| An illustrated guide to ancient wood pasture in Scotland by Peter Quelch This 54 page guide is the output of a Millennium Forest for Scotland Award Scheme completed by the author in late 2000 and early 2001. The purpose of this guide is to first introduce the reader to the concept of wood pasture and then to look at some examples in Scotland to give the reader a feel for the habitat that is being talked about. Wood pasture is discussed in detail, and in particular the range of both natural and historical features that make wood pastures and the veteran trees they contain so interesting. The guide is aimed at anyone who wants to learn more about the history and ecology of the landscape around them.  Peter
says ‘Surprisingly perhaps, ancient wood pastures are a doorway that
opens onto to a very wide breadth of knowledge. Even at the top levels
of understanding at our universities and research institutes, it is
noticeable how this topic has brought together people from a very wide
range of disciplines and specialist fields. An interest, and sometimes
passion, for the subject is shown by practical people such as farmers
wishing to manage this habitat, or from tree surgeons interested in
the work of pollarding, to grassland botanical surveyors, scientists
who may be invertebrate specialists, lichenologists, mycologists,
historians, archivists, archaeologists, and to those who just like big
old trees! The list is actually much longer, including the poor
forester who is asked to manage, or pay grants towards managing, a
type of woodland which in his heart he probably believes is not a real
woodland at all!’ A
national inventory of either wood pastures or veteran trees in
Scotland does not yet exist. Some local or regional surveys have been
done, and SNH are now beginning to compile an outline inventory. It is
also expected that land-use surveys will in future recognise wood
pasture as a distinct habitat type, and so survey and map it as such.
In the meantime, we need to be able to recognise a wood pasture when
we see it, and the main purpose of the guide is to give enough
information on the typical features of wood pasture so that anyone can
do just that. Download the report as an Adobe Acrobat file. The file size is rather large - 3.1mb - this may take several minutes so you may prefer to download the file in two parts A selection of sites to visit
is given in Appendix 4 |