64 Plant-life of tJie Oxford District 



to mixed grasses, with Juncus in damper spots, and such open rough 

 grazing land was particularly developed in Mediaeval England, becoming 

 the general formation of waste common land ; controlled by keeping 

 down all attempts at woodland regeneration, giving material for faggots 

 and fuel, or intrusive Bracken and Furze kept down by firing, and so 

 maintained indefinitely, so long as grazing for horses and cattle was the 

 dominant factor. 



On enclosure, or neglect of the original use, such land rapidly changes 

 its appearance ; the larger perennial xerophytic forms, enduring the summer 

 heat, become predominant, and spring-vegetation of perennial habit may 

 grow above the grass-level especially favoured by rabbits and cattle. 

 Thorns, Brambles, and Roses take root : on lighter soils Ononis spinosa and 

 Thistles ; on heavy soils especially Crataegus, Rosa canina, and R. arvcnsis, 

 to be followed by Rubi, Lonicera, Primus spinosa, Ulex and Pteris. Where 

 cattle continue to graze, such spinous plants become centres of dense bush- 

 formation ; Brambles and Roses rise over the Furze-bushes ; cattle grazing 

 on the residual herbage work out grassy tracks between and around the 

 bushy growths, and the whole becomes a regressive rose-thorn scrub, which 

 will further grow on to an impenetrable thorn-thicket, dominated by Cratae- 

 gus and Prumis spinosa as these in turn rise above the level of the roses and 

 brambles, with an undergrowth of coarse grasses and Juncus retained wher- 

 ever light can penetrate. On these trees lianoid forms as Bryonia, Calystegia, 

 Solanum Dulcamara, and Lonicera give massed growths, the last flowering 

 freely at the top of the scrub (20 ft.). 



Among such thorn-scrub other trees may germinate and grow under 

 the damp cover, especially Acer campestris, Salix,Alnus, Fraxtnusand Oak. 

 As these forms will all grow on above the thorn-zone, and the Oak is the 

 most enduring of all, the last stage gives poor oak-trees, stag-headed above 

 the level of the underwood : the latter, shaded out, is gradually replaced as 

 the canopy becomes dense, and Hazel may come in with increasing humus 

 in the damp bottom, with Elder in the dampest spots ; giving in time an 

 Oak-Hazel coppice, mixed with minor trees, which may be cultivated on 

 the coppice-under-standard principle, as the underwood is cut out, and 

 a few of the more likely-looking trees (Ash and Oak) left to continue at 

 successive clearings. In thinning it is evident that the generally established 

 older forestry practice, dignified by modern writers as ' Coppice with Stan- 

 dard Y expresses the natural evolution of the countryside, satisfying the 

 requirements of peasant-proprietors, without any special forethought or 

 calculation ; however subject to further elaboration as the clearing periods 

 become more systematized. 2 A woodland which has been coppiced or drawn 

 for several centuries is by no means virgin forest. Much of local woodland 

 is astonishingly poor in tree-growth, suggesting that the soil is wholly 

 exhausted, having been thus cut for many generations with no return what- 

 ever, or too recklessly exploited. 



Good examples of this progression are still afforded by parts of ' Open ' 

 Brasenose and ' Open ' Magdalen, grading to the later phases in Magdalen 

 Wood and Brasenose Wood, of poorest coppice on Kimeridge Clay. Much 

 of the older and more neglected part of Bagley Wood (Spring Copse) is little 

 better ; and this seems to be the general mode of origin of many small Copses, 

 which are probably not so much the retention of areas of primitive woodland, as 

 secondary regressions of partially cleared ' waste '. Older woods are really as 

 artificial as the compartments of modern forestry practice ; only the much- 

 enduring ground-flora has any claim to be in direct succession. The last phase 



1 Schlich (1910), Manual of Forestry, ii, Silviculture, p. 104. 



2 Schlich, loc. cit., p. 105 ; age-gradations being more generally attended to on the continent. 



