Features
Seeing The Wood For The Trees
Forests and trees - we all have stories about them, whether it is feeling in awe of a big tree that has survived for five or six centuries, or childhood memories of collecting shiny conkers, or the caramel beauty of pine inside the home. Wood has been a prime material for humans for thousands of years: many civilisations in ancient times built houses from wood, collected mushrooms, and hunted game in the forest. In Ireland, crannógs were built from wood, and early laws regulated ownership of honeybees found in the woods. Trees were used as landmarks and symbols of tribes. But this connection has weakened with time. It is more common in the last several decades to see trees being ignored, hacked at, or grubbed out of the landscape. It is time to re-awaken our appreciation of wood, along with our modern penchant for the cursive grain and warming colour of wooden floors.
Changing landscape
Woodlands and forests give us many unappreciated services. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an assessment of the status of the world's ecosystems by 1360 experts from 95 countries, examined a wide variety of ecosystem services, from forming soil to providing fresh water and fuel, to aesthetic and spiritual contributions. Many of the important services of natural ecosystems are declining with the development taking place in Ireland. The landscape is changing in character and arguably natural beauty, but also the natural buffering functions of the landscape are being damaged: for example, soils are sealed under tarmacadam and concrete, resulting in a faster runoff of rain and flooding, and lawns are replacing semi-natural or lightly cultivated habitats, driving out the plants and animals that used that meadow or hedgerow.
Varied functions
Woodlands can help provide some of the natural buffering functions which are being lost the changing landscape. Planted along rivers, broadleaf trees help protect water quality, and their leaves fall into the river, starting a food chain for river invertebrates and fish. Woodlands, especially native ones, provide habitats for birds, mammals, amphibians, and the most numerous group of animals, invertebrates. A handful of leaf litter can reveal several hundred tiny invertebrates and even more micro-organisms. Forests provide niches for rare plants, like the non-green bird's nest orchid, which lives off leaf litter. Fortunately, the increasing need for trees in the landscape is matched with forward-looking Forest Service grants specifically the Forest Environment Protection Scheme and the Native Woodland Scheme.
Specific habitats
In my view, the best sort of tree to plant is the one that would have grown there if people hadn't been managing the Irish landscape for the last several thousand years. The mixture of native tree species that belong on the soil of that corner of the field will grow well and be home for the animals and plants which have become accustomed to that tree. Conventional forestry wisdom says these do not grow fast, but many native broadleaf species, if on the right soil, do develop into a closed-canopy forest within a decade or so. Examples are dotted around the county, both planted and naturally generated. One thing that is good about closed-canopy forest is the special humid and shady interior micro-climate, making it a place where certain plants and animals can live. The shady interior is one reason woodlands are so special in the landscape: many species have specialised in living within this shady environment.
Good management
Of course, trees planted in the Forest Service schemes can be managed for timber as well as water quality, soil protection, enhancement of landscape, and habitat creation. The closed-canopy forest encourages trees that reach upwards and have few branches, helping with timber quality by reducing knots. Good pruning of the future final crop trees is essential. It helps to leave branches on trees that are not the final crop to provide a place for ferns, mosses, and birds to sit. One traditional and renewable type of wood production is coppice. Coppice is an ancient woodland management system dating back to at least the Bronze Age. The product is rods and pole-size material which can be used to make all sorts of traditional hurdles, furniture, and household objects like baskets, charcoal and firewood.
Ancient uses
Master craftsman Eoin Donnelly of Muintir na Coille, the Irish coppice association, recently trained GMIT forest management students in coppice management and restoration. "Coppice is a traditional way of getting products from woodlands," he explained. "In coppice management, the frequency with which you cut a tree will vary from 7 - 25 or more years, depending on the product you wish to obtain." Coppice wood was used to build the wattle walls of houses such as the post-and-beam construction noted at the Céide Fields. The 7th century Brehon Laws contain a clause on how to sue a house owner if you hurt yourself on the ends of the sticks used in the wattle, if they were not properly turned to the interior of the house. Baskets were made from coppiced willow, all over Europe, including Ireland (Native Americans in California used bracken rhizomes). Basket handles and frames were often made from hazel in Ireland. Coppice was also used for producing baker's fuel as small diameter stems have proportionately more bark, and it is the bark of oak that imparts a lovely flavour to the bread. In fact some private landowners in Ireland are still producing oak and hazel charcoal for the discerning BBQ customer. Another modern coppice product which is very much in demand is wattle screens for gardens and to cover oil tanks.
Benefits of coppicing
The revival of the traditional coppice craft sits well with the Native Woodland Scheme. This is because most broadleaved trees, including many of our native trees and shrubs, will produce a multitude of small stems when cut in wintertime, although not all of which are useful for coppice. Of our native trees, ash, oak and alder are used, as well as the very common hazel and willow. In addition to tangible products, the impact of light coming through the newly opened forest canopy encourages primroses and bluebells to flower more vigorously for the first few years, and seeds sometimes dormant in the soil for many years, will finally germinate. The vigorously growing young shoots from the stumps of the trees will create a thicket loved by many birds and small mammals. Inside the thicket is the humid forest interior. The coppice worker will return in a few years to recreate this cycle of sun and shade, once again benefiting many woodland dwellers. And the person walking in the forest will see sun and flowers, shade and woodland atmosphere. The bases of the coppiced trees can live for centuries, getting thicker and thicker. I have seen fat, twisted, growing coppiced oaks that are thought to be six hundred years old.
Time for action
Judging from the glowing faces of the participants in a recent coppice course organised by Muintir na Coille and GMIT, and funded by Woodlands of Ireland, working in the woods is good for another ecosystem service we have forgotten about: quality of life. Urban workers need fresh air and exercise, everyone needs a space to relax, muse, or chat, and landscapes that inspired painters are on museum walls the world over.
I call on all owners of land to have hedges or thickets of trees, woodlands, or coppice on their land. Plant some trees, cut some hazel and let the bats of Ireland forage among the leaves of your broadleaves. This is the time to restore our landscape, to bring together the tiny copses, tree lines and groves still left on the landscape, and to increase the area of native woodland. Help re-connect the Irish landscape by planting some native trees!
