Where have all the flowers gone? A perspective on flowering plants - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

Where have all the flowers gone?

A perspective on flowering plants in Scottish semi-natural woods Findings from Kate Holl’s Churchill Fellowship

Photo: Neil Mackenzie

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

Where did it all begin........? Peter Wormall’s exclosure on the Isle of Mull

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

What do woods with no herbivores look like?

They have palatable species

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

What do woods with no herbivores look like?

They have climbing and trailing plants

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

What do woods with no herbivores look like?

They have “filling”!

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

Woods with no herbivores have “filling”!

Cartoon: Ben Averis

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

Woods without “filling”:

The impacts of herbivores on woodlands are far greater than we had realised….

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

The big idea

Through a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship I was able to visit places and countries where there are fewer herbivores to see how they might be different…

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

Not a scientific study – just observation…

Over 6 weeks, I travelled to 4 countries, visited over 40 woods and interviewed 25 people. I saw more woodland flowers than I have seen in nearly 30 years as SNH’s woodland adviser

Photo: Helen Armstrong

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

The French Pyrenees

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

The French Pyrenees

Silver fir and beech mixed woodland in central Pyrenees Ash woodland near Aucun, Central Pyrenees Flower-ful glade in pine woodland

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

Isle of Wight woods have been free from herbivore impacts for 150 years

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

Isle of Wight woods – full of understorey

Typical Isle of Wight wood Honeysuckle climbing and flowering profusely Abundant ivy fills the understorey

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

South-west Norway

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

A Norwegian alder woodland free of herbivore impacts for 80 years

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

Honeysuckle writhes around the understorey, bursting into flower when it emerges from the canopy

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

Iceland

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

Icelandic birch woods – full of flowers

The field layer in the woods was literally a carpet of flowers

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

Moorland species such as golden plover and stone bramble amidst regenerating birch woodland…

Photo: Lorna Holl

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

Conclusions: Conclusions:

• Scotland’s woods should have more flowers
• Whole habitats comprising palatable species are

missing from the landscape, or have retreated to inaccessible places

• Ecological productivity is low and this has

implications for human productivity as well as biodiversity

• Habitat resilience is diminished because woodland

plants rarely get to flower and set seed

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

Primary recommendation is for a significant and urgent reduction in large herbivore numbers across Scotland

We need to tell a new story about Scotland’s woods and their missing flowers We need to restore the filling to at least some of

• ur woods

And in the words of the (slightly perverted) great song: O Flower(s) of Scotland, When will we see Your like again (?)

Scottish Natural Heritage Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba

Thank you!