One of the features of the land in north Northumberland are the strings of Alder woodland ((Alnus glutinosa) that cluster by the streams and burns, usually surrounded by fields grazed by sheep or cattle. These little wooded areas are unlike the oak and ash woodlands found elsewhere, they have no rich vegetated understory, typically the ground is bare stony soil with rough grasses, trampled by the beasts as they go to the waters edge to drink and shelter from inclement weather. What I have never seen in those places are young trees – as soon as any seedlings produce their pairs of leaves they are grazed away by deer or sheep or cattle- and that is bad news for the future of this habitat.
Ancient pollarded/coppiced Alder
Not all that many years ago Alders were considered to be a useful crop, they were either coppiced or pollarded and the new young growth used for fodder in the winter months and some of the branches stored in furniture to draw the woodworm away from the Oak. Trees managed in this way will live so long as they are being harvested, but left to it’s own devices an Alder tree will only live for around 60 years. The wonderful one, shown in the image above is clearly very much older than that, it must have fed a lot of cattle and saved a lot of sideboards from woodworm during it’s life!
So without some sort of action scenes like that above will be gone within 50 years, although happily at this site there is fencing to keep the grazing animals out.
I’ve focussed this on the Alder woodland in The County, but there are many other woods where there is no natural regeneration. Some are being managed by landowners and new trees planted, but some are very slowly dying. The beautiful ancient Oak woodland at Healey Farm, in Coquetdale, suffers from deer predation. There are large parts of it where cattle are never allowed in, but there is sufficient grazing pressure from the deer to see that young trees rarely survive. I have spent a lot of time in this wood and never seen a seedling tree.