Woodland and Copse 57 



The bushy growth of green shoots after pollarding, and the collection of 

 wind-borne debris between the old stumps and decaying twigs, affords a 

 nidus for all sorts of seedlings to germinate, often with conspicuous success, 

 as a flora of humanly assisted epiphytes. Minor plants as Taraxacum, 

 Aquilegia (3 ft., and 60 flowers), Senecio squalidus, thus flower and fruit on the 

 heads of the trees, with roots sunk deep in the decaying central mass. ' Epi- 

 phytic ' brambles and briars may send their roots down to the soil inside the 

 trunk, and hang as lianas from the upper branches. Woody forms follow 

 the same course, and well-grown bushes may be found in Willow heads (jRi'&es, 

 Elder, Viburnum). The limiting case of a Pyrus Aucuparia, 20 ft., was noted 

 near the Botanic Gardens ; but these are cut away in the pollarding rotation, 

 and their further development is checked. 1 



Forest Plots and Clearings. In all cases of clearing and felling, or of 

 coppicing and planting, the effect of human agency is directly obvious, and 

 the ecological interest centres in the recovery of the ground-vegetation, 

 as much as in the regeneration of the woodland main crop. Beyond the 

 general exploitation of the woodland included as Forestry, Sylviculture is 

 concerned more particularly with the regeneration of the woodland and the 

 growth of some special form of tree. As in the case of agriculture, this 

 involves a weed-problem, as other plants require to be kept in a subsidiary 

 position, or preferably wholly eliminated. On the other hand, the ordinary 

 agricultural methods of ploughing, cultivating, manuring, and sowing, 

 involving considerable labour and expense, when operations are conducted 

 on a still larger scale, are commonly ruled out. Regeneration is thus left to 

 natural causes, or forest-land has to be planted. 



Older methods of forestry as cultivation of coppice with standards, or their 

 limiting cases, 2 in past centuries, express the retention of a practice introduced 

 from the continent, and still largely followed in France, which aims at the 

 supply of the needs of a countryside with a cheap source of fuel, as well as 

 agricultural timber and poles. For these purposes the underwood is cut in 

 rotation of 8-10 years or 15-20 years, often before the trees flower and fruit. 

 As such coppice is not everlasting, although oak-coppice endures a long time, 

 for purposes of regeneration a few standards are left at intervals to supply the 

 necessary seed. In such case regeneration is left to nature, the underwood 

 is cut with one rotation, e.g. 10 years, and the standards are given a rotation 

 of possibly 100 years. 3 The application of the system, however otherwise 

 objectionable, is seen in the fact that natural regeneration is provided for from 

 the first ; and in the case of an indigenous tree, a dense crop of seedlings will 

 keep down intrusive weeds as herbaceous ground-flora and grasses. 

 More modern forest- practice may differ in that : 



(1) The tree favoured as main crop may not be an indigenous form 

 at all, but one giving a greater or quicker return of timber, or one which is 

 cheaper in production and conversion, as also commanding a better market. 



(2) The woodland may not be grown for local needs at all, particularly 

 in a country where there are other sources of fuel, and the crop may be so far 

 a commodity for export. 



Both cases' are admirably illustrated by the general cultivation of Larch 

 poles for mine-work (pit-props). 



In such case the regeneration cannot be left to natural causes ; that is 

 to say the forest requires to be planted ; while, as the trees when young are 

 less likely to compete successfully with the indigenous flora, the ' weed '-problem 



1 Plot (1705), p. 173, records the case of an Ash which grew until the Willow shell was left as 

 relic : a good Elder tree (15 ft.) on a Willow at Wolvercote, 1922. 



For a list of 60 species of plants noted 011 Willows at Oxford, cf. Gunther (1912), Oxford 

 Gardens, p. 259. Other trees are less frequently pollarded, but an Elder (5 ft.) grows on a Sycamore 

 which has been formerly pollarded, at Godstow. 



2 Schlich (1910), Manual of Forestry, Silviculture, ii, p. 106. 



3 Schlich, loc. cit, p. 105. 



