeing The products from coppices were used almost everywhere, but markets and thus crafts tended to be concentrated in particular districts. The furniture trade, already mentioned, was one example. Wattle hurdle-making was concentrated around the chalklands where sheep needed to be folded on arable. Charcoal tended to be made around ironstone mines or places to which iron ore could be easily shipped. Within these concentrations, particular villages were foci of craftsmen: in Hampshire, for example, King’s Somborne was a place of wattle hurdle-makers; in Rockingham Forest, Northamptonshire, King’s Cliffe had a concentration of craftsmen. Nevertheless, woodland skills must have been very widely distributed: all towns, villages and farms used wood, not just those in the well-wooded districts.

Decline and survival of traditional woodmanship By the time Edlin completed his book in the late 1940s, coppicing and the woodland crafts had long been in decline. Modern industrialisation, increasing mobility, the growing dominance of urban-based socioeconomic arrangements and the general increase in standards of living were the root causes. Long apprenticeships were unattractive – why would young men spend seven years as cheap labour at the bottom of a ladder handing up straw to the thatcher when they could work elsewhere? – and the social devastation of the First World War affected woodland work along with farming. Rural workers migrated to factories, where work was easier and more comfortable than the hard labour of working in woods in all weathers, leaving some coppices neglected, even though the produce was still saleable. Further, productivity could only be increased so far, so that increasing mechanisation priced craft products out of the market. Now, non-native trees, plastics and remote industries have largely displaced native wood and timber, whilst traditional modes of working have almost completely vanished from the economy. Nevertheless, woodland crafts lingered into the 1970s, so it was still possible for my generation of woodland ecologists to witness them at first hand. In Lowick Green, Furness, I could peer through the window of the spade forge, which functioned as a multi-product woodcraft workshop. In Bewdley, Worcestershire, I met Mr Birch, the last of the oak spelk basket makers, at his home, though he was far more interested in the Olympics on the television than in talking 299

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above: Ken Tuffin standing proudly in woodland near King’s Somborne, Hampshire, with a completed Hazel wattle hurdle. Photographed in 1972, Ken had been making hurdles since the 1930s. below: One of the last four oak spelk baskets made by Mr C. Birch in the Wyre Forest. It still bears the labels addressed to me at Monks Wood Experimental Station.

to me. In Lowick, Northamptonshire, a retired woodman gave me the tool that four generations of his family had used to strip bark from oaks. In Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset I learned never to shake the hands of wattle hurdle-makers and why even slightly overstood Hazel coppice was no good for making hurdles – the small whippy stems used for binding the ends would be dead. Near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, Whelnetham Woodwork still made wooden rakes and scythe snaiths with machinery powered from an unprotected leather drive belt that ran the length of the dingy workshop. Some crafts and products survived by moving up-market. Wattle hurdles were used as garden fences and motorway screens. Thatched cottages once inhabited by hurdle-makers became expensive rural homes, but they still needed spars to tie down the thatch. In Grampound, Cornwall, I met Mr Groggan amongst the evil-smelling vats full of tanning cow hides, which would eventually be fashioned into surgical footwear and royal shoes. Modern uses for coppice wood were developed, such as the mining chocks cut from lime in Potterhanworth Wood, Lincolnshire, and the fascines cut in Swanton Novers Wood, Norfolk, for tying down and stabilising fenland river beds. For a brief period, Bowaters even set up incentives to supply coppice wood to their paper-making factories at Sittingbourne, Kent, and Sudbrook, Monmouthshire, but this was undermined when Canadians sold timber offcuts cheaply. Nevertheless, even in the 1970s many craftsmen were unwilling to change, and not all were of pensionable age. The youngest hurdle-maker I met was simply too versatile: he spent his winters making hurdles and his summers preaching in the American Bible Belt. Around 1970, conservationists recognised the value of maintaining woodmanship skills and

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Utility and wellbeing traditional management in some form. When the Bradfield Woods, Suffolk, were saved from total destruction as working coppices, Whelnetham Woodwork was bought to maintain the market for the material they produced and the skills involved in working the wood and manufacturing the products. At the same time, I joined with colleagues to explore opportunities for attracting hurdle-makers (who needed Hazel woods) to work in woodland nature reserves (whose Hazel needed coppicing), inspired partly by the Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas, which had revived the market for thatching spars by helping the thatchers to change the basis for apprenticing. Sadly, Whelnetham Woodwork foundered in the face of health and safety legislation and we could find no practical way to bring hurdle-makers and Hazel-rich nature reserves together: most of the hurdle-makers were nearing retirement, and there was no chance of attracting new workers, even if the apprenticing arrangements had been accelerated. Traditional woodland crafts have continued on a small scale. At the Green Wood Centre in Coalbrookdale, it is possible to learn old woodland management skills, such as making hurdles, besoms and furniture, and extracting timber with horses. I once made a coracle myself and put to sea in a local hammer pond. A few people

Logs from coppice woods on their way to become hardwood pulp and packaging at Bowaters Yard, Sittingbourne, in 1973. For a short while, this company offered incentives for continued coppicing.

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The end of Hazel coppicing ODSTOCK COPSE, Wiltshire When I first visited this wood south of Salisbury in 1972 it was a typical chalkland Hazel coppice in which a traditional wattle hurdle-maker, Mr May, was still working. A group of us had met earlier to discuss whether we could find a way to link hurdle-making with the management of woodland nature reserves, after which we repaired to the wood to hear what Mr May thought. Genial and articulate, as befits a man who spent half his year preaching in the American Midwest, he joked that we had time to save hurdle-making: he was only 47 years old and his father had made hurdles until he was 94. However, shortly after, much of the wood was reforested with Pedunculate Oak, larch, Beech and Wild Cherry, so the remaining Hazel languishes in heavy shade. Half a century later there is no trace of hurdle-making there, but it continues elsewhere, albeit no longer for folding sheep. We also talked with other traditional hurdle-makers in the region. One, Ken Tuffin, who had obvious pride in his work, had kept a daily diary of all the hurdles he had made in the previous 30 years, but his work was getting harder. The best Hazel had been cleared to arable. Overstood coppice was impossible to use, for the rods were too large and potential binders had died. Where coppicing had ceased long ago, the Hazel had grown up to shade and kill the lower branches of the Pedunculate Oak standards. Markets were changing, but they had managed to sell hurdles for restaurant decorations, garden fences and screens in the central reservations of dual carriageways. After centuries of careful management, the underwood was still dominated by Hazel with a few Field Maple and Ash infiltrating, but they would need at least one rotation of cutting for firewood before they could be used for hurdles. Meanwhile, the rides and their habitats had been shaded out.

Mr May in Odstock Copse, Wiltshire, in 1972, showing conservationists how to make wattle hurdles from Hazel coppice.

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can make a living from such skills, but for most participants the work is partly recreation, partly therapy and partly education in sustainable management.

Modern uses of timber and wood from native trees Oak, Beech and other native trees have not lost their material value in the modern economy, but the markets for their timber and wood have changed greatly from pre- and early industrial times. In the home, they have largely been replaced by pottery, plastic and metal, though we still use wooden chopping boards, bread boards, rolling pins, salad servers and fruit bowls. We still construct houses round oak frames or with oak and other native-tree timbers for window frames, floors, doors and fittings, but this usage is now up-market rather than routine. We warm our houses with logs and chips from native trees in wood-burning stoves and automatic boilers, but these too tend to be minority measures by those who can afford them. On the land, oak gateposts are an expensive luxury where galvanised metal reigns supreme. This trend up-market, which was also clear in the late adaptations of some coppice crafts, is understandable: oak and other native trees are less amenable to processing by machine than conifers, slower to grow, and must therefore fetch higher prices to justify the investment in growing them.

above: Bradfield Woods, Suffolk (left), in 1973, when Whelnetham Woodwork still took some wood for the local rake factory. This area has since been developed by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust for recreational woodworking.

Coracle on the Teifi at Cenarth, Carmarthenshire (right), photographed in 1972, where, despite being held together with Tuftape, it was used for both fishing and recreational joyrides.

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Oak and Ash amongst timber cut in Lydney Park woodlands and seasoning in the estate sawmill yard.

The great majority of hardwood harvested in Britain is used as fuel. The 2021 edition of Forestry Statistics (Forest Research) records the felling and extraction of 830,000 green tonnes of hardwood in 2020, an increase of 39% on 2016, most of which came from private woodlands. Of this, 700,000 tonnes was used as wood fuel, 62,000 was delivered to sawmills and 68,000 found other unspecified uses. Since 1994, wood fuel use has greatly increased, the amount sent to sawmills has decreased, and use for wood panels and pulp has ceased. Much of the wood fuel is burned in power stations that have been converted to use biomass, and the rest is used in our homes. There is nothing new about the latter. Wood’s use for warmth and cooking goes back to distant prehistory, and it was the main fuel source for all levels of society until coal and latterly oil became available. The energy crisis of 1973 stimulated increased interest in wood stoves, whose popularity has continued to grow. When felled, the moisture content and calorific value of native timbers vary widely, from Ash at 32% moisture and 3,448kWh per green tonne to poplar at 64% and 1,610kWh per green tonne (Forestry Commission 2010). (By comparison, the conifers range from larch at 50% and 2,772 to Norway Spruce at 65% and 1,787.) Drying increases the calorific value of all woods to around 5,400kWh per tonne when oven-dry, with little difference between species.

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Utility and wellbeing That wood should be as dry as possible before it is burned has recently been reinforced by promised new restrictions on selling wet wood (more than 20% moisture) for wood-burners. When wood burns, it generates not only carbon dioxide, but also carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide and very small particulates, all of which add to the pollution from traffic that is blamed for increases in the incidence of heart attacks, strokes, dementia, cancer, asthma and many other diseases. The threats extend from cities to living rooms, where an open fire and a badly maintained wood-burner are equally polluting. The carbon dioxide released by combustion will be compensated for eventually if the wood source is managed sustainably, though it will take 100 years to do so if it has come from a 100-year-old stand, and it will not be offset at all if the land is converted to agriculture after felling. Further, much of the wood burned in power stations as ‘green energy’ is imported from the USA and elsewhere, thereby increasing carbon emissions. I burn wood in domestic wood-burners. It all comes from the trees around our own fields and garden, mainly from fallen trees and branches that have to be cleared away, or by lopping branches to reduce shade. Every bit is cut by bow saw, carried by hand to the wood store and split with wedges and mallet, all of which warms me every bit as much as the actual wood-burner. Ash, oak, birch, Holly and Beech are indeed the best fuel, but larger Hazel rods burn well, hawthorn too, and the timber of the maligned lime will also burn in the mix. The alternative is burning more oil. Timber of oak and other native trees is used for a wide variety of constructive purposes. Oak itself is used for floors, doors, window frames, tables, beds and other furniture. New houses are built with oak frames. At home, our living room has a double-sided oak bookcase made by a local cabinet-maker, Andrew Pyke, and floors of oak planks from the woodlands of Bernard Dru in Exmoor, who kindly showed us the silvicultural operations that produced the timber and allowed us to choose what elsewhere are called ‘character-grade’ planks for their interestingly varied grain patterns. The alternative might have been parquet flooring from Welsh oak logs, which allows smaller-dimension wood to be used for quality products.

Oak in our living room. The floor boards came from Exmoor; the bookcase was made of local timber by Andrew Pyke; and the wedge of bog oak came from near Woodwalton Fen.

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Trees and Woodlands Beech, Ash, Scots Pine, birch, Sycamore, Wild Cherry and other native trees all have their uses. Beech, to take another example, is widely used in structural timber, veneer, flooring, boatbuilding, furniture, cabinetry, musical instruments (piano pinblocks), plywood and turned objects. An interesting insight into the variety available can be found on the website of a Scottish furniture maker, Stephen Finch. Ash, which has a pronounced grain and becomes very hard when dried, has a tonal difference between heart and sapwood that allows striking designs for book-matched door panels. Spalted Beech, with its patterns of black veins generated by fungi, is in decorative demand. Elm has an irregular grain and is thus hard to work, but the wood has character, and burr elm produces attractive decorations. Oak timber is normally uniform, but British material more often has irregular grain. Birch and Sycamore both produce uniform wood, but Sycamore has a fine texture which gives a smooth finish, and its ripple wood is highly prized. Turned Yew wood is highly decorative due to its irregular structure and abundant knots.

Food Woodland has long been an important source of food, though we rarely think of it that way. As we have seen in earlier chapters, wooded commons were places where parishioners could pasture their cattle and fatten their swine under rights of pannage, and to this day those rights are exercised in the New Forest, where one can still encounter herds of cattle and foraging pigs. In the Forest of Dean, sheep badgers (common graziers) still turn out small flocks onto the verges of the forest roads. Royal forests were reserved for hunting, but remained commons and were more important as sources of fresh meat. Deer parks too were more sources of fresh meat than places of entertainment. Even ordinary coppices provided hay and intermittent pasturage. Latterly, many were devoted more to the slaughter of pheasants and the exclusion of peasants, which established circumstances in which the local population sometimes turned to poaching to maintain their own supply of Rabbits and other wild meat. Today in the Dean, Wild Boar hybrids roam the forest and feature on butchers’ shelves. When Charles I released them into the New Forest they were poorly received, because ‘the lightness of his hindquarters and the thinness of his flanks appear to great disadvantage in the ham and the flitch’ (Gilpin 1794). 306

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Utility and wellbeing Some of the trees were themselves food, and not just in the form of acorns for pigs and foliage for deer. Remarkably, in the Highlands and the Nordic countries, from at least the time of the Vikings, pinebark flour was a valuable fallback when other flours were unavailable after crop failure, cold weather or war. It is still promoted as a fibrerich, low-energy, gluten-free, trace-element-rich addition to bread, porridge and health bars. Edlin (1949) interpreted woodland crafts widely enough to note the role of trees and woodland in other foodstuffs. Smoke from burning logs was used to preserve and flavour fish and meat: birch was preferred for smoking haddocks and red herrings; oak and Beech were used for kippers, hams and bacon. Hazel nuts were gathered wild, and in Kent forms of super-hazel known as cobnuts and filberts were – and still are – cultivated in orchards. In 1949 they were evidently eaten as a dessert, used as oil or substituted for almonds. Sweet Chestnuts, too, were roasted or made into stuffing. My favourite dessert, marron glacé, is made from larger nuts grown in southern Europe. Beech nuts are edible if one has the patience to extract them from the husks; pine seeds are nutritious; but acorns are best left to pigs. Elder yields berries that were used as flavouring and made into wine. They still are if the flowers have not already been harvested for elderflower cordial. Other wild fruits come from the rose family. Pear is too rare to be significant; Wild Cherries are more stone than flesh but, if Blackbirds allow, yield a fine syrup if boiled with sugar and sieved. Crab Apple, hawthorn, Rowan and Whitebeam can be made into jelly, and rose hips into syrup. Sloes are too bitter to eat fresh, but may be eaten raw after frosting. They flavour gin and will make a syrup if boiled to a pulp with sugar. Much the best, however, are Cherry Plums. One of our hedges contains several that produce heavy crops of crimson, orange or yellow fruit if the flowers are not frosted in spring. They are not particularly tasty eaten raw, but can be rendered into a thick sauce that goes astonishingly well with ice cream and as flavouring in home-made desserts. Honey Bees originally formed colonies in hollow trees. Today, willows are an important spring nectar source for both wild and hive bees; lime and maple are later sources; but the largest tree sources are the hawthorn and other members of the rose family, including those in orchards. Heather and other wild herbs and shrubs are also nectar sources in wood-pastures and woodland rides. In Białowieża Forest in eastern Poland, villagers made wild bee hives by cutting holes into 307

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Franciszek Kostrzewski, Gezybobraie [Mushroom Picking], 1860. People foraging for fungi in what appears to be a lightly grazed Polish wood-pasture.

large Scots Pines: they can still be seen as elderly, open-grown trees scattered through allegedly pristine wilderness. Today, the most direct link between woodland and food must be wild fungi. Britain, along with Belgium and Denmark, has a reputation for mycophobia, but truffles and morels were hunted in southern English beechwoods and the original 19th-century forays among the funguses were partly motivated by the prospect of a fine repast that evening. Other countries, such as France, Italy, Poland, Lithuania and many Slavic countries, are mycophilic, with long traditions of foraging for personal consumption: the mid-19th-century painting by Franciszek Kostrzewski, Mushroom Picking, shows a group of men and women scattered around glades in a mature Polish forest gathering mushrooms into trugs. Today, foraging for food has become popular, fashionable and profitable in Britain as well, to the point where authorities have had to ban collecting in the New Forest. Some fungi are hallucinatory; one can easily imagine these playing a role in ancient religious ceremonies. The Gwaun valley woods in Pembrokeshire, and no doubt others, were recently magnets for people bent on ‘expanding their minds’. The great versatility of fungi mentioned at the start of this chapter extends to the wide variety of species collected in Britain and the rest of Europe (Spooner and Roberts 2005, Chapter 17).

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Changing climate and carbon sequestration Britain’s wildlife is clearly changing in response to changing climate (Beebee 2018). The dates when most leaves had fallen from Ash, Beech, Pedunculate Oak and Horse-chestnut were 10–18 days later in 1999–2008 than they had been in 1938–1946, and some species with short life cycles or high mobility have expanded their ranges. Responses are less readily demonstrated in vegetation, where changing management , pervasive eutrophication or other factors may be more influential. In recent decades, the two native lime species appear to be setting fertile seed more frequently than heretofore. Trees are neither short-lived nor mobile, so responses to climate change are bound to be slow, but there is no doubt that they respond nonetheless. Native species expanded from southern refugia when the ice retreated and the climate warmed, and ranges of individual tree species are now defined partly by climate. No two species have the same range, which implies that each species responds individually and that combinations of species would not move in concert when climate changes. Responses may be indirect: the spread of open Scots Pine woodland onto bogs during the dry Sub-Boreal period between 4,000 and 3,000 years ago was halted by waterlogging during the wetter Sub-Atlantic period. Trees may also be influenced indirectly via the influence of climate on pathogens and pests. Ecologists have attempted to predict the changes climate will bring about by defining the climate envelope of each species and then using climate-change projections to predict how the range of each species would change. This has practical implications. With the prospect of substantial climate change within the lifetime of trees now being planted, foresters are tempted to plant the trees that will grow best in the future climate, either different species or different provenances of species already present, taken from warmer parts of their range. Such measures seem reasonable where the objective is timber production, even though there must be a risk that projections will change, but there is an element of self-fulfilling prophesy that makes them less appropriate for nature reserves. Native species have high inherent variability and may adapt naturally. Climate change may be experienced more as changes in the incidence of extreme weather events than as steady increases in means. Beech in particular may be vulnerable, being notably prone to high winds (as in October 1987) and sensitive to droughts (as in 309

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Trees and Woodlands the summer of 1976). Nevertheless, wholesale replacement of Beech by some species introduced from warmer, drier or less windy lands seems premature. After all, the main impacts of the 1976 drought were felt in the apparently secure centre of Beech’s range, not in the fringes (Cavin and Jump 2017). In any case, Beech has recovered well from the 1976 drought, and we could always plant more oak in place of Beech if we worry about drought and wind. Since woodland holds so much more carbon than other habitats, excepting peatlands (Gregg et al. 2021), so more woodland would help mitigate climate change. Representative values of 265 and 354 tonnes per hectare are given for 30-year-old and 100-year-old mixed broadleaved woodland respectively (of which 151t/ha was in the soil in both age classes), whereas peatlands can store up to six times more than this. Peatlands, however, accumulate additional carbon very slowly, whereas young woodland is the fastest accumulator of all. The values given can only be approximations, for woodland biomass varies according to its age and management regime. Short-rotation silvicultural systems such as coppice maintain a lower average biomass than long-rotation systems such as continuous-cover high forest, and much lower than woodland left unharvested. Some measure of the latter came from the old-growth stands of Lady Park Wood, where carbon stores of 175 tonnes per hectare for carbon in the tree biomass and 111 for carbon in soil were modest compared with the values given by Natural England (Hale et al. 2019). Adding to the woodland area will sequester large amounts of carbon, but decades must pass for it to accumulate. We can keep carbon out of the atmosphere by retaining mature woodland, even if the timber is harvested on rotation, and using wood in long-lasting constructions, such as furniture and timber framing for buildings. Changes in farming practice will sequester more in the short term, if only because agriculture occupies more of the land. More woodland is not necessarily a contribution in all circumstances: afforestation of peatlands may release more carbon from drying peat than it stores in growing trees.

Trees, erosion and river health Forests influence their environment. In the distant past, forest destruction by felling, grazing and fire led to extensive erosion, and it continues today. How many times recently have we heard 310

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Utility and wellbeing how cloudbursts in distant countries have caused mudslides that have overwhelmed settlements with tragic loss of life, then noticed in the reports that forests had previously been felled from the slopes above? We also read repeatedly of tropical rainforest being logged, burned and converted to cultivation and ranch lands, then of the soil degradation that follows. Of course, it was woodland destruction that created farmland and human living space in the first place, but there are enough circumstances where the damage caused by deforestation has outweighed the benefits. Some people have known this for a long time. In the mid-19th century George Perkins Marsh (1864) noted that when forests were cleared, springs dried up, but flooding increased in the catchment into which the forest streams drained. Rain falling on forest is released slowly and evenly because it penetrates the ground and is soaked up by litter and soil. Clearance raises the temperature of the ground surface, eliminates the spongy litter, reduces the proportion of rainfall that evaporates directly back from vegetation, facilitates run-off and thus turns naturally even flows into spates and droughts. In a naturally forested catchment, fallen timber gravitates towards stream beds, where it creates small pools and falls, further slowing run-off. This knowledge did not inhibit his countrymen from logging the forests of the Appalachians and causing rivers – in the words of one eyewitness – to run like porridge. Reforestation of deforested catchments quickly reverses these changes. In parts of Europe, the logical conclusions were drawn and acted on much earlier. In 1397, the people of Andermatt, Switzerland, banned the felling of Norway Spruce on slopes above their houses and the removal of branches and cones (Brang et al. 2006). This and other Alpine villages needed protection, not only from floods, but also against snow avalanches, rock falls, shallow landslides, debris flows and erosion. Trees halted falling stones; tree crowns intercepted snow and released it slowly; roots bound soil and prevented shallow landslides; litter reduced surface erosion and built organic matter in soil, which increased water-holding capacity; and fallen dead trees retarded erosion. With all this forgotten, forest clearance in the 19th century led to landslides and severe floods and then a reaction in the form of tighter forest regulation and a general infilling of the forests with regeneration. Now, half of Swiss forests are managed as selection forests, which involves maintaining permanent tree cover of late-succession trees, such as Beech and Silver Fir, by small-group 311

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The forest on the slopes above Bosco Gurin, Ticino, Switzerland, protects the village from avalanches.

selection ellings with rotations o 250–400 years. In effect, they mimic the small-scale aspect of natural disturbance regimes, but not the occasional large-scale disturbances. In Britain, woodland clearance and concomitant soil erosion happened long ago. The soils o the Lake District ells were washed into the lakes in prehistory. Lowland rivers of the English Midlands normally flow between cliffs o alluvium, deposited by floods rom the Bronze Age onwards, but continuing in some places until recent centuries (Canti 2009). Woodland clearance per se was only part of the problem: the cultivation and hard grazing that followed increased the rate of soil erosion by one or two orders of magnitude above the pre-clearance rate. Under natural conditions, riparian woodland would interact with rivers to create diversity in both (Peterken and Hughes 1995). Trees all into channels and create blockages which deflect the main flow into banks, eroding bank aces and leaving deposition shoals. As the channels move, they destroy woodland on one side, but provide new substrates on the other that trees will colonise (Chapter 7). However, the relationship between trees and rivers has largely been destroyed. Only ragments o floodplain woodland remain

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in Britain. Upland catchments have been deforested, lowland streams have mostly been ditched, and woods everywhere have only minimal contact with watercourses. Trees generally line the banks of Borderland rivers in their middle reaches, but the Wye, which I can see as I write and which is often perceived as relatively natural, still runs brown in floods because of ploughing in the catchment or green due to run-off from chicken farms in Wales. The 2014 floods in the Somerset Levels were blamed on lack of dredging, but the moors and farms in the upper catchment have been drained with increasing efficiency in recent decades, thereby increasing the flood risk to farms and settlements downstream. And, before that, the natural forests had been cleared. Nevertheless, the Rivers Trust is clear that ‘rivers love trees’ and is implementing this through its Woodlands for Water schemes. Among the benefits the Trust cites are the food and shelter they provide for fish, regulation of water temperature in hot spells, the protection they afford from pesticides and phosphates running off farmland, and stabilisation of stream banks. We now recognise that holding back water high in the catchment will mitigate flooding lower down, and see trees as part of the solution, even though the scientific evidence for

Gallery woodland lining a backwater on the middle reaches of the Tay.

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above: Flooding on the Somerset Levels, February 2014, might have been mitigated by retaining and planting more trees in the upper catchment.

right: Porous headwater dams have been built across headwater streams in Forestry Commission plantations above Pickering, North Yorkshire.

this is ambiguous (Stratford et al. 2017). They prevent some rainfall reaching the ground and reduce surface run-off by maximising the ability of rainwater to penetrate into the ground, and logs can be built into leaky dams that restore the restraint once exercised by accumulated woody debris in natural forests. Forest cover has been restored to parts of the uplands, but during the 20th century it took a form that could scarcely be less natural. Sitka Spruce and other conifers were planted in extensive forests of necessarily even-aged stands. Most were on moorland that required 314

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Utility and wellbeing draining to enable the trees to grow well, and inevitably erosion rates increased (Soutar 1989). In the late 20th century, this was reinforced by drainage of upland pastures and mires. The effects were felt downstream in the form of spates, erosion and acidified water that spoiled fish stocks and added to lowland flooding. Upland conifer forests also trap particulates and add to the acidifying effect in streams running from inherently base-poor catchments. Latterly, mitigation measures such as silt traps, stopping drains short of natural watercourses and buffer zones beside streams have been implemented. Further, the increasing broadleaved component helps to neutralise acid.

Living with trees Trees are also important in ameliorating our immediate surroundings. We can see this in the upland sheepwalks, where a mature Sycamore often stands out beside an isolated farmstead, and in the arable lowlands, where villages are still marked from a distance by clusters of trees amongst bare farmland. Neither motorway service areas nor new housing estates would be complete without their scatter of whitebeams and other small trees. In towns and cities, not only do trees counterpoint the rectilinearity of the built environment, they also provide welcome shade in summer and a chance to shelter from the heat on the hottest days. As Roland Ennos (2015) explained, the relief they afford comes more through reducing the ‘physiologically equivalent temperature’ than by any reduction in ambient temperature. The former is the relief we feel when sun is not striking the skin directly, which can be 7–15°C less than in direct sunlight. Trees will also cool buildings and soak up a wide range of urban pollutants. Of course, this comes at some cost in necessary tree surgery and inevitable leaf litter, bird splatter and coatings of honeydew. Having trees around our houses can increase property values by well over 5%. They lend character to a house, add a dimension to a garden and may afford some privacy. However, they grow larger than people think, need maintenance, suppress herbs and block sunlight, whilst a tree in the wrong place may threaten the structure of the house and relations with neighbours. Proximity to woodland will also be important for some house buyers, depending partly on whether the house stands in sun or shade. 315

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Arborescent cityscape of London from Parliament Hill.

Screens of various sorts can also be created with trees. This was well understood by landowners who planted shelterbelts to reduce wind and limit the view from, and into, country parks, and by suburban gardeners who grow hedges between them and the neighbours. In the arable countryside, surviving hedges shield road verges and green lanes from some of the lateral drift of fertiliser from fields. The most conspicuous modern use of wooded belts as planted screens is along motorways and other busy new roads, to protect us from visual intrusion, chemical effluents and noise. Increasingly, as we drive along lowland motorways we speed through a forested canyon, as unaware of neighbouring communities and countryside as those that live there hope to be unaware of the traffic. Tree screens along railways have developed naturally on lightly managed embankments, where they can become a source of delays due to ‘leaves on the line’. Trees are able to clean the air and absorb harmful airborne particles and gaseous pollutants, including toxins such as nitrogen oxides, ammonia and sulphur dioxide through their leaves, bark and roots. This improves the air quality in the microclimate around the trees and contributes to a healthier and cleaner environment overall. Trees also supply us with oxygen, and soak up the harmful carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

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Trees for mind and body Education Forest schools are 21st-century innovations that, according to the Forest Schools Association website, ‘offer all learners regular opportunities to achieve and develop confidence and self-esteem through hands-on learning experiences in a woodland or natural environment with trees’. And they need it: as Patrick Barkham (2020) has related, today’s children grow up divorced from nature, but benefit from access to almost any element of the wild. Some forest schools take place in real woodland and plantations remote from habitations, others in bushy corners of the primary school grounds. All offer tuition in the natural environment through a process of discovery, opportunities for artistic activities and learning basic survival skills outside the domestic setting; and perhaps a hint of adventure outside the safe confines of the classroom. Forest schools hark back to the Scout camps of my youth, which were pitched in a variety of environments from woodland glades to well-hedged fields and scrubby commons. There we learned much about survival, resilience, navigation in a rural environment and

Native woodland lines the M48 near Caldicot, but elsewhere, in less wooded districts, most motorway screens have been planted.

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A small forest school in operation near Dinas Powys, Vale of Glamorgan.

cooperation within a group. We gathered wood and cut small branches for our fires, on which we cooked our meals, and encountered an element of adventure, exploring unknown countryside. Like today’s children in forest schools, we too sat on logs arranged in a circle around the camp fire. Most forest schools provide all-too-brief interludes in the safeindoors life of early learning, but they can be more. Two examples from Arboreal (Cooper 2016) show what is possible with prolonged and concentrated familiarity with woodland. In ‘Cusop Dingle’, Nina Lyon describes how this deeply incised wooded valley on the border between England and Wales has become a scene of make-believe and adventure for her children growing up nearby. In ‘Discovering the spinney’, Deb Wilenski follows the responses of young schoolchildren when given the opportunity to roam in a wild patch of woodland close to their school. Under the guidance of a supervisor who built ideas, questions and exercises out of their early responses, they brought into being a fantasy of mythical creatures, hidden underworlds and changed perspectives mixed with sober reality, all expressed as games, poems and maps. In preparation, a few paths were cut, but interestingly the children were most fascinated by ‘the tangled qualities of the woods, exactly the parts we didn’t cut back’.

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Health and wellbeing As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in 2020 and people were obliged to lock down with only limited scope for external refreshment, many turned to the countryside, particularly to the woods. At weekends, rural car parks were full and woodland paths were worn flat with people seeking both an opportunity to meet friends at a safe distance and a complete contrast from unblinking screens and the hard geometry of the built environment. It’s not just the exercise that helps, but freeing the mind by direct contact with relatively wild places and free-living wild species and thereby improving our mental and physical health. Blessed with one of the sunniest springs of recent years, nature provided a great relief for a nation in lockdown (McCarthy et al. 2020). Another contribution to Arboreal (Cooper 2016) indicates that the benefits of woodland can go beyond refreshment to health and rehabilitation. In ‘Heartwood’, Tobias Jones notes that alienation from the natural world creates everything from depression to behavioural disorders (‘nature deficit disorder’), and that trees in particular ‘soothe, heal and make whole’. So, at Windsor Hill Wood, Somerset, he and his family provided a temporary home and a woodland refuge for recovering drug abusers and other individuals at low points in their lives, where they learned survivalist skills within a small community and recovered a degree of mental and physical selfreliance. This was not a matter of money and profit, but a practical application of the deep-seated links between people and woodland. Trees in towns and cities become particularly important for health and wellbeing and for anyone who cannot visit the countryside. We hear, for example, that patients in hospitals recover faster and more completely if they can see trees out of the window. The people of Sheffield protested mightily when contractors set about felling their street trees, and one can see why. Partly it is the comfort, for, as mentioned above, trees provide shade and mitigate the heat-island effects in summer. Partly it is health from the antibacterial phytoncides emitted by trees. Perhaps, too, it is an improvement in mood, for trees provide a counterpoint to the built environment, movement in contrast to static buildings, and, if they are deciduous, an enhanced sense of the seasons. They also enhance the sense of scale of large buildings, especially when dwarfed beside a skyscraper. Some are memorials, landmarks and places to gather, such as the many ancient 319

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Trees and Woodlands limes in French and German towns and the late, lamented Ramsbury Elm (Marren 2016) and the Black Poplar of Aston on Clun. Trees also provide places for birds to perch and thereby bring a natural element into an artificial environment. And it’s not just street trees, but also the mature trees in town squares, parks and cemeteries. The health benefits of trees have taken a new turn recently with the rising interest in forest bathing, which broadly amounts to spending time in a forest to reduce stress and feel a sense of wellbeing. Originating in Japan, this is a form of ecotherapy, or nature therapy, which is a name for any form of contact with nature, from adventure therapy through green exercise, to nature-based arts and crafts to wilderness experiences. Trendy though it sounds, it makes sense to me. After all, I have been doing it all my life and called it fieldwork.

Recreation The pandemic of 2020 introduced even more people to the pleasures and solace of walking in woods, and reinforced the view that woods are just as much places for exercise, companionship, contemplation and a change from ordinary living as they are places for growing timber. In the Middle Ages, when most people were rural, recreational usage took the form of royal forests and chases where the sovereign and his nobility took part in highly ritualised hunts governed by a strict terminology, which set them apart from the rest of society. These hunts were replaced in later centuries by fox hunting and pheasant shooting, which also incorporated customary rituals, reinforced

A Carrion Crow still struggling in a gamekeeper’s trap somewhere in eastern England. Such sights and worse were a common feature of woodland surveying in the 1970s.

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Utility and wellbeing social hierarchies and applied harsh penalties to poachers. Like the medieval hunts in forests and parks, they ranged over a variety of habitats, but woodland provided the essential cover. Enclosure of the commons enabled coverts, scrubs and belts to be planted in small, well-spaced patches across farmland and the former open grazings. Here, pheasant preservation became fashionable about 1800 and continues to this day. It helped maintain coppicing long after the markets for coppice had declined and latterly provided an incentive to maintain open rides and indeed to spare the woods from destruction for agriculture. The cost has been the grotesque ‘washing lines’ of dead vermin putrefying along the ride sides. Walking started to become popular in the 18th century. Early tourists boated down the Wye to Chepstow, from where many would walk next day to the Piercefield Cliffs and the Wyndcliff, both woodlands with views over the river. When William Wordsworth composed his lines above Tintern in 1798, he did so during a long walk up and down the Wye Valley while visiting friends. Mass walking in woods seems to have burgeoned in the 19th century. Schama (1995) tells the story of Claude François Denecourt, ‘the man who invented hiking’. He arrived in Fontainebleau in 1832 and set out to explore the forest’s interior, naming individual great trees and eventually marking lengthy routes (‘promenades’) with coloured signs. By 1848, these appealed to ‘a whole new democracy of hikers’, who had recently gained easy access from Paris on the new railway, and by the 1850s there was a great network of trails with guide books to the sites/sights. What he provided was access to the wild with the assurance of a safe return, an idea that would have resonated with Henry David Thoreau, who, in delivering a lecture to the Concord Lyceum in 1851 extolling the virtues of walking, declared that ‘all good things are wild and free’ (Thoreau 1851). Early tourism and recreational use of the countryside was closely linked to the artistic appreciation of landscape (Chapter 10), and through this to a direct impact on the woods themselves. Recreational usage continued to have links to the higher reaches of society, but it spread to the general public through the work of the Commons Preservation Society and culminated in statutory preservation of woodland. Like the réserves artistiques in Fontainebleau, the ancient wood-pastures of the New Forest survived partly because they were ‘ornamental’. The Society was founded in 1865 under the leadership of George Shaw Lefevre (later Lord Eversley) to preserve open spaces 321

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Walking in the New Forest.

for rapidly increasing urban populations. The immediate threats were to Wimbledon Common and Epping Forest, but their work was in the tradition of resistance to the Statute of Merton, 1235, which established a legal basis for the enclosure of waste by the lords of the manor, thereby further enriching the rich and depriving the poor. The Society helped save several of the accessible ancient woods we now take for granted, not just the New Forest, but also Berkhamsted Common, Epping Forest, Ashdown Forest, the Forest of Dean and Burnham Beeches (Eversley 1910). Fox hunting and gamekeeping continue, but today far more woods provide opportunities for walking, cycling, paintball games, artistic pursuits and much else. Some remain off-limits or accessible only along footpaths, but increasingly we regard woods as places to roam. The countryside agencies, including the Forestry Commission, Woodland Trust, National Trust, Wildlife Trusts and local authorities, have variously promoted access and provided facilities for recreation, knowing that woods can absorb many visitors without diluting their enjoyment. Even in town, woodland screens people from each other and the urban world, thereby providing a chance to ‘get away from it all’. Once within a wood, there is freedom to roam and enjoy a touch of wilderness, though most visitors stick to paths.

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Remembrance The popularity of woodland burials must have some connection to the solace and tranquillity afforded by a partially wooded and shaded environment. Most woodland burial sites in my experience include both glades and real woodland, the balance being determined partly by the initial state of the site. Some are forms of wood-meadow – groups of trees and shrubs in a mosaic with grassland mown only as much as it needs to be. At the Colney burial ground near Norwich, the proceedings take place in an auditorium with a great picture window giving close-up views of a mixed pine and oak wood, an emotionally and visually restful setting for a sobering occasion. Traditionally, cemeteries were open, but some have latterly been overtaken by woodland, most notably at Highgate.

Woodland burial ground near Pwllheli, Gwynedd.

d By teasing apart these benefits from woodland and trees into separate products and services, I may have obscured an important point, that they all hang together. As so many Forestry Commission properties now demonstrate, productive timber plantations also yield opportunities for walkers and cyclists. Large, continuously coppiced woods provided not just near-optimal wildlife habitat but also supported local society and its economy. The screens lining a motorway are wildlife habitats. The riparian strip not only cleans the river and embellishes the landscape, but it also provides a longdistance wooded corridor for wildlife movement through a habitat network. Trees planted as a windbreak for an isolated farm will also be used as rookeries. Urban trees not only ameliorate the climate and clean the air, but beautify the scene and provide habitat. This comprehensive relationship between people, trees and woodland has underpinned our lives for millennia.

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F

chapter ten

rom the earliest time, trees have been a focus of religious and cultural life. As the largest plant on earth and eternal mystical emblem, the tree has been a

major source of inspiration for myth and legend. Trees symbolise longevity, strength and pride. Tree cults, in which a single tree or a grove of trees is worshipped, have flourished at different times almost everywhere. In ancient Egypt, several types of tree appear in mythology and art and notably the sycamore acquired special significance. Trees also figure prominently in the culture and mythology of Ancient Greece – the oak tree for example was sacred to the god Zeus and the Dryads were forest nymphs who guarded trees. The Celts believed trees to be sources of sacred wisdom … Tim Craven, Under the Greenwood (2013, p.11)

Trees and woodland have always meant more to us than timber, firewood, habitat and environmental services. They are part of our imaginative life, reflect our experience and beliefs about our place in the world, represent ideas about how the world works and, through metaphors and symbolism, have helped us to understand ourselves and communicate that understanding to others. One particular tree has become my symbol of passing time and family memory. When I was born, my parents planted a Silver Birch in our garden on the fringes of London. It grew large enough to be climbed in my teen years and later to shade my young family during visits back home. My parents eventually moved elsewhere, but I have occasionally returned to see ‘my’ tree, watching its trunk thicken, noticing on my last visit that the current owners had removed the low branch from which I started my climbs. It was, like me, less vigorous than it once was. Another tree is my symbol of stability. It is a large Beech growing on the lip of the Smugglers’ Path entrance

opposite page:

Asher Durand’s In the Woods, 1855, evokes natural old-growth woodland in the Catskill Mountains of New York State.

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above: Smugglers’ Path,

Ridley Wood, as shown in a 1930 etching by William Corbin (left), and in a photo taken in 2021 (right). The Beech balancing precariously on the lip of the sunkway is almost unchanged, unlike most old Beech in this wood, most of which have died, fallen or lost large limbs.

to Ridley Wood in the New Forest, the first wood I ever entered. My mother must have carried me as a 10-month-old baby across the heaths from Picket Post and walked under this tree on the way in. Ten years earlier, my great uncle, William Corbin, had featured it in an etching, and it remains there still, hardly changed. This chapter considers where trees and woodland stand, and have stood, in our culture, tracing what seem to me to be the main ramifications. It recognises that art and science express different aspects of our responses to, and understanding of, woodland, but that they overlap and can reinforce one another. Thus, Anne Anderson (2013), discussing Graham Sutherland’s Green Lane, painted in 1945 against a background of war, saw ‘sinister undertones’ that reinforced the belief that nature could be far from benign, wilfully vicious or implacably indifferent. This forcefully expresses what ecologists understand about natural woodland as places of occasional violence and perpetual, unrelenting competition. I have tried to distinguish themes, but this is only possible up to a point, for they are all linked in complex ways that match the physical and physiological links that bind together the trees in a forest. A recurring feature is the long-standing ambivalence of people towards trees and woods and the shifting balance between

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Cultural appreciation of trees and woodland positive and negative attitudes (Thomas 1983). Thus, woods were regarded as wild and hostile; progress was once defined by clearance of woodland and enlargement of farmland; yet at the same time outlaws saw woods as refuges; and in modern times the very wildness of woods is appreciated by an increasingly urban society. Variety and contradictions are the essence of what woods mean to us. Our understanding and appreciation of woods has changed down the centuries. Take Sherwood Forest as an example (Watkins 1998). The medieval royal forest was valued by the aristocracy for hunting and venison and by the commoners for its pasturage, the fodder that could be lopped from pollard oaks, and the lop, top and offal wood available for their fires. By the late 18th century it was still seen as a resource by Crown agents, but the timber was decayed, the deer had vanished and there was no regeneration. By then, however, local aristocrats valued the old trees for their size and curiosity, but not enough to stop them cutting wide rides through the forest to demonstrate their reach and power. At the same time, the ‘remarkable oaks’ became objects of antiquarian interest: their great age was estimated and attempts were made to link them with ancient Britons and druids. Increasingly, under the rules of picturesque artistry, the oaks were appreciated because they were ‘blasted, ragged’ and half-dead. In 1820, Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe popularised Sherwood as the haunt of Robin Hood, and shortly after that an American visitor delighted over the ancient oaks as ‘a genuine wild wood, of primitive and natural growth’: the ‘veteran oaks’ were ‘noble and picturesque in their decay’, their ruins

The Major Oak in Sherwood Forest, drawn by Christopher Thompson in the early 19th century.

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The Piper at the Gates of Dawn: an illustration by Paul Bransom for Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, 1913.

‘giving evidence of their ancient grandeur’. Today, medieval legend attracts visitors in droves and usefully reinforces the modern interest in nature conservation and veteran trees. The multifarious, interconnected meanings we attach to trees and woodland have been expressed in essays, memoirs, diaries, letters and other art forms. Architects have mimicked the form of woods in the columns of cathedral naves, the vaulting supporting the roof and the fine tracery of great windows, and in this they echo the pagan belief in woods as places of spirits. Poets express their feelings and perceptions, inviting readers to make their own connections from their own experiences. Novelists use woods to define settings, establish mood and draw out aspects of the human condition. The earliest surviving story, the Epic of Gilgamesh, is built round a visit to mountain cedar forests to fell trees and vanquish some ogre. Dante’s Divine Comedy starts in a forest where Dante is spiritually disorientated. Music evokes and expresses woodland, but not always successfully. Neither songs from William Bird’s 16th-century Will Yow Walke the Woods soe Wylde nor the first Pink Floyd album would conjure up woodland for me were it not for their titles. More successful is the quiet and reflective Bohemian Woods by Antonin Dvorak, or the well-known Tales from the Vienna Woods by Johann Strauss II, which bring to mind a stroll through sunny beechwoods in early summer. Arnold Bax’s November Woods evokes the gloomy ambience of woods on an overcast day in winter. In Haydn’s 73rd symphony, or ‘Autumn’ in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, we hear the exhilaration of hunting. A magical open-air concert my wife and I attended on Hampstead Heath was performed against the backdrop of Ken Wood. In the Chilterns, a lone bagpiper I witnessed practising amongst the trees of a beechwood was not as hair-raising as reading as a child the ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ in The Wind in the Willows, an evocation of Pan, the god of the wild.

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Painting and drawing Artists have long used trees to frame views and provide a vertical structure to horizontal scenes (Watkins 2018). They seem particularly drawn to the multitude of form, colour, texture, space, pattern and mood that woods afford, but many of their works address social and political issues or express religious beliefs. Nevertheless, artistic representations of trees and woodland have not always delighted ecologists and naturalists. Thus Oliver Rackham (2006): ‘Go into a gallery, take a landscape painting at random, and ask “What tree is that?” Surprisingly seldom can you give a definitive answer. Representing trees is perhaps the most difficult task in art, and few artists succeed.’ And Richard Mabey (2010): For a tradition that has glorified individual trees in every detail from bark fissure to bursting bud, the way woods are generalised in English landscape painting is striking. Trees have been marginalised, domesticated and simplified. They sit as amorphous lumps on hilltops, or nestle in deep valleys like comfortable green hearth rugs; they ornament formal views and are reduced to political symbols of status and wealth. If trees are brought into the foreground, or into closer focus, it is to frame other, more significant, business. Artists might reply ‘true, but photographic reality is not what we are seeking.’ To this, Richard has responded ‘it’s not about naturalistic versus impressionistic representation, but about meaning. The mythologising of woods into undifferentiated green blurs in art has had profound political and cultural consequences which we are still suffering from.’ My own appreciation of art and what it says about how people respond to woodland has been shaped by collaborating with the Arborealists, a group of professional artists with a particular interest in trees and woodland. Working en plein air, they observed Lady Park Wood every bit as carefully as myself when I record as a research ecologist, and they emerged like myself with sketches, notes and photographs (and sometimes, unlike me, with completed artworks). The finished paintings and drawings display artists’ multifarious styles, their awareness of colour and light and their sense of design, observation of form and mastery of painting techniques. They also express their particular feelings and perceptions about the woods, their sense of belonging to a group or tradition and their awareness of 329

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Fiona MacIntyre, one of the Arborealists, in Lady Park Wood in 2017, drawing in charcoal and shading with soil taken from the scene she was drawing.

artistic fashions and the relationship between woods and society as a whole. In so far as they want to convey a precise message, artists – or commentators on their behalf – often resort to words, but they also invite us to follow our own thoughts. The Arborealists did not change my understanding of woodland ecology, but they showed me how other people look at woods and what they feel about them. Artistic representations of woodland in Western art were shaped by the dominance of Christianity from 4th-century Rome to the 16th-century Renaissance (Bazarov 1981). Earlier, Roman frescoes sometimes depicted pastoral landscapes with trees, if not woodland, but medieval art placed religious images in the foreground and either excluded the rest of the landscape or relegated ordinary life, trees and woods to the background. The 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry is an exception – non-religious art which shows timber being lopped from trees to build the Norman invasion fleet. Towards the end of the Middle Ages the artistic rules were relaxed enough to permit prominent representations of trees in managed landscapes. By then, Islamic learning had helped to stimulate a reawakening of interest in nature among Europeans. Roger Bacon (13th century) sought knowledge from observation. St Francis enjoyed the natural world. Both, like St Augustine, regarded the natural world as God’s creation. Landscape painting eventually re-emerged

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in medieval religious paintings as decorative backgrounds to human activities. In the celebrated Tres Riches Heures (1409–1415) the Limborg brothers decorated the Duc de Berry’s Book of Hours with detailed depictions of observed landscapes, including for December a successful boar hunt backed by an even-aged high forest. By the late 15th and early 16th century these landscapes become more prominent and naturalistic until some, such as Simon Bening’s, were pure landscapes. The first painting with a locatable landscape was by Konrad Witz, Walking on Water (1444), which depicts a Christian story against a background of fields and a small wood on the shore of Lake Geneva. This period produced the first pictures of woodland where the structure and contents are realistically observed. The backgrounds of Giovanni Bellini’s Assassination of St Peter Martyr (1507) and Orpheus (c. 1515) show woodmen about to fell a belt of mature broadleaves and out-grown oak coppice, respectively. Albrecht Altdorfer painted Satyr Family (1507) and St George and the Dragon (1510) within detailed landscapes containing old-growth stands that some commentators have called ‘primeval’. Gillis van Coninxloo, a Flemish landscape painter who lived for many years in Germany, evoked in Forest Landscape the darkness and oppression of natural woodland interiors. Representations of woodland of this period rarely display the exact observation of reality found in Albrecht Dürer’s Das grosse

Gillis van Coninxloo, Forest Landscape, c. 1600.

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Miniature from the Grimaldi Breviary, November, c. 1510. The artist was Gerard Horenbout, working with the Benings.

Rasenstück (1503), but there are exceptions, notably miniatures by Simon Bening and associates. November in the Grimani Breviary (1510) features pigs foraging for acorns on the margins of oak high forest, whilst beyond the fields Ash–oak high forest shows signs of small-group felling. Bening’s November in his Labour of the Months, was so exactly observed that it was analysed by Oliver Rackham (2006). Behind the foreground scene of wild pigs being killed and eaten by dogs, it shows the interior of a coppice-with-standards wood somewhere in the Low Countries. Like most coppices, it has been cut in stages, with patches of older regrowth, some younger regrowth, but mostly coppice cut last winter. Since last summer shoots have sprung from the trunk of an oak standard and some of the coppice regrowth shows the characteristic broad, heart-shaped leaves of lime. Apart from the oak and lime, Rackham identifies Aspen, Broom, elm, Ivy, Male-fern, Fly Honeysuckle and the fungus Oudmansiella radicata. These miniatures, and The Seasons by Pieter Breughel the Elder, heralded an era of landscape painting in which trees and woodland were prominent. They gave shape, scale and perspective to images ranging from the pastoral, in which trees were part of agricultural scenes, to the picturesque and sublime, where trees and woodland were part of rugged, often frightening, scenery. The principal British exponents included Thomas Gainsborough, with his popular picture of Cornard Wood, Paul Sandby, who drew scenes in Windsor Forest, and John Constable, who mainly depicted mature trees in pastoral settings. Some of the ancient Beeches drawn by Sandby are truly remarkable growths, depicted in detail, as befits an artist who started life as a military draughtsman. Wood-pastures developed into an artistic obsession in the 19th century, led by Theodore Rousseau, Camille Corot, Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Peña, Claude Monet and other Barbizon artists working in Fontainebleau Forest, a place that citizens of Paris could reach by train to enjoy contact with wilderness. Wood-pastures have several artistic advantages. They display complex vertical and horizontal

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structure in a great variety of tree forms, including large, old and distinctive individual trees; an infinite variety of glades with varied patterns of light and shade; and contrasts between the strong, vertical trunks and clouds of foliage. To that was added the ambience of wild woodland of great antiquity, leavened by a scatter of domestic stock and local people collecting firewood, which linked the scene to pastoral landscapes. British artists not only anticipated this fashion but reinforced it: Benjamin West, John Linnell, Samuel Palmer, John Martin, Miles Birket Foster and Thomas Creswick painted Windsor Forest, Richmond Park, Lullingstone Park and Burnham Beeches, all within easy reach of London (Payne 2017). The New Forest inspired Frederick Golden Short to produce several fine, photorealistic images of the wood-pastures, which, unlike those of Fontainebleau, are still there for us to visit. With the invention of photography in the 19th century, landscape painting was free to become more impressionistic. Numerous photorealistic paintings of woodland and landscapes with trees were still produced, but they were less highly regarded in the artistic world. The wooded scene was no longer something to copy, but a

Claude Monet, The Bodmer Oak, Fontainebleau Forest, 1865.

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Trees and Woodlands springboard to represent patterns of form and colour and to indulge fancy and imagination. Realism is sometimes left so far behind that it is difficult to connect the resulting images with the trees and shrubs that inspired them. There seems to be a much greater interest in the rigid geometry of plantations and the fanciful shapes of exposed roots, fallen branches and ancient trees. Some artists used trees to drive home a wider message, notably the paintings from the Western Front by the Nash brothers. Even when trees and woodland are the main subject, they are presented with the exaggerated shapes of Paul Nash’s paintings of Wittenham Clumps or the free and colourful daubs of the Canadian Group of Seven. Personally, I admire the simplified, realistic, silhouette images of, say, the LNER’s 1923 travel poster of Epping Forest, so I’m probably not qualified to comment further, but readers can sample the variety produced by living artists in books by the Arborealists (2013, 2016). Most woods and trees in paintings have clearly been affected by the presence of people. If they are not obviously even-aged, singlespecies plantations or manifestly thinned stands, they are components of carefully contrived landscapes or agricultural settings. One can understand this preference. Managed woodlands and parklands were often carefully contrived to be beautiful; the picture may have been painted with a sub-text of prosperity; and ancient pollards have the irregularity of form that played to the imagination of Romantics. Much managed woodland is even-aged, ecologically dull, but artistically rewarding. Its clear perspectives, angled shadows, fallen trees and stark geometry of parallel verticals superimposed against level horizons make dramatic pictures. Even so, it was unusual to see pictures of silvicultural operations actually taking place, except in devotional miniatures, where the labours of the month were the point. Examples include William Havell’s Woodcutters at Park Place, Henley (c. 1826), depicting a felling operation in a Chiltern beechwood, and John Everett Millais’ The Woodman’s Daughter (1851), which has a thinned pine plantation in the background and a foreground of a year’s growth of oak underwood with the woodman actually raising an axe. More often, we see clear signs of recent management in the form of stumps and felled timber alongside other activities taking place in or by woodland. The cover design of H. L. Edlin’s New Naturalist 32 by Clifford and Rosemary Ellis is unique in my experience in demonstrating the close control foresters exert over conifer plantations. 334

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Cultural appreciation of trees and woodland Identifying natural woodland in artworks is bound to be guesswork. It is also limited to images of woodland interiors, where one can see the stand structure. Pictures of microcosms – say, a bush leaning over a stream or a mossy log lying amongst leaf litter – lack enough context by which to judge. Panoramas of distant forests with billowing crowns could either be natural or a mature managed woodland. The early internal views of dark, wild forests by Altdorfer, Dürer and Coninxloo show natural woodland in the broad sense, but their woods cannot have escaped influence by people. Likewise, people have influenced the wood-pastures of Gainsborough, Sandby and the Barbizon artists via the pasturage regime, if not directly by felling and lopping. In my experience, the most convincing depictions of ‘virgin forests’ were painted by some of the Hudson River school of artists, whose works date from the second half of the 19th century when explorers were discovering the landscapes of North America. Albert Bierstadt painted famous images of the great west-coast forests, including Giant Redwood Trees of California (1874), which shows the spacious, endlessly ascending interior of virgin old-growth. But the picture I used for the cover of my Natural Woodland (1996) was Asher Durand’s In the Woods, painted in 1855 in the Catskill Mountains of New York State, which shows towering groves of mosscovered deciduous woodland (and one Eastern Hemlock) leaning over a small stream in which several fallen trees lie undisturbed, slowly rotting. Like other Hudson River artists, he thought that ‘The true province of Landscape Art is the representation of the work of God in the visible creation, independent of man, or not dependent on human action, further than as an accessory or an auxiliary’ (Roque 1987). In order to achieve this, he ‘advocated direct drawing from nature with as much realism as possible’, so he sketched in the woods and worked up the paintings back home from a multitude of astonishingly detailed and realistic drawings. I knew that In the Woods was not an objective and complete record of a real old-growth stand. Rather, it had been assembled from separate elements arranged to

Asher Durand, A Group of Trees, c. 1855: an artistic representation of virgin forest.

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Trees and Woodlands represent Durand’s notion of primeval forest. Christiana Payne tells me that Durand painted many smaller studies from nature, one of which, simply called A Group of Trees, seems to be a precursor of In the Woods, for it shows many of the same standing and fallen trees. At about the same time, Ivan Shishkin and other artists were painting natural woodlands in Russia. Most of Shishkin’s pictures of towering oak and pine groves resemble the works of the Barbizon artists more than Durand and the Americans, for most clearly show wood-pastures. Oak Grove (1887) might be in the New Forest, but for

above: Ivan Shishkin, Landscape with a Hunter, 1867. right: Ivan Shishkin, Wind-fallen Trees, 1888.

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Cultural appreciation of trees and woodland the absence of pollards. The Mast Tree Grove (1898) is a view into an old, grazed Scots Pine stand from which fallen dead wood has been removed to local hearths. Shishkin’s sketch for this picture shows a more confused disposition of trees and marginal saplings than the finished work, indicating that it, like Durand’s In the Woods, is an idealised image. Several pictures, such as Forest Cemetery (1893) and Wind-fallen Trees (1888), show old pine forests with carpets of mossy fallen spreadeagled and broken trees. We see no sign of humanity, but this is a forest type where plantations can easily look natural when they mature. Equally, in Morning in the Forest (1889) the old-growth pine forest behind the four bears playing on a fallen tree certainly looks primeval, but must be just as contrived. His most convincingly virgin forest is Landscape with a Hunter (1867), which shows natural, long-unmanaged, wet woodland in the island of Valaam, close to Finland. Its complex structure is implied by the sunshine streaming through a clearing onto a group of birches.

Woodland as wilderness Evolving in savannah, early humans must have found edges and openings safer than dense forest, and more rewarding places to hunt. Throughout most of the million years that humans have been present in Britain they lived in the openings around coasts and estuaries (Ashton 2017) and edgelands around forests with the large herbivores and carnivores that dominated their art. We can sense here the origins of the historic antipathy to dark, unbroken forests. ‘Wilderness’ as an idea has a fascinating history (Cronon 1995, Nash 1967, Thomas 1983). It originated in northern European languages as a place of wild beasts and uncultivated land, and such land was covered in untamed forest. In Britain, the association of woodland with the wild survives in ‘weald’, ‘wilds’ and related place names marking what were abundantly wooded districts. Further south, wilderness did not necessarily mean forested environments at all – the biblical wilderness was a desert – but, from the standpoint of civilisation, it was consistently remote, unproductive and dangerous. Despite this, Judeo-Christian traditions saw it as a sanctuary, a personal testing ground and a place to draw close to God. Until the late Middle Ages, people regarded wilderness as a horrible place for savages, an evil whose reduction signalled an advance in civilisation. By the 18th century, the forest was understood to be 337

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Replicas of Henry David Thoreau and the hut he lived in for two years, two months and two days while writing Walden. The original house was close to Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts.

contrary to civilisation. ‘In a country full of civilised inhabitants,’ wrote John Morton in 1712, the forest could not be ‘suffered to grow. It must give way to fields and pastures, which are of more immediate use and concern to life’ (Mabey 2010). Nevertheless, the concepts of the sublime and picturesque rose to prominence in the 18th century, and the relationship between God and nature became a basis of religion. There was even a fashion for wilderness areas in the gardens of great country houses – which, however, were far from wild. Lying between the formal gardens and the park, they were carefully designed groves with native trees permeated by a network of winding gravel and grassy paths where Elizabeth Bennet and Lady Catherine strolled in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The protagonists of real wilderness could, however, take only so much. Henry David Thoreau – he of ‘In wildness is the preservation of the world’ – left the relative security of Walden Pond on an excursion to Maine, hoping to find 338

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Cultural appreciation of trees and woodland genuine primeval America, but emerged feeling a greater respect for civilisation. The Maine wilderness was ‘even more grim and wild than you had anticipated’, a landscape ‘savage and dreary’, and he felt ‘more lone than you can imagine’ (quoted in Nash 1967). He decided that wilderness was best experienced as a refreshing holiday from civilisation, not a lifelong alternative. Ambivalence ruled. Today the idea of wilderness has become nuanced. Wilderness restoration now ranges from ‘Pleistocene restoration’, which in Britain would involve reintroducing elephants and other elements of the megafauna lost in prehistory, to creating small patches of natural-looking vegetation within large cities, which are merely wild relative to their surroundings. It has also detached itself from the little woodland that remained in Britain: now most people link the idea of wilderness with the coast and uncultivated mountains (Macfarlane 2007). Nevertheless, the rewilding movement clearly seeks self-maintaining ecosystems with minimal direct control by people, which in practice centres on woodland and its restoration.

Arthur Rackham’s illustration of the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, 1909.

Danger and disorientation With the spread of cultivation and pastoralism, home was unambiguously in open ground. Woodland had its uses, but it must have seemed relatively unattractive, hostile, dangerous, possibly mysterious and certainly less controlled. It became the ‘forest’, the land outside or beyond civilisation. The danger lay in Wolves, bears and other large, fierce animals, symbolised in the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. Even when these creatures were largely exterminated, forest was still a source of danger to civilised, settled communities, for it might conceal an army planning an ambush and harbour outlaws and people beyond the reach of civilisation, not all of whom were as romantic as Robin Hood. Unsurprisingly, in the heavily wooded regions of Europe, 339

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Trees and Woodlands woodland was associated with fear and danger, as exemplified in Grimm’s fairy tales. Today, there are few real dangers and woods have come to seem benign places. Dead, detached branches caught in the crowns of mature trees may be known as ‘widow-makers’, but (according to a Forest Research leaflet) the risk of being crushed by a falling tree or branch is 500 times less than the chance of being killed on the roads. Urban woods may still be haunts of rapists, so managers of Highgate Woods removed potentially concealing underwood. Murderers and other people on the run sometimes use woods to hide in, or to dump their victim’s body. Mostly, the sense of danger associated with woodland becomes an enjoyable adventure with a frisson of excitement, no more risky than walking along cliff tops or climbing mountains. Off-road cyclists plunging dangerously down the rocky defiles in the Wye Gorge woodlands must experience heightened awareness. Most people, however, rarely venture off the beaten track and we insist that public-access woods be free of dangerous trees. December birthday parties for our grandsons, which took the form of night-time games in woodland with attackers, defenders and a glowing lamp, excited some boys enormously but paralysed others. The main danger now is getting lost in the woods. As Hansel and Gretel discovered, disorientation is the classic consequence of entering a large wild wood with few marked tracks. Beyond help, we are thrown back on our own resources, which generates confusion, apprehension and a sense of vulnerability in some, but which for others forms an adventure or a therapeutic relief from the control and order of civilised, mostly urban, life. My only experience of fearful disorientation was in the Pisgah State Park, New Hampshire, a forest that had been left as it fell after destruction in the 1938 hurricane and had regenerated naturally into a trackless woodland carpeted with moss-covered logs, lacking open areas and distant views. On a grey, overcast, still day, my wife and I wandered away from the people we had come with and spent four hours trying to find them. We were saved by remembering that the trees had all fallen towards the north. Disorientation is a real hazard in the vast forests of North America, even in the era of GPS devices and good advice to head downwards, seek open ground, and go to ground in a makeshift shelter well before dusk. It is rarely a problem in Britain’s small, 340

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Cultural appreciation of trees and woodland well-mapped woods, but real enough. As a student, I once set out from Brockenhurst to walk through the New Forest woods to Lyndhurst, and three hours later, still thinking I was on course, came to the edge of a village, only to realise it was … Brockenhurst. In November 1987, when exploring the high tangled mattresses of extensive blown-downs in woods south of London, I needed the equivalent of the ball of thread that enabled Theseus to navigate the Minotaur’s labyrinth. On the slopes of Mount Fuji the trackless and treacherous Aokigahara Suicide Forest is popular with wilderness walkers, who have taken to laying trail markers of string and tape in order to retrace their steps. Sadly, it has also become a magnet for suicides, so much so that the number of people who succeed is no longer publicised. Something of the melancholy of losing both one’s way and one’s sense of identity emerges from R. S. Thomas’ poem, The Wood.

Refuge and freedom Woodland is not only a threat but also a refuge. It can place individuals beyond property boundaries, the law, retribution and the constraints and norms of society. Any wild habitat or remote place would suffice, but woodland also provides cover and seclusion, and is usually close to civilisation in an emergency. In the past, gypsies might camp in open woods. Today, homeless people can sometimes be found in makeshift shelters in woodland near towns. Freedom today usually means freedom to roam, represented by freedom of access to Forestry Commission, Woodland Trust, National Trust and common woods in England and Wales; the general access to rural land in Scotland; and the resentment one feels when sighting a ‘keep out’ notice. Here again, the significance of woodland is that, unlike mountains, it is local, a place immediately available, as was abundantly demonstrated by the popularity of daily walks during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The peaks of my personal freedom to roam came in scrambling down rocky slopes in the shade of upland oakwoods and ranging over the New Forest woods and heaths on horseback, constrained only by a few enclosure fences and the lie of the land. Woods were once free to use as a resource, expressed in common rights to firewood (estovers), acorns (pannage), grazing (pasturage), hawks, honey and now edible fungi and other wild food sought by 341

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Trees and Woodlands foragers. These freedoms are limited today and rarely exercised, but they underlie the feeling that woods are public property. For centuries in the Forest of Dean, that has been enough to generate protests and civil disobedience whenever governments propose privatisation.

Religious associations

J. M. W. Turner, A Beech Wood with Gipsies Seated in the Middle Distance, 1799–1801.

Spiritual associations with woodland developed long before Christianity (Hooke 2013). Sacred trees and groves were widespread in Europe, places where rituals were conducted by druids. They generated myths and mythological figures, such as Pan, Puck, the Wild Man of the Woods and Robin-in-the-Wood, who became Robin Hood. Woodhenge, now decayed to post holes, once resembled a wood on an open plain. The inverted rootstock of an oak tree surrounded by a circle of split stakes found on the shore at Holme-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, was set about 2000 bc so that the bark on the stakes was visible from the outside – a religious site representing a wood? The pagan rituals of Celtic regions were displaced by Christianity in Roman times, but it was not until the 4th century that Christianity sought to suppress earlier beliefs and practices, destroying in the process many sacred trees and groves. Christianity, however, proved to be ambivalent about trees and woodland, apparently coopting some elements of earlier symbolism. Rumours persist that many ancient churchyard yews pre-date the first foundation of the churches in whose grounds they stand, which would imply that early Christianity took over pre-Christian places of worship. However, Bevan-Jones (2002) decided that they are more likely to mark places where early saints established cells in remote places. Christianity endorsed civilised attitudes that abhorred wild woodland, but Christians also recognised that woods could themselves be civilised. Indeed, many monasteries were established in forested

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districts to take advantage of the thriving natural economy, and the monks became vigorous managers of local woodlands. Church architecture adopted the form of the forest, with slender columns rising like trees to pointed arches and rib-vaulted ceilings that resembled the canopy of mature woodland. Green Men gaze down from corbels throughout Europe, often with sprays of oak, Beech or hawthorn foliage springing from their mouths. Christianity dominated thought until the very end of the Middle Ages. As Simon Schama put it in Landscape and Memory (1995), paradise then turned green. In the 18th century explicit connections were made between church architecture and forest structure. Thus Schama quotes Goethe, writing in 1772 about Strasbourg Cathedral:

Four of the 12 ancient yews in the churchyard of St Meugan’s, Llanfeugan, Powys. The largest yew – not shown – comprised nine ancient trunks round a central mound of rotting wood and internal roots.

Multiply, pierce the huge walls which you are to raise against the sky so that they shall ascend, like sublime, overspreading trees of God, whose thousand branches, millions of twigs and leaves … announce the beauty of the Lord, their master. 343

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above: The nave of Salisbury Cathedral. The cathedral was

built on a floodplain. The display brings a mature, flawless floodplain plantation to mind.

below: The south door into the 12th-century church of

St Mary and St David, Kilpeck, Monmouthshire, embellished with fantastical carvings. The Green Man is at the top of the right-hand column.

Others saw the tracery of stained-glass windows as representations of tree branching. At this time, too, Green Men became more popular, not just in church buildings but also as a name for pubs. A form of natural theology known as Deism developed amongst Christians who had become disenchanted with organised religion, asserting that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of a single creator. Some Protestants considered that prayers could be said in fields and woods as well as in churches. Despite their Christian beliefs, rural communities retained beliefs and customs about trees that seem both pagan and practical. When Beech and Rowan were planted near a house they gave protection against lightning and witches respectively. If you sought water, your divining rods had to be made of Hazel. If your children suffered from rickets, they could be cured by passing through a cleft Ash. Holly

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Cultural appreciation of trees and woodland decorates our homes at Christmas. At school we recited: ‘If the ash comes out before the oak, then we will have a soak …’ When, in the 1970s, I asked some Norfolk farmers why Hollies had been retained on some field boundaries after the rest of the hedge had been removed, I was told it was unlucky to fell them. Trees and woodland continue to inspire both pagan and Christian beliefs and sentiments. The artists of the Hudson River School, such as Asher Durand, painted old-growth forests in the belief that they were the ultimate expression of the mind of God. Americans actually christened some of the protected stands as ‘Cathedral Groves’. The German naturalist Ernst Haeckel, who coined the term ‘ecology’, proposed the pantheistic belief that God is identical with nature and drew a tree of life as a model illustration of the relationships between organisms. Charles Darwin indicated approval in The Origin of Species: ‘the affinities of all the beings in the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree … [which] largely speaks the truth.’ In the 20th century, pagan sentiments and practices enjoyed a revival in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which features Tom Bombadil, the Ents and the primeval Forest of Fangorn. Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows includes an encounter with the Piper at the Gates of Dawn, a natural deity analogous to Pan and the Green Man. Kingsley Amis composed a modern reincarnation of The Green Man as an ancient pagan monster. Even sacred groves survive in Estonia in the form of mature, deciduous woodland and open oak stands over mown grass (formally included in the National Plan of 2008) where people leave gnomes, fairies and other offerings. Green Man sculptures can be bought as garden decorations. And woodland burials have gained favour as a spiritual experience separate from organised religions (see Chapter 9).

Hunting Before the Norman Conquest, any landowner could hunt on his land (Winters 2020), but William was an enthusiastic hunter who had been used to enforcing strict preservation of game on his properties in Normandy. By 1189 the Norman kings had extended Forest Law to 25–33% of England, including tracts of ordinary farmland and villages, with the aim of preserving the beasts of the chase – Fallow, Red and Roe Deer and wild pigs – and their habitat. Fearful penalties awaited anyone caught stealing the beasts or damaging the ‘vert’, 345

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Trees and Woodlands though the reality may have been less draconian. Indeed, poaching on an organised basis for consumption and trade was widespread. Forest Law spread at a time when wood-pastures were still widespread, and that suited both deer and hunters: deer have a predilection for open glades in forested land, and chasing them on horseback is well-nigh impossible in dense woodland. Had catching game been the main point, then traps or bowsand-arrows would have been more efficient, but hunting was also a ritual with a language of its own which reinforced the social hierarchy. Aristocrats dressed in elaborate and colourful cloaks and hats and rode fine horses followed by a pack of hounds pursuing an indignant buck surrounded by a retinue of spear-wielding helpers on foot, all against a background of open woodland with mature trees. Alternatively, they were like the Epsom Derby, staged performances designed to reach their climax in front of the stands. Mounted aristocrats ‘dressed to kill’ must have found unfettered pursuit of wild, free-running quarry exciting, but even so they depended on dogs and men on foot for success. Some forests rarely staged kingly hunts. Fifteen visits were made to the Dean between 1069 and 1256, but thereafter the monarch visited rarely and after 1400 not at all (Hart 1966). Hunting clearly took second place to ranching, whose purpose was to furnish meat to the court and whomsoever the monarch chose to favour with gifts. Local people were not excluded, however, despite the reputed clearance of villages to make way for the New Forest. Indeed, common rights remained and were exercised. Poaching was rife, with local clergy, knights and law-enforcers amongst the poachers. Real life in a forest just after Forest Law had been reined in by Magna Carta, and the Charter of the Forest can be sensed in a selection of incidents in Rockingham Forest (Turner 1901). In 1246, poachers on Beanfield Lawn hunted down deer with five greyhounds and got away when they killed one of the law-enforcers with a crossbow. Again in 1246, a mad hind was captured while it stumbled and fell in Brigstock Park and the venison was given to the poor of Rockingham. In 1248, the king came twice to the forest to take beasts ‘at his pleasure’: the earl of Derby was subsequently given five live bucks and ten live does; and the Abbot of Westminster was given eight live does. In 1250, a chaplain from Sudborough was caught cutting oak branches in Aldnatheshawe at night. A search of his home revealed a broken trap with hairs from a deer. 346

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Hunting left its mark in legend, memory and imagination (Hooke 2013). The Mabinogion, a collection of medieval Welsh tales, includes the legend of a wild hunt with demonic huntsmen. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a 14th-century poem, is set in ‘a deep and fearsomely wild’ forest, with ‘huge aged oaks’, Hazels and hawthorn, ‘huddled and tangled with rough trailing moss’ in which Gawain’s host hunts deer. Herne the Hunter, a mythological figure associated with an ancient oak in Windsor Forest, accreted further legends after he was first mentioned by William Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Musical works such as John Bull’s The King’s Hunt play at a fair lick, but there is no musical sign that they caught anything, and more famous evocations, such as Mozart’s string quartet The Hunt, do not seem closely related to the chase. Today, popular accounts of royal forests always mention the hunts. Nevertheless, it was not all approval and adulation. Between the 20th century’s great wars, Benjamin Britten and W. H. Auden used the memory of hunting to express in a song cycle, Our Hunting Fathers, a pacifist distaste for killing. And, back when Forest Law was being established in 1087, objections were expressed as The Rime of King William, preserved in the Peterborough Chronicle. Eventually, those forests that were not disafforested in the Middle Ages became important sources of timber. Hunting did not die out, though. Stag hunting continues on Exmoor. Fox hunting was first recorded in the New Forest in 1675 and the New Forest Hounds was formed in 1781. In modern times hunting has meant pursuit of the Fox, but it is still a sport based on wealth and social position

Paolo Uccello, The Hunt in the Forest, c. 1470.

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Dick Balharry was a major personality in Scottish nature conservation. Once the manager of Beinn Eighe reserve, here he returns from culling Red Deer on Creag Meagaidh in October 1988.

reinforced by rituals, fine clothes and a specialised language. Its cruelties have placed it firmly in the political arena, but have been excused as a community enterprise to control ‘vermin’. Its sporting basis was clear enough in its heyday, when the vermin were encouraged by planting new fox coverts in districts lacking enough woodland. Apart from pigeon shooting, which is surprisingly common in lowland woods, the other forms of hunting in woodland today are pheasant shoots and deer stalking. Pheasants are released from pens in woods and driven from cover over static ‘guns’ by beaters. The Red Deer that are tracked over Highland hills and moors, under the guidance of stalkers who know the ground and the deer, descend to lowland woods in winter. Both game preservation and deer forests support the rural economy, but, being costly, exclude most people. My one experience of deer stalking was one of the most exhilarating days of my life. We clambered over the peaks of the Creag Meagaidh National Nature Reserve and helicoptered the Red Deer carcasses off the mountain in the evening, all with the aim of reducing the population enough to allow the woodland to regenerate.

Common use and private ownership From the 13th century onwards, the navy was the main defence against invasion and was crucial from the mid-16th to the mid-19th century. The ‘wooden walls of old England’ and the woods from which the timber came embodied the strength of the nation. Even today, oak remains a national symbol and Heart of Oak is still the official march of the Royal Navy. Supplies of oak were, however, precarious, so management of forests became a major national concern. Woodlands have long played a significant role in the unending contest between private ownership and common interests. Again, the period from the mid-16th to the mid-19th century, when unfettered private ownership reached its peak, was significant. Large private estates had developed out of the privatisation of medieval forests; monastic lands had been sold off following the Dissolution; 348

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Cultural appreciation of trees and woodland and commons of all kinds were progressively enclosed in favour of manorial lords. Fox hunting and gamekeeping had become the pastimes of the rich, and with it came rigid exclusion of the peasantry, enforced by draconian punishments ranging from gin traps to transportation and hanging. The wealthy set themselves apart and demonstrated this by building great country houses within parks defended by perimeter walls, shelterbelts and avenues. Even in the remaining forests, common rights were increasingly circumscribed by enclosures for growing timber. Before then, medieval villagers could exercise extensive common rights in woodland under a manorial overlord. Reading the 11thcentury protest poem The Rime of King William, one would think that Forest Law oppressed everyone in the interests of ‘loving’ the deer and allowing the hares to run free, but in practice it was less than rigidly enforced. Sure, the medieval hunts were reserved for the privileged and designed to reinforce social hierarchies, but commoners could go about their business – though the spread of privately owned parks must have curtailed common rights more effectively. The monastic estates also provided an element of philanthropy and employment. From the mid-19th century onwards common interests gained ground. Warships were clad in iron. The great private estates were transformed or broken up under pressure from inheritance taxes. The

Part of the 8km avenue at Castle Howard, North Yorkshire, where the road passes through the Carrmire Gate and the Pyramidal Arch beyond. The trees were planted in the early 18th century.

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Trees and Woodlands rapidly expanding urban populations needed places for recreation; the railways provided means to getting there; and movements were generated to preserve footpaths and commons and acquire woodland near towns. The Corporation of the City of London acquired Burnham Beeches and Epping Forest, and this was followed in the 20th century by numerous local authority purchases, such as Lesnes Abbey Woods. Artistic appreciation of landscape and developing sentiment in favour of nature conservation led to increased protection of the New Forest. The National Trust was formed in 1895, and now holds numerous woods, such as Hatfield Forest, Ashridge and Buckholt Wood. In their turn, other non-statutory conservation organisations have also acquired woodlands as reserves, most notably the Woodland Trust. The Forestry Commission was created in 1919 after private woodland owners had failed to provide a strategic timber reserve for the First World War. The war itself led to a retreat of gamekeeping. Reconstruction after the Second World War generated National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and National Nature Reserves. Local trusts, such as the Severn Gorge Conservation Trust, assumed responsibility for access to and management of woodlands. In Scotland, Trees for Life, the John Muir Trust and the Borders Forest Trust were founded to protect existing native woods and expand them as naturally as possible. The surviving historic commons have largely become wooded open spaces, and are particularly important amenities in, for example, Surrey. The right to responsible public access is now enshrined in the law of Scotland. In England and Wales, the network of public footpaths allows passage through many private woods. Private ownership takes many forms, from large estates with timber and often sporting interests, through smaller woods kept as game coverts, to small woods within farms, but some, including the now famous Knepp Wildland, go out of their way to attract the public. Britain, however, still lacks the community forests of France and other European countries. In 2019, a Forestry Commission opinion survey found that 93% of Britons thought forests and woodlands were important to them as places to relax and de-stress. People tend to regard woods as a public asset, even though only 27% of forest land is publicly owned – and just 16% in England (Forest Research website). Nevertheless, in recent decades, the Forestry Commission has been obliged to sell woodland piecemeal and the Conservative-led coalition of the early 2010s earmarked the Forest of Dean for sale, a proposal that was met in 350

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true Forest tradition by prolonged protests and the symbolic burning of the Houses of Parliament. Trespass has become an adventure, no longer met with gin traps and punished by hanging or deportation.

Time

Rich Daniels, a free-miner, leads community protests against the Conservativeled government’s proposal to privatise the Forest of Dean, January 2011.

Trees mark, measure and record the passage of time. Our woods mark spring by bursting into leaf and the onset of winter with a display of colour and a snowstorm of leaves. By living beyond a human lifetime they embody history and memories and generate a sense of permanence in a changing world. We revel in the great age of veteran trees and defend the ancient wood that, like the parish church, connects the present with our distant past.

Signs of the seasons Trees and woods most obviously mark the annual passing of the seasons with the spring leafing and the autumn fall. Bud-break ushers in a rapidly changing sequence of changes in the external and internal appearance of woods. Within woods, the bleached light of March gives way to the bright green of April and the dark green of high summer, what D. H. Lawrence in The Enkindled Spring called a 351

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Wassail in a cider orchard at Dilwyn, Herefordshire, 6 January 2018.

‘conflagration of green fires’. Woodlands do have their apple-blossom time, but apples make only a minor contribution. It is the flowering of sallows, Blackthorn and Wych Elms that stands out initially, then clusters of Wild Cherry, ‘the loveliest of trees’ in A. E. Housman’s The Shropshire Lad, and hawthorn on the margins and in new woodland. Later, we find the subtle changes in the colour of lime canopies as the flowers develop, or notice the localised contributions of smaller trees and shrubs, such as Bird Cherry, Wild Service and Guelder Rose. Beechwoods are particularly attractive in late spring, bright green foliage draped over carpets of blue, but this soon gives way to darker green. Ash remains leafless into May and for a week stands out as patches of winter amongst the oak and Beech already enjoying summer. Eventually, the foliage is complete until autumn reverses everything. As these changes rush by, we can see briefly into the inner life and broader patterns of woods. Thus, the inherent variety or uniformity of the Beech or limes in a wood can be seen in the different leafing times of individual trees, and the distribution of each species can be seen fleetingly from a distance. Trees have long played a role in seasonal rituals (Hooke 2013). Wassails are sung and danced around fruit trees. Foliage of willows, Box and Yew decorates houses at Easter; birch, broom and other

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Cultural appreciation of trees and woodland greenery decked the streets and houses on May Day; Holly and Ivy decorate living rooms and puddings at Christmas; and in Scotland, Holly was brought into houses to keep out the fairies. The yule log, first recorded in Britain in the 17th century, is still a large log of oak, Ash or a fruit tree that would burn for 12 hours. (The spruce Christmas tree came from mainland Europe in the 19th century.) One of Common Ground’s projects is to revive the once-common annual tree-dressing ceremonies such as the one held around the Black Poplar in Aston on Clun, Shropshire – which continues today, around the old tree’s replacement.

Growth With each annual cycle, trees grow a new annual ring. In Sylvia Plath’s words (Winter Trees), they are ‘building memories’, for the size of each ring records the growing conditions that year. Following the sequence in a sawn stump, one can see how the tree developed from youthful vigour through steady maturity to weak old age and mere oblivion. The ring sequence, though, is partly an artefact of geometry, for a narrow ring added to a large trunk accumulates more wood than a broad ring added to a small tree. Like people, the broad

Veteran oaks in Parham Park, West Sussex. Tree-ring counts (inset) revealed the dead tree to have been at least 348 years old.

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Trees and Woodlands rings of youth express potential, whereas the narrow rings of maturity express achievement. In my early years as a woodland ecologist, annual rings and tree shapes enabled us to date the periods of regeneration in the New Forest wood-pastures, which could then be investigated and understood through historical documents. Growth rings show how individual trees grew; how they laid down buttresses to compensate for the stresses of leaning trunks and lateral branches; and how they healed wounds and concealed discarded branches. These annual ‘memories’ can be extended back into prehistory through the work of dendrochronologists, who construct baselines from the collective record embodied in many growth-ring sequences of oak timbers, then use this to date old barns, church roofs, medieval paintings, prehistoric trackways, and much else.

The longer term The village of Newland, Gloucestershire, was once famous for one of the largest oaks in Britain, which grew in a field just outside the village core. A card posted about 1900 shows several farm hands resting round a horse-drawn rake beneath its spreading crown. After centuries of pollarding, the massive, squat trunk collapsed in 1955, by which time its girth had reached 14m. It died a few years later, but by then a cutting had been taken from the last living branch, which was planted nearby, leaving the hulk to rot. Fifty years later I could still measure growth rings at different points on its fragmenting radius, and from these I estimated that it had lived for over 1,000 years. It is largely forgotten now, but, while it lived, it was a symbol of village continuity going back further than nearby All Saints’ church, the ‘cathedral of the forest’. The great Ramsbury Wych Elm was another symbolic tree (Marren 2016). Reputedly over 300 years old and standing in the centre of the village, it was the core of village identity, a focus and emblem of village life. But it went downhill in the early 20th century, probably because traffic damaged its roots, and died in 1983, leaving the village to agonise over the stump. It was eventually replaced by an oak, which is doing miraculously well with its roots under tarmac. Both these trees, like so many others, were key elements in the sense of place which symbolised the permanence of the village. Other kinds of link between trees and deep time are expressed in Norman 354

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Nicholson’s poem Elm Decline, which starts like a poetic summary of a peer-reviewed research paper. After describing the earliest signs of human impact on the woods some 5,000 years ago, it develops into bleak awareness that people destroyed the woodland and so changed the environment that, by doing so, we may destroy ourselves.

The Newland Oak in the early 20th century.

Memorials Once they outlast a human lifetime, trees increasingly embody our memories and history. Some attract visitors because they witnessed history, such as the Ankerwycke Yew at Runnymede, which may have witnessed the signing of Magna Carta; the Tolpuddle Sycamore, under which six men agreed to form a trade union; or, less convincingly, the now-aged descendant of the Boscobel Oak (and the many Royal Oak pubs) in which the future Charles II hid. Dark Sycamores still overlook the Wye at Brockweir, upstream from Tintern Abbey, as described by William Wordsworth. Blunden’s Beech was a particular tree where Siegfried Sassoon could remember with affection his long friendship with Edmund Blunden: the poem itself is memorialised on the plaque in Yalding where Blunden lived. According to a boundary description dated 1300 (Price 1955), a mepelbusk grew at the south-west corner of Shire Wood, Lincolnshire, and there was still a Field Maple there in 1973. 355

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The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottageground, these orchardtufts, Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves ’Mid groves and copses. Extract from William Wordsworth’s Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, 1798. There is still a dark Sycamore at Brockweir, a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

The commonest memorials are bark graffiti carved into Beech and other smooth-barked trees. One hopes that they record relationships that last and can measure their durability in the slowly stretching hearts and initials, but it is not always so: Andrew Young’s short poem In Westerham Woods records a heart carved into a tree by lovers who separated. Ageing graffiti on the Beeches in the Lion’s Den at Felbrigg (Norfolk) may be reminders of days out after the railway reached Cromer. Tree-planting ceremonies and associated plaques are self-conscious attempts to create tree memorials. In a sense, whole woods are memorials if one can read the ‘inscriptions’. Ancient woods with their banks, ditches, moated sites, vanished tracks and patches of ridge-and-furrow are as much physical reminders of parish life and history as the parish church and other dwellings. Less tangibly, Rudyard Kipling’s The Way Through the Woods is a poetic expression of the lingering memories within woods. He recalls an old road running through woodland that was closed off 70 years earlier and which has quite vanished, yet on calm evenings those who know can still feel the presence of travellers on horseback. Woodlands have often safeguarded these physical memories from

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Cultural appreciation of trees and woodland later damage, such as the great enclosure in Welshbury Wood (Dean), or the remains of a medieval nunnery in Cocklode Wood (Lincolnshire). Until 1970, the same could have been said about the former settlement of the Silures near Caerwent in Monmouthshire, but then the archaeological authorities felled and poisoned the wood. Woods can also be memories of past woodmen and foresters. Thus, the New Forest Sessile Oaks grown from acorns sown in 1700 in what had been enclosed coppices, can still be visited in the Bentley Inclosures, a memorial to the change in practice that presaged plantation forestry in later centuries.

Permanence and stability Some trees do indeed survive unchanged for a long time. The Beech at the entrance to Ridley Wood reassures me that not everything has changed during my lifetime, but the birch I climbed in my youth is a measure of passing time. The oak at Newland must have symbolised the continuity of the village and reinforced its distinctiveness, though modern incomers derive these feelings from the old buildings. Equally, some trees violate perceptions of timelessness, notably the conifer plantations that drew the ire of R. S. Thomas in Afforestation: on the Welsh hills we are creating a ‘world that has gone sour with spruce … standing in black crowds under the night’. Oaks in particular stand for permanence and stability. Individual trees live for hundreds of years, and so do the timberframed buildings made from them. Indeed, oaks are so strong and durable that they came to symbolise Britain (Schama 2010),

above: Graffiti carved into Beech bark, Wye Gorge. below: The dawn of high forest management in the New Forest: oak planted into South Bentley Coppice in 1700.

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Trees and Woodlands and when the 1703 storm felled thousands in the royal forests, it was seen as a threat to the nation. Formerly built into the wooden walls of England, oaks were used to panel the House of Commons. The veteran Greendale and Cowthorpe oaks attracted patriotic tourists. Almost inevitably the National Trust chose a Pedunculate Oak to symbolise the inalienability of the places it maintains. Perhaps the several blights that have afflicted British oaks since the early 20th century could be seen as an emblem of a declining world power. Woods may endure, even if the trees within them do not. This was expressed by Wendell Berry in How Long Does it Take to Make the Woods? The wood ‘is always finished, it is always being made, the act of making forever greater than the act of its destruction’. Woods certainly transmit an illusion of permanence and stability, but that is because most people visit particular woods only once or over a short period. Anyone who knows a wood for decades, or who watches a wood daily, knows that ‘everything may seem to stay the same, but everything changes’. Poets often turned to these themes when their perceptions of permanence were violated by the felling of large trees and old woodland. Thomas Hardy’s Throwing a Tree describes woodmen felling a 200-year-old oak, but concludes sadly that ‘two hundred years’ steady growth has been ended in less than two hours’. Andrew Motion’s Wooding expresses the melancholy felt by old people as they watched a tree being felled. The young tree-fellers spoke of ‘anything except [the tree’s] death’, ‘destitute of ways to show our grief’. The long, heartfelt, but anonymous Glyn Cynon Wood angrily laments the felling of a wood in the Rhondda by people from England, expressed in terms that will resonate with anyone who has watched powerless as chainsaws devastate their local wood. Wendell Berry’s Ronsard’s Lament for the Cutting of the Forest of Gastine recalls a 16th-century French poem To the Woodsman of Gastine by Pierre de Ronsard, whose local wood had been sold to pay debts. Ronsard appealed for a delay in felling the homes of wild animals and the dwellings of nymphs and goddesses, but accepted the worst: ‘Farewell, though ancient forest, Zephyr’s toy.’ Berry saw this as a massacre of the old oaks ‘who nourished us’ by ‘people utterly gross’, mitigated only by the realisation that ‘by the deaths of forms new forms will flourish’.

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Human experience Oak and Ash have often been described as masculine and feminine respectively, ascribing to these species characteristics that we traditionally, if simplistically, associate with men and women: strong, sturdy and enduring on the one hand, slim, graceful and accommodating on the other – and in doing so we explain the character of these species to other people. Then again, I have likened the competition between saplings in a canopy gap to the annual boat race between Oxford and Cambridge Universities, attempting thereby to explain the ‘once-you-get-ahead-you-stay-ahead’ process in familiar terms. In these instances, tree characteristics and woodland processes can be quickly understood by reference to human experience. Conversely, we use our familiarity with trees and woodland to convey something about human experience. When speaking about people and human enterprises, we may ‘branch out’ in new directions, ‘stay rooted’ to where we started in life, ‘bend with the wind’ in the face of difficulty, ‘fell’ a speeding footballer with a strong tackle, fail to ‘see the wood for the trees’ when seeing the detail but not the wider context, and assert that ‘from little acorns big oaks grow’. Trees are central to the Genesis creation myth. The Garden of Eden contained many trees whose fruits Adam could eat, with the exception of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But the serpent entices Eve to eat this forbidden fruit, Adam tastes it, and so God expels them from the garden and deprives them of eternal life. The fruit of the tree is commonly depicted as an apple. But the similarity between the Latin word for evil and the generic name of apple is evidently just a coincidence. The evolutionary relationships between organisms were portrayed by Charles Darwin as a branching tree. Viewed from the side with a single trunk and ever-dividing branches, this displays how, say, the urhumans diverged into different evolutionary lines to reach the topmost twigs of the present day. Viewed from above, the trunk is the central coordinator and support of a ring of twigs. Trees, like rivers, form dendritic networks, but the flow of spring sap is upwards and outwards, whereas the flow in river catchments is inwards and downwards. Competition between trees in natural woodland parallels neoliberal economics. Under the force of unrestrained competition, the strong get stronger while the weak go to the wall, whether they are trees 359

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Trees and Woodlands or people. Economists have used the internal, sustainable economy of natural woodland as a metaphor for the circular economy that must replace the currently dominant extract–use–discard model. Alfred Marshall (1890) explained why large firms did not continue to grow bigger indefinitely: But here we may read a lesson from the young trees of the forest as they struggle upwards through the benumbing shade of their older rivals. Many succumb on the way, and a few only survive; these few become stronger with every year, they get a larger share of the light and air with every increase in their height, and at last in their turn they grow above their neighbours, and seem as if they will grow on for ever, and for ever become stronger as they grow. But they do not. One tree will last longer in full vigour and attain a greater size than another; but sooner or later age tells on them all … they gradually lose vitality; and one after another they give place to others, which, though of less material strength, have on their side the vigour of youth. And, as with the growth of trees, so was it with the growth of businesses … The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 could be likened to the fall of a great tree in a gale. Enthusiasm has burgeoned recently for anthropomorphic interpretations of trees and woodland. In The Hidden Life of Trees Peter Wohlleben (2017) found the vestiges of the outermost edge of a Beech that he said must have been felled at least 400 or 500 years earlier. These remnants had been kept alive by sugars produced by neighbouring Beech and supplied via root connections facilitated by mycorrhyzae. He sees these connections as ‘affection’, writes of ‘friendship’ between trees in a stand, and thinks of trees as ‘social beings’ working together. A lone tree is exposed to the elements, but trees clustered in a wood ameliorate extremes of heat and cold, store water and generate humidity, thereby creating an environment in which trees can live to great ages. Every tree is seen as valuable to the community and is worth supporting through sickness until it recovers. Like a herd of elephants, trees in a wood help their sick and weak. ‘They are even reluctant to abandon their dead.’ Personally, I struggle with this. Never mind that trees grow perfectly well on their own in parkland and generally live longer there than in woodland, my long and detailed observation of how trees interact with their neighbours reveals vicious and unrelenting competition, not friendship. Once a tree lags behind its neighbour 360

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Cultural appreciation of trees and woodland it is weakened further, not nurtured back to ‘health’. Others have variously described these ideas as either visionary or nonsense. The interesting point, however, is that they have clearly struck a chord with so many people, who evidently want to think woods are benign, friendly and cooperative.

Beauty ‘It is no exaggeration to call a tree the grandest, and most beautiful of all the productions of the earth,’ declared William Gilpin (1794). They not only ‘form the arrangement of composition in landscape’ but also they are beautiful in their form, foliage, ramifications and in ‘the effects of light and shade’. This sentiment is commonly expressed today, though thankfully not in the convoluted ways that Gilpin and his contemporaries argued the nicer points of what exactly was and was not beautiful. Nevertheless, beauty, being ‘in the eye of the beholder’, is still hard to pin down. A clear, straight trunk will be a thing of beauty to a timber merchant, but a romantic would see beauty in ancient, twisted limbs. Edmund Burke in 1757 saw beauty as a form of love manifested in well-formed and aesthetically pleasing objects and places, which contrasted with sublime circumstances and places, which were large, awesome and powerful enough to induce fear for our survival (and pleasure when we survive). Picturesque beauty was, in simple terms, somewhere in the middle, favouring rugged land forms and furrowed bark over their smooth counterparts.

William Gilpin’s sketch of trees of the Beaulieu River. From Forest Scenery, Volume 2, 1794. The trees on the far bank were ‘as rich as a picturesque imagination could conceive them’, but ‘the foreground was not equal to the scene, which was in every other respect so compleat.’

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The memorial to the woodland poet in Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, North Carolina.

Fiona Reynolds (2016) points out that trees both enhance and destroy beauty. Today, we tend to see beauty through eyes attuned to the picturesque in irregular, ‘natural’ patterns and deplore the rigid geometry of afforestation with conifers. For some, the conifers themselves are ugly, simply for being uniform, straight and regularly branched, whereas deciduous trees are less regular, more individual. However, ideas about beauty change over time. Before the 18th century gardens were laid out in straight lines and rectangular shapes – perhaps the 20th-century afforesters would have had a better reception if they had operated 300 years earlier – but since then, picturesque sentiments have dominated. Thus, in 1877, the ancient woods of the New Forest were protected from the oak–pine plantation forestry unleashed by the 1851 New Forest Act because they were ‘ornamental’ (Eversley 1910). Where I live in the Wye Valley, Gilpin’s legacy lives on: the woods are a principal component of the ‘outstanding natural beauty’ and any felling must try to match the irregularity and form of the mature woodland. Artists and poets often express the beauty of trees, but they have an impossible task. They cannot match the experience of actually being in woodland. Joyce Kilmer took this view in his 1913 poem, Trees, which opens with a simple couplet, ‘I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree’, and concludes with another, ‘Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.’ I first came across it on a plaque at the entrance to the Joyce Kilmer reserve in the southern Appalachians. The reserve itself is a stupendous old-growth cove forest with immense Tulip-trees, 500 years old, emerging above a multi-layered forest formed from the richest assemblage of tree species in North America. Much the same might be said of paintings and drawings of the interiors of woods. None can really match the experience of walking through a wood, directly experiencing the wood’s three-dimensional structure and feeling, hearing, smelling and seeing the trees and the ever-changing array of light and shape. Sure, an artwork shows us how the artist saw it, and that may change our perceptions, but if you can’t see the beauty on the ground you won’t see it on the studio wall.

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Cultural appreciation of trees and woodland It was not just Gilpin who found beauty in the transient interplays of light on and in woods at different times of day and in a variety of weather. Even under the desperate circumstances of the First World War, the schoolboy recruit Paul Baumer, fighting on Germany’s Western Front, was so distracted by the beauty of the changing colours and tones as trees moved in the breeze that he almost missed the officers’ commands (Remarque 1929). These transient interplays are best experienced in woodland as an interaction between the physical sensations and the visual, as recently expressed by Simon Ingram in The Guardian Country Diary (16 August 2019): Woods in wind are joyous: so sensory. Here, wind takes form: sound, feel and vision. You hear it moving around you, feel energ y breaking against the branches, see it dance through that August-fat foliage, every leaf a tiny sail. I … lie on my back on the ground … look up, watch, and listen. I love the shelter and the hunker: a primitive pleasure, glad to be enclosed from the wild outside, and exhilaration at the melee. Every now and then I hear the thunk of something falling.

d Trees and woodlands are crucial to our physical survival, but they also embody a great depth of meaning. In particular, they occupy an ambivalent position in our cultural history, associated with noble aspirations, health and refreshment, but also with disorientation, fright and threat. They literally make us small, and by outliving us to the point of seeming permanence they emphasise that our presence is fleeting. Perhaps all habitats are like that. Certainly, meadows, the non-arboreal counterpart of coppices, are associated with sociable happiness and fine weather at the peak of the year, yet also symbolise death and the mowing down of young lives. Coppices, too, attract a sunny reputation, but only if one forgets daily back-breaking woodland work in winter rain. The enduring and multifarious associations between trees, woodland and our cultural lives will influence the decisions we make about their future.

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Looking forward

chapter eleven

T

he main change in forestry during my professional lifetime came with the Broadleaves Policy of 1985. It was not a sudden, blinding conversion but

a culmination of steady changes of attitude within and outside forestry that were crystallised by the Broadleaves in Britain conference of 1982 (Malcolm et al. 1982). From that point on, forestry moved steadily away from a narrow concentration on timber production funded through tax-avoidance schemes towards multiple objectives and diverse management directly funded by grants. Now another change in attitudes that has also been developing for decades has recently been expressed in the Dartington Hall conference that marked the centenary of the Forestry Commission in 2019 (Lloyd et al. 2020). Just 50 years since forestry was officially governed almost wholly by financial and commercial interests, it now fully recognises the cultural significance of trees and woodlands. Nature conservation has also changed profoundly since the 1960s. Then it was based on sites – nature reserves and SSSIs – leaving wildlife and natural features beyond their boundaries to their fate. Farmers, foresters and developers were happy enough to see nature conservation confined behind thick black lines on the map, but the result has been sobering: steady and substantial loss of habitat and species, and even some deterioration of the places that were supposedly protected. In response, habitat networks and rewilding have become embedded in ecological and conservation thinking, agri-environment schemes have been developed, specialist organisations for birds, butterflies, vascular plants and other groups have gained great support, and private nature conservation initiatives have proliferated. What next for Britain’s trees and woods? The ‘Ponzi schemes’ that drive humanity have generated an environmental crisis that

opposite page:

Sweet Chestnuts in Windsor Great Park, symbolic of greater acceptance of naturalised trees in future.

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Trees and Woodlands seemingly leaves trees and woodland more vulnerable than they have ever been. As climate change, disease, deer and other threats multiply, many people predict great changes, and in some cases propose actions designed to fulfil their prophesies. But trees have always been threatened. Nearly 400 years ago, John Evelyn wrote that ‘So many are the infirmities and sicknesses of trees that it would be almost impossible to enumerate and make a just catalogue of them’ (Evelyn 1664). Victorian guidance on trees also lists numerous maladies to which native and introduced trees were subject. And it’s not just diseases: early in my career, I heard fears that the growing stock of British native trees had been impaired by centuries of selective felling of the ‘best’ trees. Today, concern has burgeoned in the face of climate change, uncontrolled deer and Grey Squirrel populations and the arrival of new fungal diseases and invertebrate pests. Each tree species seems to be assailed in turn. Perhaps none will be left standing. Yet trees and woodland also command increasing popular and political support. Here, I review some of the threats and consider some opportunities for optimising the role trees and woodlands play in our lives.

Stresses and threats Grey Squirrels, deer and feral pigs Deer and Grey Squirrels were already a problem when I became a forest ecologist in the 1960s, but they were not regarded as such in woodland nature reserves because deer had not spread far since they had been ‘released’ during the Second World War, and attempts were still being made to control squirrels where they damaged timber plantations. During the 1970s, there was no hint that squirrels would turn planting Beech into a fool’s game, and in some woodland reserves we resumed coppicing, confident in the knowledge that the new growth would ‘get away’. Grey Squirrels had been introduced from North America in the 1870s and by the early 20th century had started to spread widely. Unlike the native population in eastern North America, these introduced animals developed a habit of stripping bark from broadleaved trees, causing leaders to die and rot to develop in vigorous trees. Fast-growing saplings that should have grown into elite trees and valuable timber were reduced to inverted candelabras 366

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Looking forward of dead branches and irregular regrowth, quite useless for timber and hardly worth cutting as firewood. This struck at the heart of timber growing: not only did it reduce timber potential, but the squirrels waited until the timber grower had incurred most of the costs of planting, beating up and thinning, and growers still had decades to wait for significant income. Attempts to control them seemed to become largely ineffective by the 1980s, except on some particularly conscientious private forestry estates. By the millennium there were districts where one wondered whether Beech, Sycamore and even oak would ever again grow into great trees. Grey Squirrels arrived in Lady Park Wood in 1943. They evidently ignored the young growth until 1958, when they attacked the fastestgrowing species, birch, leaving many trees with distorted growth. Later, they turned their attentions to Beech and Field Maple, leaving many potentially large trees as ragged shrubs, which subsequently suffered a high rate of mortality. Worse, they also debarked the upper side of the crown branches of large Beech – out of sight from the ground, but obvious enough when large branches broke off in moderate winds, almost always snapping where rot had developed under a ‘squirrel scar’. The slowest-growing Beech poles attracted

Grey Squirrel, scourge of woodland trees, and (inset) the reason why.

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Trees and Woodlands least attention, suggesting that there was some hope of Beech growing into the canopy if they grew slowly. Bark stripping also seemed patchy, as if one squirrel was particularly active while its neighbour was not, but these were the only rays of hope. Today, our hopes rest on the reintroduction of Pine Martens, which find Grey Squirrels easier to catch than Reds. Red and Roe Deer are native to Britain, and Fallow Deer were reintroduced long ago, having been in Britain during a previous interglacial. Britain also supports populations of Sika, Muntjac and Chinese Water Deer, among others. The problem is not that they are present, but that their numbers are almost out of control. True, there are local deer control groups, and British diners increasingly favour venison, so there is a degree of control, but not enough to prevent further spread nor allow woods to regenerate. Part of the problem is the ‘Bambi’ sentiment, which abhors deer culling and breaks out in irrational directions. Thus, some years ago, after the Forestry Commission had let the deer culling in the Dean to a German syndicate, the Forest Review printed letters asking why we had bothered to win the war if we were going to let Germans shoot our deer. Another factor is that deer will feed undisturbed on arable crops, while using the scattered woods for cover. In the 1970s we could recommend coppicing on nature reserves without protective fences, but by the millennium this would have sentenced regrowth to death. Some measure of the increasing deer problem is provided by Lady Park Wood. When the wartime shelterwood fellings were complete, the woodland was allowed to regenerate naturally without protection. Fallow Deer were present in large enough numbers to form well-worn paths along the edge of the cliff, but a thicket of coppice sprouts, new saplings, dense bramble and much else quickly developed. The deer forced tracks through this and browsed down saplings on their margins, but enough regrowth was spared to suppress the bramble and produce a fully stocked stand within a decade. The only blanks were under the surviving standards, where regrowth was weaker and deer congregated to graze the remaining accessible herbage. By 1993, however, deer were numerous enough to destroy the remaining brambles and most saplings. Outside the reserve a similar stand was thinned, but deer killed all saplings, reduced stump regrowth from vigorous limes to a low ‘hedge’, and even prevented the Wood Anemones from flowering. Perimeter fencing round the whole reserve 368

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in 2007 quickly demonstrated that deer were the problem – saplings grew up in gaps and basal regrowth from Hazel, limes and other trees was prolific. That deer control can work was demonstrated in the New Forest in the mid-19th century. As a prerequisite to planting more trees, the government passed the New Forest Deer Removal Act in 1851, and actually did remove most of the deer. The result in the unenclosed woodland was dramatic. Wood-pastures that had been open enough to allow the old oak and Beech pollards to develop into wide, spreading trees filled with a new generation of birch, oak and Beech, while Holly not only developed as thickets in the shade, but also colonised parts of the heaths. Regeneration largely ceased once the spaces had been filled, but continuing collapse of the old pollards again opened the stands. By the 20th century the deer had returned and regeneration was slow, but it accelerated during the Second World War when there was a downturn in the numbers of commoning cattle and horses. Since then, the grazing pressures have again greatly increased, with the result that recruitment has largely ceased and the now-ageing Hollies have been decimated by horses and deer chewing their bark. Deer are still spreading. In south Wales 20 years ago, there was a feeling that woodland owners should accelerate their restocking

Red Deer in Richmond Park, London.

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Wild Boar in the Forest of Dean.

programme before the deer arrived, lest planting later became impossible. Where deer are numerous, tall fencing is now required to restock clear-fells, which adds to the costs. In nature reserves, brushwood fences have been constructed round coppice plots, but I suspect these are only partly effective. Deer culling has to be organised on a landscape scale, else the deer move to safe havens, but it is still limited by public sentiment, uncooperative owners, public safety and sporting interests in Scotland. The native Wild Boar were hunted to extinction in Britain by the 17th century, but feral pigs with a strong strain of Wild Boar in their make-up have escaped or been released into the wild in several places. In the Dean and neighbouring parts of Herefordshire they ‘fell off the back of a truck’ in 2004 and, once the less wary individuals had been removed from the breeding stock by poachers, their numbers increased to the point of public nuisance. They churn up road verges, grass fields and lawns, terrorise children in playgrounds and sidle up to people waiting at bus stops. They disrupt Bluebell displays and uproot a few saplings, but they do not endanger the survival of any species. In Lady Park they churn up patches, mainly where the soil is deep. Conspicuously, they disturb the ground around well-rotted tree stumps, where the decaying material must increase the supply of

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Looking forward food. Their long-term effect in modern woods is yet to be observed, but they are a natural component of native woods and should not be a threat if their populations can be controlled. There is nothing to be said in favour of Grey Squirrels in British woodland, but deer and wild pigs are different. Together with cattle they are a natural part of the ecosystem, but not in unrestrained numbers. After all, traditional wood-pasturage allowed trees and pasturage to coexist by prolonging the life of individual trees and periods of low-density grazing. It even coexisted with medieval coppices by means of temporary fencing. It is the spectre of high stocks of deer and sheep that gave woodland pasturage a bad name. Now, rewilding schemes and woods where controlled numbers of cattle and pigs have access may restore a balance, both of habitats and of attitudes to large herbivores in woods.

Fungal and bacterial diseases In his last book published before he died, Oliver Rackham (2014) ranked burgeoning diseases as the greatest threat to Britain’s native trees. The book was about Ash, and the disease that was uppermost in his mind was the newly arrived chalara affliction, which was then well established and spreading fast enough to galvanise a reluctant environment minister into action. Oliver’s early career in woodlands was also marked by disease, the devastating attack on elms that became known, somewhat unjustly, as Dutch elm disease (DED), and there is every prospect that our successors will face yet more novel fungal invaders. Trees have many different relationships with fungi, from the mutually beneficial mycorrhizae, through the neutral relationship with saprophytes on dead wood, to destructive infections by pathogens. These are all elements in the natural functioning of ecosystems and turnover of populations. As a result, some kind of balance is normally maintained. For example, I have heard that the pathogenic Honey Fungus is everywhere and constantly probing weak roots, yet healthy and vigorous trees stay ahead by constantly generating new roots. It is only when the tree’s vigour is reduced by age or, say, drought that the fungus gains the upper hand. The threats emerge when fungi mutate into a more destructive form, or fungi come into contact with tree species from which they had hitherto been isolated. New contacts are made when a fungus spreads naturally to new regions (perhaps after a 371

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Oak Mildew forms a silvery patina on oak leaves in late summer. This unshaded sapling will not be disadvantaged, but the fungus may be lethal to seedlings in shade.

mutation), trees are introduced to new regions where they encounter resident fungi, and fungi are introduced by people to new regions (usually when moving plants or plant products around the globe). No two diseases are exactly the same in origin, modus operandi or long-term consequences. The most devastating I know was the blight that brought American Chestnut to its knees. Chestnuts were a major forest dominant in the deciduous forests of North America, but Cryphonectria parasitica was introduced from south-east Asia in 1904 and killed the lot. One can still find chestnuts in the woods, but only as weak sprouts from old stumps that are quickly killed by disease. The decaying remnants of the great chestnuts that died in the 1920s could still be seen in Appalachian old-growth stands in the 1990s, littering replacement groves of Red Maple and other trees. Oak Mildew is a malady that was largely forgotten. Arriving in Britain about 1907, it covers the leaves of oaks in high summer with a white powder that impairs their growth. Established trees and young oaks in the open survive, but oak seedlings and saplings in woodland, already disadvantaged by their limited ability to withstand shade, are weakened enough to succumb to competition from ground vegetation and other trees. In Lady Park over the last 75 years, only one oak sapling has survived for more than a decade, despite substantial gap formation, but it died in 2020, killed by the combined effects of mildew and deer. The result has been that oaks have almost ceased to regenerate within any woodland, even in gaps. By continuing to evolve, the mildew increasingly threatens even veteran oaks (Lonsdale 2016). A new strain of Dutch elm disease was imported in 1970 and eventually reached everywhere, though Brighton, whose elms were isolated behind the South Downs, had time to organise quarantine, treatment and immediate removal of infected trees, while its progress through the outer reaches of Scotland has been slow. Everyone watched in horror as hedgerow elms were lost from the landscape, ancient pollard elms expired in village closes and elm-dependent organisms such as the White-letter Hairstreak declined.

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DED came as a shock and was perceived by the general public as a novelty, but it was merely a new version of an old disease. Historic accounts of elms dying in droves in the 19th century, combined with elm timbers in old buildings containing the marks of previous infections, showed that versions of DED had struck several times before (Rackham 2003). Moreover, an excellent case can be made for disease being a major factor in the great ‘elm decline’ of the early Neolithic. The implication is that the disease abates after an outbreak, elms recover, and then a new outbreak is triggered when a mutation occurs in the Ceratocystis fungus. Today, the disease remains, but we seem unconcerned, much like Johns (1886) and Nisbet (1893) writing between outbreaks. Perhaps the disease is again becoming less virulent, and anyway we have forgotten that elms were once so prominent. We have also developed a more realistic understanding of DED’s impact. A scatter of mature trees has (so far) come through the outbreak unscathed without treatment. Many of the hedgerow and woodland elms grew again from suckers. Woodland elms in Short Wood, Northamptonshire, were coppiced and re-sprouted. Whilst some elm clones in woods

Elm disease strikes suckering elms in what were once hedges near Papworth Everard, Cambridgeshire. Photo taken in 1971. Neither tree survived.

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Overhall Grove, Cambridgeshire, where elm disease killed this clone, leaving a weedfilled clearing, but left other clones intact (see page 236).

perished, many survived (Rackham 2003). In fact, many clones were more threatened by replanting in woods and when the death of large trees provided an opportunity for hedge removal. Within woods, Wych Elms have both resisted and fought back by re-seeding. In Lady Park Wood the large, fast-growing elms on fertile soil quickly died, but elm survived because some rootstocks re-sprouted; small, slow-growing elms escaped; and numerous saplings appeared, presumably from seed shed by the dying elms. Nevertheless, the disease continued to attack pole elms when they emerged from the canopy and eventually found and killed some of the slow-growing older elms. However, by then, the pole elms had started fruiting, so there has been a continuous supply of new seedlings at low density. In 2020, 50 years after the outbreak, Wych Elm survives as a thin scatter of healthy trees in the underwood, some of which produce fruit, and some fast-growing poles, which also fruit before they are again caught by the disease. The initial partition of the population into a fast-growing but short-lived sub-population on deep fertile soils and a slow-growing, long-lived sub-population on less suitable ground (Peterken and Mountford 1998) is less clear now, but the main long-term threat is clearly the deer that browse saplings and basal sprouts.

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The latest epidemic is ash dieback, caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus (originally identified as Chalara fraxinea). In the UK, it was first found in 2012 in nursery stock brought in from the Netherlands and was soon detected throughout Britain in young plantations of stock imported from mainland Europe. In woodland, it first appeared in Ashwellthorpe Lower Wood, Norfolk, and was soon well established in Wayland Wood, the fictional playground of The Babes in the Wood. The blame was cast on lax import conditions and the organisations that imported Ash saplings, but the disease had been spreading steadily across Europe and must have also arrived naturally. At first the incidence of disease was greatest in the eastern parts of England and Scotland, but now it is infecting trees even in seemingly remote places, such as the Harlech district west of the Rhinogs. By 2020, it had infected over 90% of Ash in the canopy of Lady Park Wood and had killed many saplings. Nevertheless, I hope we heed Lance Corporal Jones’ advice: ‘Don’t panic!’ From the outset, I have thought that Ash is genetically variable enough to have some resistance. We can see this easily in the pigmentation of new shoots, some of which are deep purple, others green with narrow purple rings round the lenticels, and many in between. Ash fruits prolifically and in ordinary times will maintain

Ashwoods are characteristic of the Pennine limestone, but for how much longer? This is part of Hawkswick Wood, Littondale, where ash dieback disease is rife. Inset: diseased Ash.

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Trees and Woodlands populations of tiny saplings of up to one million per hectare: even if only a very few prove to be resistant, they will restore Ash populations in woods within a few decades. Alarming reports of 90% death rates show the glass is 10% full, and there are also indications that ‘social distancing’ helps, at least where summers are hot (Grosdidier et al. 2020). Clearly, we must promptly fell trees in dangerous positions, but the main danger is from people who think ‘something must be done’. Immediate felling and replanting with other species will certainly reduce Ash, much as rooting out hedges containing diseased suckering elms precluded regrowth. Britain’s trees are also under attack from a regiment of Phytophthora species. Known as water moulds, these are the pathogens behind the potato blight that caused the Irish Famine in the 1840s. Attacks on Lawson Cypress and Nothofagus may be of limited concern in native woods, but attacks on Beech, oak and Alder could be transformative. The most conspicuous is alder dieback, caused by a hitherto unknown species. Discovered in 1993, it has increased steadily and is now widespread in Britain and mainland Europe. Alders along the banks of the Wye and other borderland districts seem to be severely affected, with many trees dead or dying back, but there seems to be less infection within woodland. There is also sudden oak death, caused by Phytophthora ramorum, and an infection of Rhododendron in Cornwall since 2013 by P. kernoviae, which has also struck Beech, larch and several other tree species. Many Phytophthora species are known and more are presumed to remain undiscovered. Whether or not they are constantly evolving, some species are certainly spreading, bringing new diseases to our trees. One could go on, but these are some of the present threats. Read accounts of any tree species and you will find a list of root rots, cankers, shoot blights and other maladies, some of which, like acute oak decline, have several contributory causes. Most debilitate tree populations rather than threaten them. They change the performance of native species in competition with other tree species, but do not eliminate them. They can transform woods, especially if they are reinforced by other factors, such as excessive browsing. But the background problem is us, transporting plant material and diseases around the world, and then sometimes overreacting when the disease arrives.

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Invertebrate pests Trees are food, refuge and home to vast numbers of invertebrates. Oak and sallow have long been elevated to the head of a league table of native species because they provide food for the greatest number of plant-feeding invertebrates. The importance of both trees to Britain’s most spectacular butterfly, the Purple Emperor, has been brought out by Matthew Oates (2020). The survival of White-letter Hairstreak depends on the survival of elms. Whole classes of beetle depend on access to rotten timber within old, but living, trees. In some years caterpillars of Oak Leaf Roller Moth and Winter Moth – ordinary inhabitants of the canopy – defoliate mature oaks and leave an indelible mark of their presence in the form of a narrow growth ring. All this and more is the ordinary currency of tree life, and in the long term some kind of balance is maintained, each organism limiting the potential excesses of the others. The relationship becomes unbalanced when a tree species is introduced to a new environment without its attendant fauna, or an invertebrate species spreads, or is moved, to places where the trees have not adapted to its presence. A currently troubling example is Oak Processionary Moth, which arrived in 2005 from southern Europe. It is now established around London, well beyond its natural predators, where it is a threat to the health of people and animals. Imports of oak transplants continue to spread it to other parts of Britain. Another example is Horse-chestnut

Oak Processionary Moth caterpillars processing.

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Trees and Woodlands Leaf Miner, which has spread from southern Europe where it disfigures trees in summer. Invertebrates may work in tandem with other damaging agents. Elms are suffocated by their response to a fungus, but the fungus is spread by a Scolytus beetle. Invertebrates may also have a role in weakening oaks to the point where ‘acute oak decline’ sets in, though in this case drought and high levels of atmospheric nitrogen may be more to blame. The most conspicuous signs of infection are stripes of dark fluid, generated by three previously unknown species of bacteria, weeping from vertical fissures in trunks. From these rot spreads and can kill an oak in a few years. Forest Research advises that it is still largely confined to lowland England, but there is no cure – we just have to avoid spreading it. Perhaps the largest known threat that we can still avert is the Emerald Ash Borer beetle. Introduced from Asia, it has killed large numbers of ash in North America and continues to spread westwards from Russia on the heels of ash dieback. If it reaches Britain it could nullify measures to mitigate chalara ash disease.

Climate change Trevor Beebee (2018) said that trees have not yet been seriously affected by climate change, but they have changed. Blackthorn, Hawthorn, Elder and Horse-chestnut flower earlier, by a whole month in the case of Blackthorn, and Beech comes into leaf earlier (Sparks et al. 2020). Since I was a boy in the 1940s, autumn has been postponed by 2–3 weeks in the sense that Ash, Beech, Pedunculate Oak and Horse-chestnut complete their leaf fall 10–18 days later (Sparks and Smithers 2009). The later leaf fall in Beech may be due partly to more rainfall in autumn (Peaty 2018). A further factor is light pollution, which brings Sycamore, Beech, Pedunculate Oak and Ash into leaf earlier (ffrench-Constant et al. 2016). Some species will benefit while others suffer. Likely beneficiaries include the two limes, whose ability to produce fertile seed has until recently been restricted to the warmest summers. In the Lower Wye Valley I now see new seedlings every year. Oak masts seem to be more frequent, possibly because wind pollination is more efficient when all the trees flower together. Likely sufferers include Beech, whose growth rate has declined since 1950 on dry soils in central Europe (Knutzen 2016). They are particularly susceptible to drought. 378

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Agriculture and development My early years in woodland conservation were a race against time. In the 1970s, every visit to a private ancient wood was assumed to be the last. The tide of destruction was symbolised by Oxlips blooming in the spoil heaps at Waresley Wood, Cambridgeshire, and the tragic destruction of much of Monks’ Park Wood, Suffolk, both to enlarge arable fields. In January 2020 the Woodland Trust was aware of threats to 1,064 ancient woods. The greatest single source of damage or destruction was the HS2 railway, but other major sources were housing, utilities, roads, agriculture and leisure activities. In many cases, including HS2, new woodland planting mitigates the losses, but new woods do not replace the historical associations and rich wildlife of the woods destroyed. This is where I came in. My early years as a woodland ecologist coincided with a burst of interest in ‘new agricultural landscapes’, stimulated by a book by Nan Fairbrother (1970). Among other things, this promoted the idea that, if history had left woods in inconvenient places, they could be replaced by new woods in more convenient places. By then we had developed ideas about ancient woodland and

Karen Hale and Richard Bradshaw of Liverpool University in Lady Park Wood, researching the potential for carbon storage in woods allowed to grow naturally.

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The 250-year-old Pear on the edge of South Cubbington Wood, Warwickshire, voted Tree of the Year in 2015, but felled in October 2020 to make way for the HS2 railway, despite prolonged protests. This painting by Stella Carr shows the tree against a suitably threatening background.

their irreplaceability (Peterken 1974), and this led through to the development of the Ancient Woodland Inventory that the Woodland Trust now uses as a base for its campaigns.

Hopes and aspirations What kind of woodland should we aim for? We start from an imperfect base. Britain is still one of the least wooded countries in Europe, despite a century of afforestation. Moreover, our native woods lie scattered in small parcels, with few substantial tracts of native woodland; many have been simplified in composition by past management; and their timber trees have allegedly been depleted of best growth forms by selective felling. Deer have been allowed to spread, compromising management opportunities. Pests and pathogens have been released into the woods, damaging both native and introduced species, and we shower the woods with pollutants. Several decades of neglect have left many native woods at risk of drastic change when management resumes. Combined with a recent history of industrial forestry characterised by clear-felling, this has created a culture of suspicion when chainsaws start up, and this has been reinforced by a romantic sentiment of woods as natural places in which any tree felling is invariably regarded as damaging. Britain also has a long history of partitioning woods from farmland (and forestry from agriculture), which discourages integration. More generally, we 380

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have separated people from the land and its management; the best intentions of managers are often viewed with suspicion. Despite everything, spring still brings fresh growth, bright flowers and new hope, so let’s be positive as well as realistic. Everyone interested in woodland has their wish list; this is mine.

Woods, trees and their context

Destruction of the southern part of Monks’ Park Wood, Suffolk, in October 1971. This was one of the greatest setbacks for woodland nature conservation since 1945.

It is easy to think there is limited space for additional woodland, yet, within my lifetime, while the UK’s human population has grown from 48 million to 67 million, the area of woodland has grown by more than 1.8 million hectares. There is now a political consensus behind substantial tree planting and natural woodland expansion, which I support. Yet we still need to feed and house ourselves, so new woodland must be placed, designed and managed to maximise benefit from every additional hectare. But a word of caution for planting enthusiasts: there are wildlife- and carbon-rich places that would be impaired by tree planting. 381

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The Heart of England Forest, Warwickshire. Twenty years after it was started by publisher and poet Felix Dennis, it is starting to develop a woodland ambience, diversified by extensive meadows.

From an ecological perspective, we should keep what we have, especially ancient woods, reverse fragmentation and increase connectedness. I would implement these aims by: expanding existing woods; infilling clusters of small woods until woodland reaches 30% cover; creating new well-wooded districts; and building woodland onto existing linear features, such as motorways, railways and riparian corridors. A particular aspect of woodland restoration should be to restore the two major woodland types we almost lost, treeline and floodplain woodland, and the entire beneficial relationship between trees, woodland, streams and rivers. Most new wooded districts of the 20th century were coniferous, but latterly we have added the Countryside Commission’s New National Forest, several urban-edge forests and rewilding initiatives, all with a higher native tree content from the outset. Rewilding should be enthusiastically supported as a component of woodland expansion. It takes many forms, from the idealistic, but still aspirational, very large reserves with large carnivores to small patches of relatively wild-looking vegetation in cities (wilder, not wild) (Parliament 2016). Almost all involve more trees, even the river restoration projects that reinstate natural channel forms and

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processes. Many involve extensive planting in largely unwooded territory, as at Carrifran. Others involve modification of plantation forests, as in Ennerdale. Perhaps the most widely acceptable approach involves free-range cattle and other large herbivores in an environment where they control the balance between trees, shrubs and herbage in a re-enactment of woodland pasturage: Knepp Wildland, Wicken Fen and Holme Fen are prime examples. Heath and grassland restoration schemes with traditional breeds of cattle, starting with either scrubby heathland or plantations on former heathland, produce much the same result. Rewilding is a new and exciting approach to nature conservation. It has already realised some of its potential, but it has a long way to go. It offers opportunities for taking a harvest (discreetly) and admitting visitors for walking and camping, but above all it restores natural processes and the excitement of uncertainty in what will unfold. Rewildings complement those nature reserves where managers often seek to perpetuate a semblance of traditional management because it is the best bet for maintaining what is there. Looking a long way ahead, the woodland parts of rewilding schemes will have to be lightly managed for safety, especially where the public is admitted.

Ennerdale, Cumbria. This is an early rewilding scheme, initiated in a valley with extensive conifer plantations. Thus far, the most convincingly wild elements are associated with the River Liza.

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Trees and Woodlands Equally, in addition to harvesting free-range beef, pork and venison, Beavers may have to be restrained in river-based rewildings. Harvesting substitutes for the large carnivores that could not sustain their populations safely within our lowland countryside. We must continue efforts to bring farming and forestry closer together. Rewilding achieves this by usually bringing trees, woodland and pastoral farming together on the same ground where the trees will eventually have to be discreetly managed as much as the free-roaming grazers and browsers. Mostly we inherit an enduring separation between agriculture and woodland, expressed in ownership, tenancies and the separate professions of farmer and forester. On the ground, this is manifested in the lowlands by the removal of hedges and farmland trees that has left woods isolated like warts on the smooth face of arable farmland; and in the uplands, by large forests with only small patches of other land types within them. It still inhibits the development of tree-planting schemes, such as the Heart of England Forest. Intensively cultivated landscapes can be ameliorated with trees on field boundaries. Impacts of farming on watercourses can be reduced by riparian strips of woodland, trees and grassland. Elsewhere there are plenty of places where pastoral farming can be mixed with woodland, both on a large scale in the hill farms of the west and north and on a smaller scale in the commuter country of the lowlands and the many places that retain a reasonably high density of woodland and other semi-natural habitats. If we do reduce our meat consumption on health and environmental grounds, such mixed habitat zones would be the places to grow our free-range, organic beef in novel forms of wood-pasture. Part of this involves restoring links between rivers and woodland. We now realise that, under natural conditions, trees on floodplains influence the flow and form of rivers and the range of floodplain habitats. Trees that fall in the channels divert the flow, increase bank erosion, hold up river-borne deposits as shoals and tend to braid the stream. Such interactions have been almost lost from Britain, though they survive locally on, for example, the Spey and the Tay. Most rivers have been reduced to single, fixed channels designed to discharge water as fast as possible, which results in downstream places bearing the brunt of floods. Restoring trees to both floodplains and headwaters can hold up water and reduce flooding, as well as making a contribution to cleaner water and richer fish populations (e.g. Dyson 2020).

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Woodland and tree management With only a few exceptions (see below), I prefer to see woods managed and their timber and small wood put to good use, provided this is not a pretext for replacing native woodland with evergreen conifers. In the 1970s, my preference for management rather than neglect was decidedly controversial amongst the conservation fraternity, but it is now widely accepted. Management not only benefits wildlife, but also broadens the stakeholder base, yields useful material and minimises long-term safety problems. Management is especially important for wildlife in the scattered woods of the lowlands, isolated amongst farmland. There the woods, if managed, often retain the parish’s only remnant of semi-natural grassland free from the influence of modern agriculture: felling and regrowth not only keeps the grassland open, but also generates young stands and multiple woodland edges. In ancient semi-natural woods, the default management aim would be to grow useful timber and wood with site-native species, say by planting oak nursed in a matrix of natural regeneration. Reversion of PAWS (plantations on ancient woodland sites) to native woodland in stages restores these benefits, but resumption of silvicultural operations in

This ride in the Bradfield Woods, Suffolk, has been kept open by coppicing plots on either side in different years.

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Trees and Woodlands long-neglected ancient semi-natural woods could be controversial if it is carried out in one operation. A modicum of coppice management would be beneficial if deer can be kept in check. The old ideal of a normal age-class distribution would, if implemented, have ensured the perpetual presence of all age classes. In larger woods and extensive plantations, it should be possible to identify portions that could be run on extended rotations, releasing other parts for shorter rotations, thereby optimising both overall maturity and the supply of open space and new growth. Veteran trees and non-intervention stands can be incorporated. Individual mature trees can feature along ride sides, and non-intervention stands could be retained along incised stream courses and the core of larger compartments. Admittedly, idealised age structures are inherently hard to achieve in a world of increasing natural disturbances and unforeseen social and economic changes, but they provide a target against which short-term options can be assessed. Management along these lines should reverse the decline of the woodland flora, which has been conspicuous during my professional lifetime. One factor is widespread pollution in the form of nitrogen compounds emanating from traffic and intensive cattle rearing, but mostly it’s a matter of how woods have been managed (Kirby 2020). The change from coppice to high forest and thus longer rotations has reduced seed banks, so openings are less likely to be quickly populated with gap-phase species. Where evergreen conifers have replaced deciduous broadleaves, the deeper litter and year-round shade has reduced even the spring flora displays. The huge piles of brash left after felling operations cover the ground and promote dominance by brambles. Burgeoning lowland deer populations have reduced woodland flowers almost as much as sheep and Red Deer in the uplands. In the absence of management, rides have become shaded and their distinctive grassland and wetland flora has largely been lost; and it does not recover completely when management resumes, because the ousted species have no refuges in farmland outside woods to return from. And it’s not just the flora: populations of specialist woodland butterflies have also plunged, and for much the same reasons. Even in the well-wooded Wye Valley where I live, we still have the woods, but have fewer woodland species (Peterken and Wood 2020). The recent recognition of ‘veteran trees’ has raised the profile of these important and historical features and scarce habitats. Listing them has created a practical tool for their monitoring 386

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Looking forward and management. We perceive them as permanent features, but inspection of the lists of great trees mentioned in Loudon (1844) demonstrates that they do not last for ever. Disease has killed many veteran elms and will kill many veteran Ash. Lack of management risks physical collapse. Renewing the lopping that generated the great oak, Ash, Beech, lime and Hornbeam pollards is necessary, but not always successful, for the trees have lost vitality during neglect. In many places, there has been little attempt to create successors, and often the potential successors have been felled while they were still valuable as timber. Nevertheless, the need now is to create and reserve successors, and to generate the habitat by other means, which includes blasting the tops of mature trees, retaining remaining standards in former coppices while managing the rest of the woodland, retaining hedgerow trees and expanding hedges into ‘shaws’, or even rewilding projects. In the Lower Wye Valley, some of the spectacular lime pollards have been re-pollarded, but the rapidly declining stubs and low-cut stools are failing fast.

Littondale in the Yorkshire Dales, where Sycamore has joined Ash as a characteristic element in the landscape, and may become its successor.

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Choice of species

opposite page:

Top: Douglas Fir regenerating naturally in a mid-Wales plantation. Bottom: Cherry Laurel starts to smother Beech– oak–lime woodland on the acid soils of the Hudnalls, Gloucestershire.

One of the most effective ways to increase native trees would be to diversify composition within plantation forests. Today, this is less my wish, more a recognition of current trends. As foresters claimed from the start of conifer afforestation, the new plantations have eventually diversified with the spread of native and naturalised trees. The spreading natives are mainly birches, willows and Rowan, but where there is contact with older woods, oak, Ash and Sycamore also spread. This is encouraging, especially if plantations are designed and managed to allow broadleaved riparian strips and retain broadleaves on plantation margins. We should also be open-minded about naturalised trees. Naturalisation involves the development of land races; gradual buildup of fauna that uses newly established tree species as habitat; an evolving coexistence with native trees in woodland; the possibility of developing new, naturally functioning assemblages; and cultural assimilation (Peterken 2001). Naturalised species can also expand available habitats in the sense that conifers provide habitats for Siskins and Crossbills in southern Britain and Sycamore provides alkaline bark for lichens and a source of sap for aphids. On the downside, some tend to dominate while they are being assimilated (for example, Sycamore, Western Hemlock) and all take up space that would have been occupied by native trees with richer dependent biodiversity. They also contribute to loss of local identity, insofar as everywhere increasingly looks like everywhere else. Sycamore has been a particular source of disputes throughout my career in woodland. It focuses minds because it is widespread, common and can seed prolifically into ancient woodland. However, it will not take over the world and will eventually become part of self-sustaining mixtures of broadleaves (Chapter 3), so I have long taken a tolerant and pragmatic view that we should work with it. We can control any tendency to dominance by felling disproportionately during thinning operations, eliminating it only from nature reserves and SSSIs – where it is still rare. Much the same can be said of Beech in the north and west and Scots Pine in the south, as well as locally aggressive species, such as Turkey Oak. Other naturalised trees, such as Sweet Chestnut and European Larch, are seldom aggressive enough to start arguments. In upland plantation forests, we can create facsimiles of the great forests of the Pacific Northwest by allowing

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Trees and Woodlands Douglas Fir, Sitka Spruce and Western Hemlock to regenerate naturally with native birch, sallows and Rowan. The truly damaging species are Rhododendron and Cherry Laurel, which bring only problems without benefits. They really do need controlling, even though it is expensive and requires eternal vigilance. Doctrinaire attitudes to naturalised trees seem to be waning, which is to be welcomed, and not just because they mirror unworthy and uncomfortable parallels with human societies. Nevertheless, naturalised trees displace indigenous species and alter native communities, so I suggest that we should still limit their incursions into nature reserves and ancient woods, where the long-established aim has been to retain examples of semi-natural woodland types on the grounds that this seems most likely to cater for the full range of wild species native to Britain. Elsewhere, though, let’s relax a bit. Woodland managers have reacted to climate change, the latest assault on our woodlands, by considering replacing native trees with species that might grow better in predicted future climates. My reaction to this is: go easy. It may be wise to plant other species in place of threatened native species in commercial woodland, but we should not write off native trees, especially in nature reserves and amenity woods. Elms recover in the long term, and Ash may have enough genetic diversity to stand a chance. Beech, oaks, Ash, limes and others grow well in warmer climates in mainland Europe, so we might bring in stock adapted to warmer regions (though the Woodland Trust argues against this). Bringing in new species based on assumptions about climate change that imply the breakdown of world order surely amounts to ‘spitting into the wind’. If woodland managers really think this is the future, they should be working to avert it.

Understanding woods Foresters are well aware of the control they exercise on woodland, and a multitude of trials and research projects have sought to understand and measure the details. Despite this, I am sure we should also maintain a few reference woods that are allowed to develop naturally (without direct silvicultural interventions) indefinitely. In scientific terms, these are the controls that can provide a measure of the effects of management elsewhere. They should be in both original-natural mixtures like Lady Park Wood and in woodland dominated by nonnative conifers and introduced broadleaves. To make full use of 390

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them, a basic record of how they develop would be needed. In total, they would occupy only a small fraction of the total woodland area and, in return for a nationally trivial loss of timber-growing potential, foresters would be able to appreciate better the long-term effects of the control they exercise. They would be able to demonstrate the value of their profession to the general public and other specialists.

Community Unlike some countries in Europe, Britain has few community woods. For most communities, their neighbourhood woodland is remote in the sense that it is owned privately and/or managed from some remote office, and this has sometimes led to hostility and disputes. In the distant past, there were many woods subject to common rights exercised by local residents. Most have lapsed, but vestiges remain, notably in the form of the Verderers’ Courts in the Dean and New Forests. The strength with which some communities still identify with their local woods was amply demonstrated when the government proposed privatising the Forest of Dean in 2010.

above: Recording the trees in the Lady Park transects. Jonathan Spencer and Susan Peterken measure a Small-leaved Lime in 1984 (left) and return 32 years later to the same tree, dressed in (almost) the same clothes. Repeated recordings provide a measure of change.

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Trees and Woodlands There has been a hearteningly strong movement during the last 20 years towards local communities sharing responsibility for their local woodland and participating in the benefits. Indeed, this has been facilitated by the Woodland Trust and the various parts of the Forestry Commission. Community woods do not necessarily involve community ownership of woodland. Some have become commercial enterprises, but all provide an opportunity for people to be involved in management decisions. They are not just inviting people into the woods, but offering them a chance to become stakeholders in the wood’s future through volunteer labour, forest schools, material benefits such as fuel wood, and contributing to the management plan. Finally, we need to promote an emotional attachment to woods and trees. In the 1960s, utilitarian economics and scientific understanding still dominated our relationships with woodland, yet many foresters knew this was incomplete. Notably, in 1968 the Forestry Commission started an arts centre in Grizedale Forest. Equally, when assessing woods on behalf of the Nature Conservancy, we were meant to put forward scientific reasons and go easy on their historical, landscape and cultural significance. Even when we advanced broader valuations, we scarcely mentioned the pleasure and wellbeing that many people feel in woodland, or the beauty of trees. Today, interest in trees and woodland seems wider than ever, and with it has come a greater recognition of their emotional and spiritual values. The once-uniform conifer blanket of Kielder Forest now boasts an art and architecture trail. This wide community of interest was brought home to me by working with the Arborealists in Lady Park Wood. They were not ecologists, nor were most involved in conservation, but their support for woodland conservation in the broad sense was as strong as mine – and they were far more willing to express that support in terms of their personal feelings about woods. Increasingly we see trees and woods as collaborators in our wellbeing, and many like to impute human emotions and motivations to trees and to interpret physiological links between trees in woodland as mutual care and purposeful collaboration. Some of the ideas that were explored at Dartington Hall in 2019 go uncomfortably far out for my professionally objective upbringing, but they widen the support for trees and woodland and their sympathetic management, and that is all to the good.

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Alex Egan, a member of the Arborealists, painting in Lady Park Wood. From my point of view, one objective of the artists’ work was to find a way to place ecological and conservation ideas before a wider audience.

d Since starting out as an over-enthusiastic woodland ecologist 60 years ago I have witnessed what amounts to an assault on our trees and woodlands. Initially it came from the drive to intensify agriculture and a narrow interpretation of forestry, but latterly it has come more from diseases, pests, pollution and climate change. Nevertheless, it has been possible to remain positive, if not optimistic, because forestry changed and people in general developed a greater appreciation of trees and woodland. Never give up!

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Species names

Where standard English names for plants, animals and other organisms exist, these are used throughout the text. For each species, the list below provides a cross-reference to the scientific name. Alder Alnus glutinosa Alder Buckthorn Frangula alnus Almond Willow Salix triandra American Beech Fagus grandifolia American Chestnut Castanea dentata Ash Fraxinus excelsior Ash-black Slug Limax cinereoniger Aspen Populus tremula Aurochs Bos primigenius Badger Meles meles Balsam Fir Abies balsamea Bank Vole Myodes glareolus Barbastelle Barbastella barbastellus Bay Willow Salix pentandra Beaver Castor fiber Bechstein’s Bat Myotis bechsteinii Beech Fagus sylvatica Beech Marten Martes foina Betony Betonica officinalis Birch Polypore Fomitopsis betulina Bird Cherry Prunus padus Black Grouse Lyrurus tetrix Black Hairstreak Satyrium pruni Black Poplar Populus nigra Black-veined White Aporia crataegi Blackbird Turdus merula Blackcap Sylvia atricapilla Blackcurrant Ribes nigrum Blackthorn Prunus spinosa Bloody Cranesbill Geranium sanguineum Blue Tit Cyanistes caeruleus Bluebell Hyacinthoides non-scripta Box Buxus sempervirens Bracken Pteridium aquilinum Bramble Rubus fruticosus agg. Brimstone Gonepteryx rhamni

Broom Cytisus scoparius Brown Bear Ursus arctos Brown Hairstreak Thecla betulae Brown Long-eared Bat Plecotus auritus Buckthorn Rhamnus cathartica Buddleja (Butterfly-bush) Buddleja davidii Buzzard Buteo buteo Capercaillie Tetrao urogallus Carrion Crow Corvus corone Cattle Egret Bubulcus ibis Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs Cherry Laurel Prunus laurocerasus Cherry Plum Prunus cerasifera Chestnut (Sweet Chestnut) Castanea sativa Chiffchaff Phylloscopus collybita Chinese Water Deer Hydropotes inermis Clematis (Traveller’s-joy) Clematis vitalba Coal Tit Periparus ater Collared Flycatcher Ficedula albicollis Common Cow-wheat Melampyrum pratense Common Hawthorn Crataegus monogyna Cornish Elm Ulmus sarnensis Corsican Pine Pinus nigra Crab Apple Malus sylvestris Crack-willow Salix fragilis Cranberry Vaccinium oxycoccos Crested Tit Lophophanes cristatus Crossbill Loxia curvirostra Dark Green Fritillary Speyeria aglaja Dog Rose Rosa canina Dog’s Mercury Mercurialis perennis Dogwood Cornus sanguinea Dormouse Muscardinus avellanarius Douglas Fir Pseudotsuga menziesii Downy Birch Betula pubescens

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Trees and Woodlands Duke of Burgundy Hamearis lucina Dunnock Prunella modularis Eared Willow Salix aurita East Anglian Elm (Smooth-leaved Elm) Ulmus minor or U. carpinifolia Eastern Hemlock Tsuga canadensis Elder Sambucus nigra Emerald Ash Borer Agrilus planipennis English Elm Ulmus procera European Larch Larix decidua Fallow Deer Dama dama False Brome Brachypodium sylvaticum Field Elm Ulmus minor Field Maple Acer campestre Field Rose Rosa arvensis Firecrest Regulus ignicapilla Fly Honeysuckle Lonicera xylosteum Fox Vulpes vulpes Garden Warbler Sylvia borin Gean (Wild Cherry) Prunus avium Goat Willow Salix caprea Goldcrest Regulus regulus Gorse Ulex europaeus Goshawk Accipiter gentilis Grand Fir Abies grandis Great Spotted Woodpecker Dendrocopos major Great Tit Parus major Great Woodrush Luzula sylvatica Greater Butterfly-orchid Platanthera chlorantha Green Woodpecker Picus viridis Grey Alder Alnus incana Grey Heron Ardea cinerea Grey Poplar Populus canescens Grey Squirrel Sciurus carolinensis Grey Willow Salix cinerea Guelder Rose Viburnum opulus Harebell Campanula rotundifolia Hart’s-tongue Asplenium scolopendrium Hawfinch Coccothraustes coccothraustes Hazel Corylus avellana Hazel Grouse Tetrastes bonasia Heath Fritillary Melitaea athalia Hedgehog Erinaceus europaeus Herb Paris Paris quadrifolia High Brown Fritillary Fabriciana adippe Holly Ilex aquifolium Holly Blue Celastrina argiolus Holm Oak Quercus ilex Honey Bee Apis mellifera

Honey Fungus Armillaria mellea Honeysuckle Lonicera periclymenum Hoopoe Upupa epops Hornbeam Carpinus betulus Horse-chestnut Aesculus hippocastanum Horse-chestnut Leaf Miner Cameraria ohridella Ivy Hedera helix Jacob’s Ladder Polemonium caeruleum Japanese Larch Larix kaempferi Jay Garrulus glandarius Juniper Juniperus communis Kestrel Falco tinnunculus Lady Orchid Orchis purpurea Lady’s-slipper Cypripedium calceolus Large Blue Phengaris arion Large-leaved Lime Tilia platyphyllos Large Skipper Ochlodes sylvanus Large Tortoiseshell Nymphalis polychloros Lawson Cypress Cupressus lawsoniana Lemon Slug Malacolimax tenellus Lily-of-the-valley Convallaria majalis Lodgepole Pine Pinus contorta Lynx Lynx lynx Male-fern Dryopteris filix-mas Marsh Fritillary Euphydryas aurinia Marsh Tit Poecile palustris Midland Hawthorn Crataegus laevigata Mistle Thrush Turdus viscivorus Mistletoe Viscum album Mountain Bulin Ena montana Muntjac Muntiacus reevesi Narrow-leaved Elm Ulmus carpinifolia Natterer’s Bat Myotis nattereri Nettle-leaved Bellflower Campanula trachelium Noble Fir Abies procera Noctule Nyctalus noctula Norway Maple Acer platanoides Norway Spruce Picea abies Nuthatch Sitta europaea Oak Leaf Roller Moth Tortrix viridana Oak Mildew Erysiphe alphitoides Oak Processionary Moth Thaumetopoea processionea Oriental Beech Fagus orientalis Osier Salix viminalis Oxlip Primula elatior

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Species names Pear Pyrus communis Pearl-bordered Fritillary Boloria euphrosyne Pedunculate Oak Quercus robur Pheasant Phasianus colchicus Pied Flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca Pignut Conopodium majus Pine Marten Martes martes Plymouth Pear Pyrus cordata Polecat Mustela putorius Primrose Primula vulgaris Privet Ligustrum vulgare Purple Emperor Apatura iris Purple Hairstreak Favonius quercus Purple Willow Salix purpurea

Stag Beetle Lucanus cervus Starling Sturnus vulgaris Stinging Nettle Urtica dioica Stoat Mustela erminea Strawberry-tree Arbutus unedo Swallow Hirundo rustica Sweet Chestnut Castanea sativa Sycamore Acer pseudoplatanus Traveller’s-joy (Clematis) Clematis vitalba Treecreeper Certhia familiaris Tulip-tree Liriodendron tulipifera Turkey Oak Quercus cerris Upright Spurge Euphorbia stricta

Rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus Red Deer Cervus elaphus Red Maple Acer rubrum Red Squirrel Sciurus vulgaris Redstart Phoenicurus phoenicurus Rhododendron Rhododendron ponticum Robin Erithacus rubecula Rock-rose Helianthemum nummularium Rock Whitebeam Sorbus rupicola Roe Deer Capreolus capreolus Rook Corvus frugilegus Rosebay Willowherb Chamaenerion angustifolium Rowan Sorbus aucuparia Sallows see Goat Willow, Grey Willow Sanicle Sanicula europaea Saw-wort Serratula tinctoria Scots Pine Pinus sylvestris Sea Aster Tripolium pannonicum Sea-buckthorn Hippophae rhamnoides Service-tree Sorbus domestica Sessile Oak Quercus petraea Sika Deer Cervus nippon Silver Birch Betula pendula Silver Fir Abies alba Silver-washed Fritillary Argynnis paphia Siskin Spinus spinus Sitka Spruce Picea sitchensis Small-leaved Lime Tilia cordata Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary Boloria selene Smooth-leaved Elm (East Anglian Elm) Ulmus minor or U. carpinifolia Snowberry Symphoricarpus albus Song Thrush Turdus philomelos Speckled Wood Pararge aegeria Spindle Euonymus europaeus

Wavy Hair-grass Avenella flexuosa Wayfaring-tree Viburnum lantana Weasel Mustela nivalis Western Hemlock Tsuga heterophylla Western Red Cedar Thuja plicata White Admiral Limenitis camilla White-letter Hairstreak Satyrium w-album White Poplar Populus alba White Willow Salix alba Whitebeam Sorbus aria agg. Wild Boar Sus scrofa Wild Cat Felis silvestris Wild Cherry (Gean) Prunus avium Wild Garlic Allium ursinum Wild Plum Prunus domestica Wild Service-tree Sorbus torminalis Willow Warbler Phylloscopus trochilus Wilson’s Honeysuckle Lonicera nitida Winter Moth Operophtera brumata Wolf Canis lupus Wood Anemone Anemone nemorosa Wood Fescue Drymochloa sylvatica Wood Mouse Apodemus sylvaticus Wood Sorrel Oxalis acetosella Wood Vetch Ervilia sylvatica Wood Violet Viola odorata Wood Warbler Phylloscopus sibilatrix Wood White Leptidea sinapis Woodcock Scolopax rusticola Woodpigeon Columba palumbus Woolly Mammoth Mammuthus primigenius Wren Troglodytes troglodytes Wych Elm Ulmus glabra Yellow-necked Mouse Apodemus flavicollis Yew Taxus baccata

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Illustration credits

All photographs and figures are copyright © the author or are understood to be out of copyright, except for those listed below. Bloomsbury Publishing would like to thank those listed below for providing illustrations and for permission to reproduce copyright material within this book. While every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge copyright holders, we would like to apologise for any errors or omissions, and invite readers to inform us so that corrections can be made in any future editions. Key: B = bottom; I = inset; M = main image; R = right; BL = bottom left; TL = top left 19 Veryan Pollard; 22 (all) Brian Cook and Irene Hawkins for books by H. L. Edlin, published by Batsford; 38 John Evelyn. Line engraving by R. Nanteuil, 1706, after himself / Wellcome Collection; 50 Asar Studios / Alamy Stock Photo; 55 Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Chester Dale Collection, 1951, 1951-109-1; 61 Rob Somer; 65 Martin Fowler / Alamy Stock Photo; 140 Aleksander Bolbot / Alamy Stock Photo; 146 TL Wild Wonders of Europe / Wothe / Alamy Stock Photo, R Andre Jenny / Alamy Stock Photo, BL Egmont Strigl / Alamy Stock Photo; 170 Yalda Davis; 175 Harald Krog, with permission from De Nationale Geologiske Undersøgelser for Danmark og Grønland (GEUS); 177 Vindolanda Trust; 185 Ernie Janes / Alamy Stock Photo; 188 Yalda Davis; 196 Veryan Pollard; 203 Gary Kerr; 204 Mike Alexander; 209 I Jessie Wormell; 234 Jeanette Hall; 263 Mike Alexander; 271 I Ron McCombe / Alamy Stock Photo; 276 I Brian Davis; 279 Wild Wonders of Europe / Benvie / Alamy Stock Photo; 281 Premaphotos / Alamy Stock Photo; 308 The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo; 312 Georg Berg / Alamy Stock Photo; 314 B Margaret Atherden; 316 Robert Stainforth / Alamy Stock Photo; 318 Angela Peterken; 323 Keith Morris / Alamy Stock Photo; 324 Peter Barritt / Alamy Stock Photo; 326 R Andrew Peterken; 327 Charles Watkins; 331 VTR / Alamy Stock Photo; 332 Rapp Halour / Alamy Stock Photo; 338 Anke Voss / Concord Free Public Library; 342 Asar Studios / Alamy Stock Photo; 351 John French; 352 Steven May / Alamy Stock Photo; 362 Andre Jenny / Alamy Stock Photo; 367 M David Tipling / Alamy Stock Photo; 370 Les Gibbon / Alamy Stock Photo; 375 I David Mark / Alamy Stock Photo; 377 Frank Hecker / Alamy Stock Photo; 380 Stella Carr.

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Acknowledgements

My preface acknowledges Barry Goater, Palmer Newbould, Colin Tubbs, Dick Steele, Derek Ratcliffe, Eustace Jones and Oliver Rackham, who shaped the way I think. In addition, thanks are particularly due to those who have worked with me, especially Paul Harding, Keith Kirby, Jonathan Spencer and Edward Mountford. We have learned from each other while sharing many days in the woods and evenings over a meal and a pint. Thanks are equally due to the wider community of ecologists and conservationists, particularly those at Monks Wood Experimental Station and the various manifestations of the Nature Conservancy, whose ideas and experience have been invaluable, and the community of ecologists who welcomed me for nearly a year at Harvard Forest. Many others helped directly in their several ways: Mike Alexander, Margaret Atherden, Rachel Bomford, Richard Bradshaw, Stella Carr, Sandy Coppins, David Cracknell, Tim Craven, Barry Dickerson, Brian and Beth Davis, Yalda Davis, Caroline Eccles and Nicholas Gubbins, Alex Egan, Lynne Farrell, Ros and Charlie Forbes-Adam, Richard Forman, John French, Karen Hale, Jeanette Hall, Philip Horton, Simon Ingram, John Josephi, Gary Kerr, Richard Mabey, Fiona Macintyre, Coralie Mills, Peter Friis Møller, Doug Oliver, Alan Orange, Christiana Payne, Andrew and Angela Peterken, Paul and Ann Peterken, Veryan Pollard, Richard Pumphrey, Peter Quelch, Rob Somer, Ian Standing, Gordon Gray Stephens, Brian Walker, Charles Watkins, Tony Whitbread, and Jessie Wormell. I just hope I have not forgotten anyone. Susan Peterken has, of course, been most closely associated with the blend of excitement, interest, frustration, tiredness and disruption involved in writing a book. She has been my scale object in photographs and in life, smiling throughout. Katy Roper, with help from David Campbell, has been an ever helpful and encouraging commissioning editor. Without them I would not have started this book, nor would I have finished. Hugh Brazier made copy-editing a pleasure while meticulously improving the text and eliminating many of my mistakes and ambiguities. Susan McIntyre’s design continues the high standards of the collection. Carry Akroyd’s arresting cover is inspired by a wood we both know well.

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Index

Page numbers in bold refer to illustrations. Page numbers in italics refer to tables. acid rain 151 acute oak decline 376, 378 Adamson, R. S. 142–3, 240 agriculture and development 379– 80, 380, 381 Ainsworth, Martin 268 air pollution 151, 316 Alder 48, 70, 101, 102, 107–8, 107, 142, 160, 176, 198, 220, 224, 225, 226, 231, 233, 234, 238, 244, 245, 246–8, 247, 250, 252, 296, 297, 376 Grey 107 alder dieback 108, 376 Alexander, Keith 274, 279 amenity woods 206–7, 207, 320–2, 322, 350 ancient trees 63, 64, 65, 77, 134, 248–9, 249, 334 ancient woodland 33, 34, 35–7, 37, 140–1, 379–80 ancient woodland indicators 268, 280–1, 281, 288–90, 289 Anderson, Anne 326 Anderson, Mark Laudon 38 Apple, Crab 70, 119–20, 120, 198, 307 Ash 27, 46, 47, 56, 58, 62–3, 70, 70, 93–6, 93, 94, 95, 112, 132, 141, 142, 143, 150, 151–2, 151, 157, 158, 160, 162, 168, 169, 174, 176, 188, 189, 191, 196, 198, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 227–8, 228, 229, 229, 230, 235–8, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 296, 304, 306, 309, 359, 378, 387, 390 ash dieback 94, 96, 151–2, 151, 155, 371, 375–6, 375

Aspen 58, 70, 101–2, 109–10, 110, 162–3, 163, 176, 198, 216, 225, 228, 229, 229, 232, 233, 235, 237, 241, 251, 298 Atlantic rainforest 124 Baker, Richard St Barbe 200 Balharry, Dick 348 Ballachuan Hazelwood, Argyll 124 bark graffiti 356, 357 bark patterns 47, 47 Barkham, Patrick 317 Baumer, Paul 362 Bayeux Tapestry 179, 330 Beaulieu River Woodlands, New Forest 245, 245, 361 beauty 361–3, 361 Bee, Honey 307–8 Beebee, Trevor 378 Beech 6, 9, 23–6, 25, 48, 50, 51, 57, 58, 60, 62, 67, 70, 70, 72–5, 73, 75, 76–7, 132, 141, 143, 148, 150–1, 151, 153, 154, 157, 158, 159, 159, 160, 161– 2, 161, 168, 176, 179, 182, 184, 189, 191, 195–6, 198, 202, 203, 204, 218, 220, 226, 227–8, 228, 229, 230, 238–9, 239, 240, 242, 245, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 268, 296, 297, 306, 307, 309–10, 344, 352, 356, 357, 360, 367–8, 376, 378, 388, 390, 394 Beech bark disease 73 Beevor, H. 288–90 Bevan-Jones, R. 342 Białowieża Forest 139–40, 140, 273, 307–8 Birch 39, 45, 56–7, 64, 101, 102, 103, 103–5, 142, 142, 144,

144, 158, 161, 176, 189, 190, 198, 221, 222, 224, 229, 231, 232–5, 233, 234, 236, 238, 241–2, 243, 250, 274, 296, 297, 306 Downy 70, 102, 103–4, 103, 220, 224, 228, 229, 232, 234, 235, 237, 241, 245, 248, 254 Silver 39, 70, 102, 103–4, 103, 157, 228, 229, 235, 237 Birch Polypore 105 birch province 173 birds 271–4, 271, 272 Black Poplar 111 Blackthorn 58, 70, 125–6, 125, 163, 176, 198, 275, 307, 352, 378 Bluebell 240 Boar, Wild 269, 270, 271, 306, 370–1, 370 Borderland woods 216, 217, 220– 2, 227–31, 228, 229, 230, 235, 244, 248, 253, 266 Borders Forest Trust 350 Boreal woods 90–2, 91, 144, 146, 147, 164–6, 165, 216, 217, 220–2, 231–5, 231, 232, 233, 234, 248, 252, 284 Box 70, 112, 223, 240, 352 Boycott, A. E. 280, 290 Boys, John 17–20 Bradfield Woods, Suffolk 170, 188, 188, 219, 265, 301, 303, 385 Bradshaw, Richard 379 Bright, Paul 288 Broadleaves Policy (1985) 23, 210, 365 Broom 252 bryophytes 260, 261–3, 263 Bryson, Bill 15 Buckholt and Cranham Woodland,

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Index Gloucestershire 75, 75, 350 Buckthorn 70, 129, 275 Alder 70, 129 Buddleja (Butterfly-bush) 129, 130 burials, woodland 323, 323 Burke, Edmund 361 butterflies 274–8, 275, 276, 277 Buxton, Edward North 42, 133 Caledonian pinewoods 29, 91, 91, 92, 231, 232–3 carbon sequestration 310, 379 Carlisle, A. 40 Carr, Stella 380 Cedar, Western Red 98, 99 cemeteries 323 chalara ash disease see ash dieback charcoal 176, 198, 298, 298, 299 chases 182 Cherry Bird 70, 129, 129, 220, 225, 233, 234, 238, 248, 352 Wild 58, 60, 70, 101–3, 106–7, 106, 162–3, 228, 241, 251, 306, 307, 352 Chestnut American 372 Sweet 19, 64, 65, 96, 97, 97, 196, 196, 198, 222, 239, 242–3, 249, 253, 268, 297, 307, 364, 388 see also Horse-chestnut Clausen, George 194, 194 clear-cutting 201, 202, 284 Clematis 67, 67, 70, 130, 143, 158 climate change 309–10, 378, 390 climbers, woody 67, 67, 130–1, 131 Coed Ganllwyd, Gwynedd 262, 263, 263 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 69, 105 common rights 178, 180–2, 185, 306, 341–2, 346, 349, 391 common use and private ownership 348–51, 349, 351 Commons and Footpaths Preservation Society 21, 206 Commons Preservation Society 321–2 commons, wooded 178, 180–2, 183, 183, 184, 249–50, 306 community woods 391–2, 393 competitive thinning 156–9, 159 conservation management 172, 205–10, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 350, 365 continuous cover forestry (CCF) 204, 204

coppice management 20, 21, 24–5, 26, 27–8 improvement 194–9, 196, 197 pre-medieval 174, 176 stand structures 283 traditional 170, 172, 177–8, 184, 187–91, 188, 189, 190, 191 tree species 73–4, 77, 78–9, 82, 87–8, 90, 94, 105, 108, 110, 115–16 trees shaped by 53, 53, 55–6, 56 wood-meadows 192–3, 193 COVID-19 pandemic 319, 320, 341 Crack-willow 70, 110 Craven, Tim 325 Crowther, John 254 Cubbington Pear 119, 380 Culpepper, Nicholas 76 cultural appreciation 325–8 beauty 361–3, 361 common use and private ownership 348–51, 349, 351 danger and disorientation 339–41, 339 growth rings 353–4, 353 human experience 359–61 hunting 320–1, 320, 345–8, 347, 348 memorials 355–7, 356, 357, 362 music 328, 347 painting and drawing 324, 326, 327, 328, 329–37, 330, 331, 332, 333, 335, 336, 342 permanence and stability 357–8 refuge and freedom 341–2 religious associations 342–5, 343, 344 seasons 351–3, 352 time 351–8, 355 wilderness 337–8, 338 Cypress, Lawson 98 Daniels, Rich 351 Dark, P. 176 Darwin, Charles 345, 359 Deer Fallow 55–6, 56, 110, 155, 269, 269, 368 Red 184, 234, 348, 348, 368, 369, 386 deer grazing problems 55–6, 56, 155, 179–80, 271, 368–70, 369, 386

deer parks 184–7, 185, 186, 249, 306 Denecourt, Claude François 321 Dennis, Felix 209, 382 Dimbleby, Geoffrey 25, 26 diseases 371–6 ash dieback 94, 96, 151–2, 151, 155, 371, 375–6, 375 Beech bark disease 73 Dutch elm disease 83, 85, 150, 155, 371, 372–4, 373, 374 Oak Mildew 89, 105, 372, 372 Phytophthora 108, 376 disturbances 147, 148–55, 149, 151, 153, 154, 155, 159, 309–10 Dogwood 58, 70, 126, 127, 228, 242, 296 Domesday Book 27, 32, 32, 33, 178, 290 Dormouse 270, 288 drought 150, 151, 153, 154, 159, 309–10 Dru, Bernard 305 Dryden, John 64 Dutch elm disease 83, 85, 150, 155, 372–4, 373, 374 dying trees 44–5, 45 Ebernoe Common and The Mens, West Sussex 182, 183, 183, 241 Edlin, Herbert L. 22, 22, 38, 294, 296, 297, 307 education 317–18, 318 Edwards, Mary 263 Elder 70, 125, 126, 126, 228, 251, 296, 307, 378 Ellenberg, H. 111 Elm 48, 296–7, 306 suckering 59, 70, 83, 84–6, 85, 86, 150, 162–3, 221, 226, 236, 237, 244, 249, 275, 373, 374, 378 Wych 58, 70, 74, 80–3, 81, 83, 84, 141, 150, 161, 162, 168, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 226, 228, 229, 234, 237, 240, 241, 249, 250, 251, 254, 352, 354, 374 elm decline 174–6, 373 elm disease 83, 85, 150, 155, 372–4, 373, 374 Elton, Charles 258, 259, 274 Elwes, H. J. 38 Ennos, Roland 315 Epping Forest 56, 74, 140, 175, 191,

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Trees and Woodlands 206, 239, 279, 322, 350 erosion 310–15, 312 Evans, Julian 38 Evelyn, John 20, 38, 38, 103, 105, 107, 110–11, 123, 366 Fairbrother, Nan 379 Finch, Stephen 306 Fir Douglas 98, 99, 99, 204, 204, 255, 389, 390 Grand 98 Noble 98 Silver 98, 99, 203 fire-dominated woodlands 144, 146, 147, 164–6, 165, 284 FitzRandolph, H. E. 294 flood mitigation 313–15, 314 floodplain and wet woodland 218, 243–8, 245, 246, 247, 312–13 floodplain woodlands 146, 147, 164, 165 Flower, Nicholas 24 food 306–8, 308 Forest Law 178, 182, 345–6, 347 Forest of Dean 16, 30, 31, 32, 55, 88, 175, 178, 182, 184, 184, 195, 203, 279, 306, 322, 342, 350–1, 351, 391 see also Lady Park Wood forest schools 317–18, 318 forestry see plantations and high forest Forestry Commission 15, 31, 32, 210, 322, 323, 341, 350, 365, 392 forests 182–4 see also Forest Law Fortey, Richard 40 freedom 341–2 fuel 176, 198, 297–8, 298, 299, 304–5 fungal diseases 371–6 ash dieback 94, 96, 151–2, 151, 155, 371, 375–6, 375 Beech bark disease 73 Dutch elm disease 83, 85, 150, 155, 371, 372–4, 373, 374 Oak Mildew 89, 105, 372, 372 Phytophthora 108, 376 fungi 267–8, 268 foraging for food 308, 308 mycorrhizae/mycelial network 47, 164, 257, 267–8, 360, 371 see also fungal diseases future opportunities 380–92, 382

choice of species 388–90, 389 community woods 391–2, 393 management 385–7, 385, 387 rewilding 209, 211, 234, 371, 382–4, 383 understanding woods 390–1, 391 see also stresses and threats Gean (Wild Cherry) 58, 60, 70, 101–3, 106–7, 106, 162–3, 228, 241, 251, 306, 307, 352 Gilpin, William 115, 306, 361, 361 Godwin, H. 134, 176 Gorse 125 graffiti 356, 357 Grass and Bastow Woods, Upper Wharfedale 254, 254 Greer, Germaine 43 group system 201, 203, 311–12 growth rings 353–4, 353 habitats see wildlife and habitats Haeckel, Ernst 345 Hale, Karen 379 Hall, Jeanette 234, 286 Harding, Paul 219 Hart, C. E. 38 Hatfield Forest 54, 76, 76, 77, 104–5, 249, 249, 350 Hawthorn 176, 275, 378 Common 70, 100, 120–2, 121, 228, 248, 251 Midland 70, 120–2, 122, 226, 237, 251 Hay, M. D. 294 Hazel 27, 52, 58, 59, 67, 70, 122–4, 123, 124, 138, 141, 161, 168, 169, 176, 191, 191, 196–7, 198, 222, 224, 225, 226, 228, 229, 229, 230, 231, 233, 234, 235–8, 236, 241, 243, 248, 249, 250, 251, 254, 268, 294–5, 296, 297, 300, 302, 302, 303, 307, 344 Hazel–elm province 173 health and wellbeing 319–20 Heart of England Forest 209, 382 Hemlock, Western 98–9, 255, 390 Henry, A. 38 heritage trees 64 Hethel Old Thorn 121 high forest see plantations and high forest Hinsley, S. A. 272, 273 Holly 23–6, 30–1, 31, 52, 70, 70, 97, 112, 114–15, 114, 143,

160, 161, 177, 198, 223, 225, 228, 233, 234, 242, 245, 248, 249, 250, 251, 274, 275, 296, 297, 344–5, 353 Honeysuckle 275, 276 Wilson’s 129 Hornbeam 48, 56, 70, 76–7, 76, 77, 141, 168, 174, 176, 220, 221, 230, 237, 238, 239, 242–3, 243, 249, 249, 268, 296, 297 Horse-chestnut 309, 378 HS2 railway 34, 119, 379, 380 hunting 320–1, 320, 345–8, 347, 348 Ingram, Simon 362 invertebrates 274–81 butterflies 274–8, 275, 276, 277 molluscs 280–1, 281 pests 377–8, 377 saproxylic 278–80, 279 Iversen, Johannes 174 Ivy 67, 70, 130–1, 131, 143, 158, 275, 353 John Muir Trust 350 Johns, C. A. 69, 109, 373 Jones, Eustace 133–4, 145, 146, 153, 200 Jones, Thomas 296 Jones, Tobias 319 Jones, William 295, 296 Journal of Ecology 71, 72 Juniper 70, 127–8, 128, 144, 231, 231, 232, 233, 233, 235 Kent, William 185 Kerney, M. 280–1 Kilmer, Joyce 362, 362 King, Gregory 32 Kirby, Keith 41, 136, 266 Knepp Wildland 167, 167, 275, 350, 383 Lady Park Wood 28, 45, 45, 60, 62–3, 67, 68, 75, 93, 104, 114, 116, 119, 123, 126, 132, 228 Arborealists 329–30, 330, 392, 393 carbon stores 310 charcoal 298 competitive thinning 157, 158, 159 diseases 155, 372, 374, 375 disturbance history 152–5, 153, 154, 155, 156, 159 fungi 268, 268

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Index Grey Squirrels, deer and feral pigs 155, 155, 367–9, 370–1 measuring trees 66, 66, 391 minimum intervention 211 regeneration within 160, 161, 162–3, 164 Larch European 98, 99, 254, 304, 388 Japanese 98 Laurel, Cherry 129–30, 143, 389, 390 layering 58–60, 60 Lefevre, George Shaw 321 lichens 260–1, 261 life cycle of trees 44–5, 45 light requirements 69–70, 70 Lime 58, 60, 74, 78–80, 141, 142, 150, 168, 191, 221, 268, 296, 390 Large-leaved 60, 68, 70, 78, 79, 80, 141, 161–2, 175, 227, 228, 230, 240, 242, 249, 251, 378 Small-leaved 1, 11, 27, 27, 47, 52, 57, 60, 61, 63, 69, 70, 78, 79, 80, 80, 132, 140, 154, 157, 161–2, 161, 175, 182, 184, 197, 216, 221, 228, 228, 230, 230, 237, 238, 241, 242, 243, 249, 250, 251, 271, 378, 391 lime decline 175–6 lime province 173 Lincolnshire limewoods 27–8, 27, 80, 253, 280 Linnaeus, Carl 103 Linnard, William 38, 195 Lord, E. S. 295 Loudon, John 38, 103, 105, 106–7, 109, 110, 387 Lowland woods 216, 217, 220–2, 235–9, 236, 237, 238, 251, 261–2, 266 Lyon, Nina 318 Mabey, Richard 38, 329, 338 Macfarlane, Robert 44 McVean, D. N. 233 maidens 52, 53 mammals 269–71, 269, 270 Maple Field 27, 28, 70, 112, 115–16, 116, 141, 143, 161, 168, 169, 176, 221, 222, 228, 235–8, 241, 248, 249, 268, 367 Norway 115, 216

Marren, Peter 268 Marsh, George Perkins 311 Marshall, Alfred 360 mast years 57, 72, 89 Matthews, John 38, 57, 200 megaherbivores 138–9 memorials 355–7, 356, 357, 362 minimum intervention 172, 211 molluscs 280–1, 281 Monks Wood, Cambridgeshire 123, 127, 194, 258–9, 259, 276, 277, 277, 280 Morgan, R. K. 62 Morris, M. G. 274 Morton, John 338 Mountford, Edward 153 Mouse, Yellow-necked 270 Muntjac 123, 155, 269, 278, 368 mycorrhizae/mycelial network 47, 164, 257, 267–8, 360, 371 Mytting, Lars 38 National Nature Reserves 205–6, 206 National Trust 21, 75, 206, 322, 341, 350, 358 National Vegetation Classification (NVC) 215, 218, 235 natural woodland 34–5, 37, 132, 133–4 competitive thinning 156–9, 159 definitions of 166–8, 167, 168, 169 disturbances 147, 148–55, 149, 151, 153, 154, 155, 159, 309–10 fire-dominated woodlands 144, 146, 147, 164–6, 165 floodplain woodlands 146, 147, 164, 165 general features 146–7 habitats in natural versus managed woodland 281–6, 282, 283, 284, 285 natural development 142–7, 142, 143, 144, 146, 167, 167 openness of 134, 135–8, 135 regeneration within 62, 160–4, 161, 162, 163, 283 see also pre-Neolithic woodland naturalised species dominants 96–9, 97, 98, 99, 167 future opportunities 388–90 novel woodland types 253–5, 254, 255 regeneration of naturalised

conifers 98–9, 98, 99, 255, 388–90, 389 shrubs 129–30, 130 Nature Conservancy 21, 34, 75, 215, 219, 287, 392 nature deficit disorder 319 nature reserves 205–6, 206, 350 New Forest 23–6, 26, 29, 60, 239, 251, 357, 357 common rights 182, 306, 391 conifer regeneration 98, 98, 99, 99 conservation management 205, 206, 350 deer control 369 disturbances 151 dominant species 74, 90 floodplain and wet woodland 244, 245, 245, 246 fungi foraging 308 hunting 346, 347 improvement 195, 196 limes 140, 175 as model for natural woodland 134, 135, 139 natural development 143 recreational use 206, 321–2, 322 Ridley Wood 24–6, 25, 62, 184, 325–6, 326, 357 shelterwood systems 203, 203 small trees 114, 115, 118, 122 Verderers’ Court 182, 391 wildlife and habitats 259–60, 261, 262, 268, 278, 279 wood-pastures 180, 182, 184, 191, 250, 262, 279, 369 New National Forest 15, 209, 382 Newland Oak 354, 355, 357 Newman, Edward 267 Nisbet, John 76, 77, 107, 373 Norden, John 24–5, 180 Norfolk Wildlife Trust 121 NVC see National Vegetation Classification (NVC) Oak 23–6, 27, 36, 39, 43, 45, 48, 49, 50–1, 53, 57, 64, 70, 86–90, 89, 138, 141, 142, 143, 145, 148, 150, 158, 161, 175, 176, 177, 179, 182, 183, 186, 187, 188, 190, 191, 195–6, 197, 198–9, 199, 203, 203, 212, 223, 224–6, 229, 230, 231, 233, 249, 250, 251, 268, 274, 275, 294, 296, 297, 297, 304, 305, 305, 306, 352, 353, 354, 355, 357, 357–8, 359,

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Trees and Woodlands 367, 372, 372, 376, 377, 378, 390 Holm 96, 97, 143, 255, 255 Pedunculate 11, 54, 70, 86–90, 87, 111–12, 163, 168, 169, 184, 186, 216, 220, 221, 222, 225–6, 225, 228, 229, 230, 235–8, 236, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 243, 244, 245, 248, 249, 249, 254, 309, 378 Sessile 17, 45, 57, 70, 86–90, 87, 88, 111–12, 157, 184, 196, 198, 220, 221, 222, 225, 228, 228, 230, 238, 238, 241–2, 243, 243, 263, 263, 357 Turkey 97, 388 oak–Hazel province 173 Oak Mildew 89, 105, 372, 372 Oceanic woods 212, 216, 217, 220–2, 223–6, 223, 225, 226, 244, 248, 250, 251, 253, 260, 261, 262, 263, 263 Odstock Copse, Wiltshire 302, 302 old-growth woodlands 145, 146, 147 Orange, Alan 66, 153 Osier 70, 110 painting and drawing 324, 326, 327, 328, 329–37, 330, 331, 332, 333, 335, 336, 342 Pakenham, Thomas 38 parks 184–7, 185, 186, 249, 306 Pear 70, 119, 307, 380 Plymouth 119 Penistan, Morley 23 pests invertebrate 377–8, 377 see also diseases Peterken, Susan 391 Pettit, P. A. J. 38 pheasant shooting 320–1, 348 pheromones 164 Phytophthora 108, 376 Pigott, Donald 78, 79 pigs, feral 155, 269, 270, 271, 306, 370–1, 370 Pike, Andrew 305, 305 Pine Corsican 98 Lodgepole 98 Scots 14, 47, 69, 70, 90–2, 91, 98, 99, 111–12, 140–1, 142, 144, 164–6, 165, 176, 177, 197, 203, 221, 226, 230, 231–3, 231, 232,

250, 251, 268, 283, 306, 309, 388 pine province 173 pioneer form 48, 49 pioneer species 101–12, 134–5, 142, 158 plantations and high forest 37, 37, 250–1 habitats in 281–6, 282, 283, 284, 285 management 20–3, 62, 98, 172, 200–4, 201, 201, 203, 204, 213–14 natural regeneration within 98– 9, 98, 99, 202, 203, 203, 255, 283, 388–90, 389 storm damage 148–50 Plum Cherry 119, 307 Wild 119 poles 44 pollarding 53–6, 54, 74, 76, 77, 79, 82, 94, 94, 105, 108, 114, 174, 181, 192, 387 Poplar 101, 102, 298, 304 Black 70, 110–11, 244, 353 Grey 110 White 70, 110 Powers, Richard 38 pre-medieval woodland 172, 173–7, 175, 177 pre-Neolithic woodland beetles 137–8, 280 birds 273 character of 134–9 dominant species 74, 78, 80, 81, 89–90, 134–5 human impacts on 136–9, 172–3, 172 openness of 134, 135–8, 135 pioneer species 104, 108, 134–5 pollen record 135–6 preserved tree remains 137, 138 shrubs 126, 127, 129 snail shells 136–7 surviving elements of 33, 35, 37, 37, 139–41, 140, 141 Priest, St John 198 primary woodland 33, 37 Privet 127, 127 provinces 173 public open spaces 206–7, 207, 321–2, 322, 350 Rackham, Oliver 20, 28, 29–30, 32, 40, 77, 84, 104–5, 107–8, 110, 123, 138, 141, 179–80,

188, 193, 195, 206, 210, 215, 218, 219, 235–6, 293, 329, 332, 371 Ramsbury Wych Elm 319, 354 Ratcliffe, D. A. 233 Rayner, Alan 267 recent woodland 33, 37 recreation 206–7, 207, 320–2, 322, 350 recruitment 62 Reed, David 267 regeneration, natural deer grazing problems 55–6, 56, 155, 179–80, 271, 368–70, 369, 386 in natural woodland 62, 160–4, 161, 162, 163, 283 of naturalised conifers 98–9, 98, 99, 255, 388–90, 389 in plantations 98–9, 98, 99, 202, 203, 203, 255, 283, 388–90, 389 in wood-pastures 179–80, 181, 369 religious associations 342–5, 343, 344 reproduction 56–62, 57, 59, 60, 61, 160–4, 163 restoration of native woodland 210, 210 rewilding 209, 211, 234, 371, 382–4, 383 Reynolds, Fiona 362 Rhododendron 129–30, 143, 226, 255, 376, 390 Richens, R. H. 84 Ridley Wood, New Forest 24–6, 25, 62, 184, 325–6, 326, 357 river health 310–15, 313, 314 Rivers Trust 313 Rixon, Phyllida 259 Roberts, P. 267, 268 Rockingham Forest 28, 116, 182, 195, 299, 346 Rodwell, John 215 roots 46–7, 46 Rose Dog 70, 125, 126, 227, 228 Field 70, 125, 126 Guelder 70, 128–9, 129, 352 Rose, Francis 136, 260–1 Rothiemurchus Forest, Strathspey 91, 91, 231, 231 Rowan 47–8, 70, 101, 116–17, 117, 143, 224, 225, 228, 229, 232– 5, 248, 251, 296, 307, 344 Ryle, George 200

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Index Salisbury, Edward 242 sallows 101, 102, 109, 109, 142, 158, 176, 276, 352, 377 see also Willow, Goat; Willow, Grey saplings 44, 45, 51–2 saproxylic invertebrates 278–80, 279 Schama, Simon 193, 321, 343 Schlich, Walter 201 schools, forest 317–18, 318 Scolytus beetles 83, 150, 378 Scott, Walter 327 Scottish Wildlife Trust 124 Sea-buckthorn 125, 252 seasons, signs of 351–3, 352 secondary woodland 33, 37, 39, 142–4, 142, 143, 144, 167, 167, 251–3, 253 seed production 56–7 seedlings 44, 45 selection forestry 201, 202, 204, 311–12 self-coppicing 58, 59, 123 semi-natural woodland 34–7, 36, 37 Service-tree 118, 255 Wild 58, 70, 118–19, 119, 142, 163, 189, 225, 225, 227, 228, 251, 352 shade succession 143, 160 shade tolerance 69–70, 70, 71, 112, 158, 160 shelterwood systems 201, 202–4, 203, 284 shredding 55, 55, 181 shrubs 43, 51–2, 125–30, 130 silvicultural systems 200–4, 201, 203, 204 Simard, Suzanne 164, 267 snags 44–5 Snowberry 129 snowfall 154, 154 soil erosion 310–15, 312 soil preferences 69–70, 70 South-east Lowland woods 216–18, 217, 220–2, 239–43, 239, 240, 243, 248, 251, 260 Southwood, T. R. E. 274 Spencer, Jonathan 391 Spindle 48, 127, 127, 228, 242, 251, 296 Spooner, B. 267, 268 Spruce 167 Norway 96, 98, 99, 203, 216, 304 Sitka 98, 99, 314–15, 390

Squirrel Grey 50, 67, 73, 97, 116, 123, 155, 251, 269, 270, 366–8, 367, 370 Red 270 Stafford, Fiona 38 stag-headed trees 45 stand structures 282, 283 Standish, Arthur 20, 38 Steven, H. M. 40 storms 148–50, 149, 154, 183 Strathbeg Birchwood, Sutherland 234, 234 Strawberry-tree 112–13, 226 stresses and threats agriculture and development 379–80, 380, 381 climate change 309–10, 378, 390 deer 55–6, 56, 155, 271, 368– 70, 369 feral pigs 155, 370–1, 370 Grey Squirrels 50, 67, 73, 97, 116, 123, 155, 251, 270, 366–8, 367, 370 invertebrate pests 377–8, 377 see also diseases Stubbs, A. 280–1 successional pathways 143 suckers 58, 59, 60 sudden oak death 376 Suffolk Wildlife Trust 188 Sussex Wildlife Trust 183 swamp woodland 243–8, 246, 247 Sycamore 52, 52, 96–7, 99, 167, 168, 169, 226, 239, 251, 253, 254, 254, 306, 356, 367, 378, 387, 388 Tabor, Ray 294 Tansley, Arthur 35–6, 40, 81, 86, 214–15, 224, 251, 252, 265 tap roots 46–7 Tavener, Roger 55 Taverner, Roger 195 Thomas, Peter 38 Thoreau, Henry David 321, 338, 338 threats see stresses and threats Tortworth Chestnut 64, 65 Traveller’s-joy (Clematis) 67, 67, 70, 130, 143, 158 tree planting 195–6, 197, 199, 208–9, 209 see also plantations and high forest trees 43 age and ageing 62–4, 63, 65, 73,

77, 79, 82, 88, 92, 95, 159 defining 43 growth rings 353–4, 353 life cycle 44–5, 45 light requirements 69–70, 70 measuring 64–6, 66, 391 natural growth forms 46–52, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52 old words for 44 reproduction 56–62, 57, 59, 60, 61, 160–4, 163 shaped by management 52–6, 53, 54, 55, 56 soil preferences 69–70, 70 see also individual species Trees for Life 209, 350 Troels-Smith, Jørgan 174 Troup, Robert 200–1 Tubbs, Colin 24, 26 two-storeyed high forest 201, 203 Urwälder 145, 146 utility carbon sequestration 310, 379 flood mitigation 313–15, 314 food 306–8, 308 forest schools 317–18, 318 fuel 176, 198, 297–8, 298, 299, 304–5 health and wellbeing 319–20 living with trees 315–16, 316, 317 modern uses of timber and wood 303–6, 304, 305 recreation 206–7, 207, 320–2, 322, 350 traditional woodmanship 292, 293–303, 297, 298, 300, 301, 302, 303 woodland burials 323, 323 vascular plants 259, 260, 264–6, 264, 265 vegetative reproduction 57, 58–60, 59, 60, 61, 160–4, 163 Vera, Frans 134, 136, 139, 273, 282 Verderers’ Courts 182, 184, 391 veteran trees 64, 108, 187, 386–7 Vole, Bank 155 walking 321, 322 Ward, Lena 128, 252 Watt, A. S. 142–3, 240, 251 Wayfaring-tree 70, 127, 242 wellbeing and health 319–20 Whitbread, Tony 183 White, Gilbert 240

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Trees and Woodlands Whitebeam 48, 70, 117–18, 117, 227, 228, 231, 242, 307 Rock 70 ‘Whitty Pear’ 118 Wild Service-tree 296 wilderness, woodland as 337–8, 338 wildlife and habitats 257–8, 388 ancient woodland indicators 268, 280–1, 281, 288–90, 289 birds 271–4, 271, 272 bryophytes 260, 261–3, 263 butterflies 274–8, 275, 276, 277 diversity 258–60, 259 fungi 267–8, 268 habitat continuity 288–91, 289, 290 lichens 260–1, 261 mammals 269–71, 269, 270 in managed versus natural woodland 281–6, 282, 283, 284, 285 molluscs 280–1, 281 in new woodland 286–8, 287, 289 saproxylic invertebrates 278–80, 279 vascular plants 259, 260, 264–6, 264, 265 woodland size and 285–6, 285, 288 Wildlife Trusts 121, 124, 183, 188, 254, 322 Wilenski, Deb 318 Willow 101, 102, 196, 198, 274 Almond 110 Bay 248 Eared 233, 248 Goat 102, 109, 109, 228, 233, 254, 275; see also sallows Grey 70, 109, 109, 224, 233, 234, 238, 245, 246, 248, 252; see also sallows Purple 70 White 70, 110 Wilson, Malcolm 219 Wilson, Valerie 234 Wise, John 38–40, 40 Wohlleben, Peter 38, 360

wood-burners 304–5 wood-meadows 172, 178, 192–4, 192, 193, 194 wood-pastures 172, 177–87, 179, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 191, 224–5, 240, 248–50, 249, 250, 262, 279, 369 wooded commons 178, 180–2, 183, 183, 184, 249–50, 306 woodland ancient 33, 34, 35–7, 37, 140–1, 379–80 area of in Britain 31–4 food from 306–8, 308 novel types 253–5, 254, 255 primary 33, 37 recent 33, 37 secondary 33, 37, 39, 142–4, 142, 143, 144, 167, 167, 251–3, 253 semi-natural 34–7, 36, 37 see also natural woodland; pre-Neolithic woodland; woodland zones woodland burials 323, 323 woodland classifications 214–16 National Vegetation Classification (NVC) 215, 218, 235 by principal trees 213–14, 215, 218–23, 220–2 see also woodland zones woodland management 171–2, 172 conservation management 172, 205–10, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 350, 365 future opportunities 385–7, 385, 387 habitats in managed versus natural woodland 281–6, 282, 283, 284, 285 high forest and plantations 20–3, 62, 98, 172, 200–4, 201, 201, 203, 204, 213–14 improving traditional 172, 194– 9, 196, 197, 199 minimum intervention 172, 211 pre-medieval woodland 172, 173–7, 175, 177 pre-Neolithic woodland 136–9, 172–3, 172

trees shaped by 52–6, 53, 54, 55, 56 wood-meadows 172, 178, 192–4, 192, 193, 194 wood-pastures 172, 177–87, 179, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 191 see also coppice management Woodland Trust 15, 206, 209, 210, 288, 322, 341, 350, 379, 390, 392 woodland zones Borderland woods 216, 217, 220–2, 227–31, 228, 229, 230, 235, 244, 248, 253, 266 Boreal woods 90–2, 91, 144, 146, 147, 164–6, 165, 216, 217, 220–2, 231–5, 231, 232, 233, 234, 248, 252, 284 floodplain and wet woodland 218, 243–8, 245, 246, 247, 312–13 Lowland woods 216, 217, 220–2, 235–9, 236, 237, 238, 251, 261–2, 266 Oceanic woods 212, 216, 217, 220–2, 223–6, 223, 225, 226, 244, 248, 250, 251, 253, 260, 261, 262, 263, 263 South-east Lowland woods 216–18, 217, 220–2, 239–43, 239, 240, 243, 248, 251, 260 woodmanship, traditional 292, 293–303, 297, 298, 300, 301, 302, 303 Woodruffe-Peacock, Adrian 286 Woods, K. S. 294 woody climbers 67, 67, 130–1, 131 Wordsworth, William 321, 355, 356 Workman, John 23, 75 Wormell, Peter 209, 209 Yew 16, 47, 62, 64, 70, 112, 113– 14, 113, 143, 208, 220, 227, 228, 240, 240, 245, 249, 251, 274, 297, 306, 343, 352 Yorkshire Wildlife Trust 254

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