G-CPTN wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 9:46 am
What species of trees are you proposing?
Our local forest (Kielder) is replacing conifers with more broadleaf for replanting clear-felled areas.
For plantations which are intended to mimic some characteristics of the ancient Caledonian forest, I have a list of sixteen native species.
They are, in alphabetical not preferential order:
Alder
(Ash)
Aspen
Birch
Cherry
Elder
(Elm)
Hawthorn
Hazel
Holly
Juniper
Oak
Rowan
Scots Pine
Willow
Yew
The two bracketed ones carry a highly infectious disease and it's currently illegal to transport them.
In the case of Oak, there are two species. One has long stems on the leaves and short stems on the acorns. The other species is the other way around. Both grow in Caledonian forest territory, but each have slightly different preferences for soil type and microclimate. I like to plant both species and let Nature determine which thrives the most. Oak grow to four or five hundred years, so long as the Royal Navy doesn't need it to build ships. A mature oak is a perfect have for all sorts of critters and is a major contribution to the web or life. As a rough rule of thumb, an oak tree will support one species of insect for each year of its life.
There are also two different species of willow. Very fast growing and a tremendous resource for craftsmen
I greatly regret that I can no longer plant Ash. It's fast growing and it produces the best firewood in Britain. It burns very bright and very hot and produces very little residue in the lum. I've got a thousand stems of Ash that I planted in-bye in the 1980s and its a great pleasure to fell and split those stems nowadays.
In addition to the trees, I also plant understorey shrubs such as blaeberry, bog myrtle, heather and sphagnum.
I'm delighted whenever I hear that those abominable plantations of Sitka spruce are being replaced with diverse native trees. Those ghastly dense stands of conifer monocultures are an ecological desert and should be obliterated. Nature abhors monocultures. They were felt to be necessary after WW1 because trench warfare consumes unbelievable quantities of timber, Something like three tons for every yard of trenchline. In 1918 a secret Report concluded that in the absence of supplies from Canada due to the U-boat menace, Blighty would run out of timber within six to eighteen months. After the Armistice the Forestry Commission was set up with a brief to create hundreds of square miles of fast growing conifers just in case The War To End All Wars wasn't.
When doing my plantations, I have eight so far with two more in the planning phase, I now refuse to apply for gumment grants. The (now former) Forestry Commission demands a spacing of 3 metres for deciduous and 2.5 metres for coniferous. The won't pay the grant until that density has been certified. I made that mistake in the late '80s and early 90s. The result of 'instant forest' now, 30 years later, is that those bits of woodland have a horribly unnatural feel as all the boles are of the same diameter and looking at the woodland from outside the boundary you can see that the crown are all of the same height. Natural woodland never looks like that.
I now prefer to eschew the 'free money' and plant a parcel of land over a half decade or even a decade so that there is a bit of varied dimensionality to the resultant woodland.
Another lesson I've learned is that the understorey is just as important as the trees. FC didn't pay for that, so I didn't bother in those days. Big mistake! Without the proper understorey species, until the forest canopy closes overhead ten to fifteen year later, the woodland floor is over-run with weed species such as dock and thistle and rosebay willowherb and nettles and, in dry places, gorse. Nasty.
