A Woodland Ride (without the one-horse open sleigh!)
Wilderness Diary 9/1/24
Arriving at Wilderness Wood this chilly winter’s morning I'm struck that I have until now failed to properly address the issue of woodland ride management.
You may question what have essentially made-up (or just well beaten), paths through the wood got to do with good conservation? However, the totally different abiotic and biotic variables caused by their presence in a woodland is quite significant.
Woods are dominated by tall trees. These cast shade, thereby reducing photosynthesis by any other plant which happens to stand in their shade. Shade also reduces the amount of radiant heat from the sun, making the woodland floor cooler than it might otherwise be. A large object like a tree reduces the wind speed, thereby reducing wind chill on a cold day and so reducing heat loss during the winter and at night time. What you can see is that seasonal and diurnal (daily cycle) changes also come into play when looking at woodlands.
Further, trees intercept falling rain - which would otherwise reach the ground flora and fauna. So rain, temperature, wind speed and photosynthesis are changed by the existence of a pathway through the wood.
Trees also take up space. A path, or a woodland ride (essentially a much wider linear space through the wood), provides space not just at ground level but anywhere vertically up to tree top height. So why is this important?
Butterflies and other insects gather in this space, perhaps to warm themselves in the sunshine, mate, feed or just gather socially. I’m sure we've all been engulfed by a mass of flying midges at some time in our lives.
Ecology is all about interactions, with a food web being one of the key examples of this. Where insects fly, fly-catching birds, bats or predatory insects feed too.
So what happened to these interactions before man cut a path through woods?
It is perhaps obvious that gaps have always existed in woodland, either due to the pathways made by the trampling hooves of larger mammals, or just as random spaces caused when trees die due to gales, fungal disease, or lightening strikes. These spaces due to tree loss are commonly known as glades. Rides are effectively just linear glades offering a whole new set of environmental conditions for a whole new bunch of extra species to occupy.
Good ride (and glade) management therefore has the potential to increase species biodiversity in a woodland. This is sufficiently significant for the Forestry Commission (the government arm responsible for overseeing woodlands in England) to offer grants to woodland owners to manage these rides appropriately. And all woodland owners appreciate a bit of extra cash - not least here in Wilderness Wood.
So let's go for a wander and see what Jake and his volunteers have been busy doing to develop our rides as species rich habitats for wildlife.
To recap, it is a sunny morning, if cold, with the temperature hovering around freezing. It must have snowed over the last 24 hours with a powdering of the stuff evident everywhere.
Bright, low angle light, a freezing wind and a powdering of snow. Wilderness Wood in January
The main track (below) from The Barn into the wood is not one being developed as a woodland ride, but has some of the hallmarks. There are understandably no trees where people and the occasional vehicle pass. The biodiversity here is limited, with frozen earth about the closest we get to it. However, either side of the earth track is a verge containing woodland edge plants such as red campion and teasel. Adjacent to the right hand verge is an area of low holly shrubs. Further from the track, on either side, are the tall trees of the woodland proper. Facing south the smaller plants are not in shade so can thrive. The wind chill is evident, but so is the radiant heat from the sun here.
A trackway, but not really a woodland ride.
Beyond this track we enter the conifer plantation and any compromise between the functionality of the access track and it's biodiversity disappears. Here the shade is so intense and constant that you will find nothing green on the earthen floor of the wood, or the ride through it.
An access path through the conifer plantation - but still not a candidate for ride management
Just beyond the conifers I spot my first bird, a rather cold looking wood pigeon basking in a sunny fleck in the coppiced woodland beyond. A grey squirrel forages on the ground before joining a magpie in a beech trees branches above. Yes there is life here, but it is focussed in the crowns, or underneath the soil.
Shortly however, I emerge from the conifers and all is magically transformed by sunlight (see below). The trees to the extreme right are largely recently coppiced chestnut, with some young birch thrown in. Neither grows more than 10m tall and casts no shade on the path, being to the north of it. The trees to the south side is of similar height. The low vegetation to the right of the earth path is a classic piece of ride widening. Here it is strimmed annually in the autumn to knock back tree growth, allowing woodland edge plants to thrive. Foxglove, campion, sow thistle, pendulous sedge and all their dependent fauna can grow here unmolested by shade casting trees. Inevitably the latter will reach a height where they must be coppiced, thuis reversing any threat to the low growing sun lovers below.
Ride widening (right of the track). coppice stools and taller vegetation has been cut back.
Turning down the Crossride it becomes almost a glade. Tall trees grow to the right, with a few small birches mid-ride for perching birds. The coppice stools and other taller vegetation in the middle of our glade will be cut back every other year by a technique known as scalloping. The coppice stools to the left are taller than those on the right, due to an alternating annual cutting regime. The ground flora of bluebells, wood anemones and violets are therefore free to appear in a couple of months time and take their turn in the sun. Dead wood is largely removed since this too can choke the light from low growers. The exception might be the odd wood pile left for wood boring beetles and woodlice. In places the trees are allowed to pinch in to permit species such as dormice to cross the ride, safe from predators.
This ride has been significantly widened, with lower vegetation adjacent to the path.
The high forest further down the trail contains much taller trees. Here no attempt is made to rein their growth in. This is the domain of true woodland plants and animals . The trees can mature and produce seed. Young trees may grow from the seed and eventually thrust up into the crown, especially if an older neighbour should fall in a gale. The woodland floor is strewn with mosses, hard fern and dead leaves. Here the decomposer food chain dominates, including fungi, slugs, snails, woodlice, springtails, centipedes, earthworms and moles. I might also expect to spot fallow deer hiding here away from human sight. I see none, so perhaps their immobility and camouflage conceals them.
High forest. Well shaded by mature trees. The relatively bare woodland floor dominated by the decomposer food chain.
In Hemlock Valley the trees were cleared several years ago, with glade like vegetation now sprouting up either side of the wilderness stream. Brambles dominate and we may need to control these at some stage in the future. Likewise the slow growing holly which is now perhaps a metre tall. Where the stream cascades between leaky dams, put in place 3 years ago, a quite different set of conditions prevail. Here plants and animals have to be wet tolerant. Brooklime grows in profusion, along with sedges and rushes, whilst in the pools created by the leaky dams water-starwort thrives, along with waterboatman, blood worm and the odd diving beetle.
The Wilderness Stream cuts a ‘wet-ride’ through the woodland. Here wetter-loving plants grow
Near the bottom of the wood is the crowning glory of any woodland glade, a woodland pond. Here masses of flying insects will emerge from the water as the spring sunshine warms the wood up. Dragonflies will pluck these from the air, whilst frogs will take them if they should settle on the ground. Of course trees will try to grow here, perhaps alders and willows, but with suitable cutting we can maintain this as a ‘wet glade’ for years to come.
A woodland pond creates a kind of ‘wet glade’ providing wet and sunny conditions quite different from those of the rest of the woodland.
An hour of photographing and writing on a frozen morning in January is quite enough for most people, so I return to my car to scrape the frost off my fingers and turn the heater up to maximum.
David Horne