We’ve written a few blog posts this winter on the planting we’ve
been doing at Wildwood. We’ve been out in all conditions working in some pretty
challenging terrain and weather conditions and last Tuesday was no different.
Priest Gill in spate |
Raven Craig and Firthhope Linn in spate |
While most of the volunteers were working through our last load
of aspen (kindly donated to us by The Woodland Trust – full story to come
soon), we had a small team planting one species of which we have
relatively few of at Carrifran – the Scots pine Pinus sylvestris.
Whilst the clue is in the name, the planting of Scots pine has
always been something of a debate. Analysis of fossil pollen has shown that it was abundant in
these hills for several millennia after the last Ice Age, but that it
subsequently disappeared . At Carrifran we try to put back all the species that we believe would have grown in
the valley before intensive grazing and deforestation. The question is should Scots
pine be one of those species? We feel that it should, but in small numbers.
Since 2008 members of the Wildwood Steering Group have been
collecting seed from what may be the only remnant of native Scots pine in England, on the fringe of Kielder Forest.
This is the closest stand of ‘natural’ Scots Pine to Carrifran, and is
therefore the best available provenance. Some seeds have been propagated by
Michael Matthews and some were sent to Alba Trees;, and this year we had around
50 saplings to plant.
A small Scots pine sapling |
We planted around half of the trees in the northern end of Rispie
Lairs.
Philip with some of the saplings planted on the slope |
Philip also selected the crags in Priest Craig as a suitable location.
Putting the guards on recently planted saplings |
We had planted some in previous years and they seemed to be doing well in both
these areas, apart from a few that had been flattened – though not killed – by an
avalanche in the past winter. We protected all of the saplings with guards and
stakes which will hopefully keep them safe from browsing deer.
We have some more follow up work to do in the summer and we’ll keep
a close eye on how things are doing.
Lynn
Site Officer
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