Woodlands.co.uk
Ground beetles – Carabids declining!
There have been various articles that comment on the decline in numbers / variety of bees and butterflies, now a recent study reported in the Journal of Applied Ecology comments on a worrying decline in the numbers of ground beetles or carabids. Scientists at Rothamsted Research, working with the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology have found that some 70+ % of ground beetle species have shown a fall in numbers. The scientists monitored beetle populations at many locations throughout the U.K. over a time scale of some fifteen years. They found the decline in the abundance of ground beetles was comparable to those reported for butterflies and moths. Read more…
British hedges ( in woodlands, gardens and farms)
We British like our hedges – perhaps it’s part of the British reserve, keeping people at arms’ length, or maybe it’s because they are very functional for keeping stock in fields and marking boundaries. For wildlife, hedgerows have long been important avenues of local migration and hedges represent their own distinct habitat.
The attitude of the authorities towards hedges has undergone a roller coaster ride over the last 50 years. In the 1970s, the government were paying grants for the removal of hedges with the objective of encouraging the creation of larger fields to make agriculture more efficient – these were bad times for conservation – Oliver Rackham describes these as “the locust years”. More recently grants have been available for planting hedges and their unauthorised removal in the countryside has become a criminal offence with the Hedgerow Regulations of 1997. Read more…
Mosses – indicators of nitrogen pollution.
Nitrogen pollution, in the form of nitrates, ammonia and various oxides of nitrogen, is a threat to ecosystems, ecosystem services and biodiversity. Monitoring and measuring such pollutants in rain and air borne particles is expensive and, ideally, needs frequent samples.
It has been estimated that some 400,000 tonnes of airborne pollution are deposited over Britain each year. Research by Dr H Harmens et al at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (Bangor) has indicated that there may be a simpler and cheaper way of gauging nitrogen pollution – through the assessment of the state of local moss populations. Read more…
Managing hedgerows.
The importance of hedgerows in the maintenance of biodiversity cannot be over-emphasised. Hedgerows provide vital food, in the form of a variety of berries – sloes, haws, blackberries etc, for small mammals and birds (redwings, blackbirds) and hedgerow flowers support pollinating insects – a variety of bees and butterflies.
However, the 'management' of hedgerows or trimming / flailing of a hedgerow can make a significant difference to its productivity – that is, the number of flowers and fruits produced. Read more…
Bedstraws
The bedstraws are slender, sprawling herbs that have square stems (in cross-section) and they belong to the genus GALIUM. This genus belongs to the family RUBIACEAE, which includes the Gardenias, Coffea (for coffee) and Cinchona (bark yields quinine = Jesuits’ bark).
Galium odoratum (sweet woodruff) is a woodland bedstraw, which tends to form ‘a carpet’ and is a perennial. Galium aparine ( aka goosegrass, kisses, cleavers, sticky bobs, sticky willy, sweethearts and robin run the hedge) is more common and is a ‘scrambler”; it is also an annual. Read more…
Hedges, hedgerows ……
Why do hedgerows exist? Many were originally planted to contain livestock (sheep, cattle, pigs, chickens), others existed to define boundaries – who owned which parcels of land. Hedges often delineate fields; field is derived from the old English feld which means an area of felled trees. However, hedge construction and management was particularly associated with the process of enclosure, which transformed the landscape of England. This was often connected with the change of land use – from arable to pasture for sheep. Read more…
Building bridges.
If you are lucky enough to have a brook, stream or river flowing through your woodland, you will almost certainly want to cross it. Where the water-course is narrow, the banks are low and the water is normally less than welly-deep, then you might be happy to just hop or wade across, particularly if the crossing point is in some out of the way spot. But if the crossing point is on a well used path then a bridge may be needed. Read more…
Autumn fruits
Autumn is a time when the hedgerows and woodlands literally ‘bear fruit’ such as Blackberries, Elderberries, Haws (from Hawthorn), Rose hips, and Sloes (from the Blackthorn). Read more…