CHAPTER XI 



THE VEGETATION OF COMMONS, HEATHS, AND MOORS 



IN past centuries the amount of common land in England was 

 far greater than at present. Gradually a good deal of it has be- 

 come enclosed, as it was considered wasteful to leave so much 

 uncultivated. There are still, however, all over the country, 

 and more particularly in the neighbourhood of London, tracts 

 of uncultivated land known as Commons. Wimbledon Common, 

 Hampstead Heath, Blackheath at once occur to the mind. In 

 the country, many commons are now devoted to golf-links. It 

 is difficult to draw a hard-and-fast line between a common and a 

 heath. In botanical language a heath denotes a tract of country 

 covered with certain grasses ; such tracts are spoken of as Grass 

 Heaths. The grasses growing on a common are kept short by the 

 grazing of animals, and on the whole the vegetation of a common 

 is more limited than that of a heath, though this is by no means 

 invariably the case. The commons of Surrey, for instance, are 

 often clothed with vegetation : Gorse, Heather, Juniper, Bilberry, 

 even Clematis and Dog Roses may occur. 



A moor is characterised, in the popular mind, by the presence 

 of heather and various heath plants, by certain well recognised 

 moor grasses, by mosses such as the Bog Moss. Great stretches 

 of moorland occur in the north, and more rarely in the south. At 

 the present time, the moors of some parts of Yorkshire have 

 been mapped out botanically, and it is usual now to speak of a 

 Heather, or Cotton-Grass, or Bilberry moor, according to the 

 dominant plant. 



FORMATION OF PEAT 



The character of the vegetation on commons, heaths, and 

 moors depends principally on the presence, or absence, of peat ; 

 it is therefore necessary to understand what peat is, and how it 



188 



