On 3rd July 2021 Councillor Sue Prochak and I joined a small number of people from Bexhill Environmental Group and Friends of Combe Valley Countryside Park, on a guided walk of Dallington Forest, led by Doug Edworthy, Tree Warden for the parishes of Brightling and Dallington. Doug is a member of the Dallington Forest Project, their mission statement is:
“To be an exemplar study of Biodiversity and Landscape History
- - to recognise and highlight the significance of the trees, grasslands, heathlands and hedgerows both as individuals and as populations within these varied habitats
- - to establish and promote the ecological value of the project area
- - to demonstrate and inform others of best practice management for landscape and nature conservation.”
The walk lasted three hours and covered about five miles through the Forest, which is mixed woodland, with some broadleaf trees and some planted conifers. We saw a variety of animals and birds on our walk: horses, a goat, sheep, fallow deer, and chickens. We saw a number of buzzards overhead and heard lovely birdsong, including skylarks. We also saw a variety of plants, foxgloves, lush green ferns, dogs mercury and cuckoo-pint (both highly toxic) and several kinds of fungi.
Doug pointed out the importance of leaving fallen trees and branches where they have fallen as the decaying wood is essential for saproxylics - plants, fungi and animals that depend on decaying wood for all or part of their lifecycle - and will eventually become the fertiliser for the next generations of trees. When a fallen tree has lifted its root plate it provides valuable habitat, especially for mining bees, who can only nest in the loose soil exposed by fallen trees. (Mining bees do not produce honey but are valuable for pollinating and like many bees, they are under serious threat due to lack of habitat and climate change). As Doug said: “Tidying is bad for biodiversity”.
Doug showed us some examples of coppicing, mainly on Hornbeam and Beech, which is a traditional method of woodland management and exploits the capacity of many species of broadleaf trees to put out new shoots from their stump or roots if cut down. In a coppiced wood, known as a copse, young tree stems, stools are repeatedly cut down when they reach a certain age. The slim branches were used over the centuries for stakes, fences and fuel and if young, thin leafy branches are cut and bound tightly, like hay, they can be fed to horses and cattle over winter, as a supplement to hay. Traditionally they were also used in furnaces to make charcoal for iron-making. Three to four hundred years ago these woodlands were big industrial areas for making iron. The woods would have been noisy, smoky places, not the peaceful havens we now enjoy.
The disadvantage of coppicing is that animals, such as deer, like to nibble the young shoots. This has resulted in the practice of pollarding, which is the same as coppicing, but at a higher level on the tree, so that the tree is cut back to a tall stump every few years. A similar practice has been used for the traditional custom of hedge laying, where a young tree’s branches are bent sideways and woven to make a hedge, cut back every few years and continually regrowing. Doug said that these methods can make the stool immortal, it will simply keep regrowing over the centuries. He showed us an example of stools from hedgelaying, on the edge of the woodland, which is where the ancient boundary of the wood is shown on a map of 1566/7. Doug thinks the stools are as old as the map, possibly older.
Doug described to us ‘phoenix’ trees that had been blown over in storms and where part of the roots remained in contact with the soil and fungi that supply the tree with its water and nutrients. Branches that had been horizontal now point vertically at the sky and take on ‘apical dominance’, they become new ‘leaders’ and grow upwards towards the light. Over time, where the old tree trunk is in contact with the ground, roots grow and the trunk between the upward growing branches rots away, leaving the new clones of the old tree at a distance from their parent. Woodsmen cal this ‘trees walking’.
We saw some impressive ancient Oak trees, the oldest was about 300 years old. Doug said that Oaks are not really woodland trees, they prefer having room to spread, and are better growing in parks and large gardens. He explained the difference between an ancient tree and a veteran. An ancient tree is one that is old for the type of tree and the place it is found, whereas a veteran tree can be any age, but one that has the characteristics of an ancient tree, perhaps through sufferering some kind of damage, such as lightening strike, but survived. He likened it to young men returning from a war zone and being referred to as veterans. The majority of the ancient/veteran trees we saw were magnificent Beech trees that were several hundred years old and possibly planted originally to make an attractive carriage ride through the woods for the aristocracy. Doug showed us an ancient Beech were the roots had been truncated. He thinks it must have been caused by the turning point of the carriages, where the carriage wheels clipped the roots.
Some of the Ash trees in the Forest are suffering from Ash Dieback, sadly like many of our lovely Ash trees. Interestingly, Doug said that the older trees are showing more resistance, it is affecting the younger trees more, so there is hope that some gene lines of trees will be able to resist dieback better. Doug showed us some interesting and lurid fungi. He explained that research has shown that all trees appear to have fungi spores already within their sap, but it is only when conditions are favourable that the fungi come to life and start their war of attrition with each other and with the tree. Fungi are a natural phenomenon in trees and only a few fungi are the sign of an unhealthy tree.
We saw an ancient Yew tree that was only half alive, it is surrounded by a plantation of Western Hemlock, which are blocking out the light and making it difficult for the Yew to survive. Western Hemlock is a type of spruce, native to North America and is beginning to take over the Forest, to the extent that it may need to be removed as, in Doug’s words: “it grows like cress”. Western Hemlock has small, non-scaly soft green pine leaves, which when pinched between fingers, gives a faint smell of grapefruit - the only tree that has this citrus smell. It is unrelated to the poisonous herb, Hemlock.
Doug said that the Western Hemlock would have been planted as a cash crop, much like a farmer would do for wheat, when wood was used extensively for building materials. Now it is not used for this purpose it is no longer harvested and is getting out of hand, stifling the other broadleaf trees. Part of the issue facing Dallington Forest is the fact that it has eight different landowners, not all sharing the same vision for the future of the Forest. Doug is hoping that there will be some collaboration going forward on improving the mix of broadleaf species and thus increasing biodiversity.
The ancient Yew was on the edge of a deep track, and the roots on the edge of the track were all horizontal, following the track line. Doug said he was intrigued to find out which came first, the tree or the track. He sought professional advice, and to his surprise, the conclusion was that the track was the same width as the Canadian bulldozers used in woodland in WWII, when huge numbers of tree trunks were needed to be used at the Normandy landings, to help prevent the tanks from sinking into the sand on the French beaches.
In the words of the poet, Robert Frost: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep” and they are full of our history. We need to do all we can to preserve them for their beauty and their help in carbon storage to prevent climate change, for ourselves and for generations to come.
Polly Gray
