It forms one half of a boundary of what locals know as The Roman Road, but which my senses tell me is far, far older, belonging perhaps to the time of the Wildwood when the earliest tribes were settling the land here. I suspect it is a pre-historic trackway that has survived the intervening millenia; the crushing of Roman boots, the twisting of horses' hooves and the compaction of tractor wheels, and now it remains as a depleted but determined Green Lane, eventually consumed by the all-in-one identity of the surrounding fields. Perhaps it once stretched the entire length of the hedge?
There are remnants of ancient woodland (all that is left now perhaps of the original Wildwood) all around the Green Lane. There is a margin of it to one side and pockets of stranded coppices marooned far out across the sea of wide open arable fields like green islands on the other.
Between the marooned coppices and the Old Wood, keeping them connected like a thick, rich, reliable vein pumping life, is The Hedge (seen in the pic below snaking to the left through the stubble fields in a long sinuous green line).
Ecologists talk a lot about Hedgerows. We lost a great deal of them after the Second War when the emphasis was all on consumption of land to feed the population. They were pulled out, grubbed up, roots and branches stretched and snapped and torn, plants dragged from their ancient earthy homes and tossed aside like so much green rubbish. Some areas lost 50% of their hedges in forty years. By 1997 the importance of hedges to the land and its wildlife and through them its people, had been recognised, and the Government brought in The Hedgerow Regulations in an attempt to halt the destruction and provide management advice for what remained. There was replanting too, and by the mid 1990s further losses to managed hedgerows had been halted.
There is no space for complacency here- many of our surviving hedgerows are in a bad way. Poor management techniques or no management at all have left them depleted to the point of exhaustion, so that, as a resource, a great many do little or nothing for the wild things that have evolved to need them.
But we still have plenty of woods right? So what's all the fuss about hedges?
8000 years ago Britain was wooded, more or less, from coast to coast. 2500 years ago we'd lost 50% of our woods, cut down to make way for farming and settlement. By the time William the Conq commissioned the Domesday book to take stock of his new Empire in 1086 the figure was down to 15%. It dropped to 5% at the start of the 20th C and is now back up to around 11%.
Hampshire is one of the most wooded counties in England, after Surrey and Sussex, with around 15% cover. The problem is that not all of it is Ancient Woodland and woods that aren't Ancient just don't offer as much ecologically (White Admirals,Silver Washed Fritillaries, Purple Emperors, Dormice, Large Black Longhorn Beetles are all species of Ancient Woodlands that rarely turn up elsewhere, as are plant species like Dogs Mercury, Lords & Ladies, Bluebells, Wood Sorrel, Primroses, Butcher's Broom, the list goes on....).
Despite what Boris Johnson says, you can't mitigate the loss of a five hundred year old wood with all its associated flora and fauna by happily planting a new one. In addition, much of our remaining Ancient Woodland has been divided up into small, isolated pockets often with no management at all, making what is left vulnerable to disease and lack of regeneration. For woods to be really healthy they need to be joined to one another, like a pair of strong green lungs and they need to be sympathetically managed.
Hedges matter because they are mini woodlands that connect the Bigger Woods. They offer a life line to vulnerable meta populations, species living in these isolated woods that would otherwise be marooned and therefore vulnerable to extinction. Dormice, for example, can only repopulate a Dormouse-empty woodland if they can get to it along a hedgerow. If the hedge isn't there the Dormice can't migrate to the wood. It's that simple.
As well as connecting all our bits and bobs of scattered woodland, many species are reliant on hedgerows. Bats use them to navigate by at night, following the line of the hedge to reach important feeding grounds and coming back along them to return to their roosts. If you remove the hedge the bats get lost and can't find food as easily (this is especially important for rare woodland species like Bechstein's (although they will also use rivers for the same purpose). Caterpillars hibernate in the earth at the base of hedgerows where they benefit from the shelter the hedge affords. Badgers snuffle around them on their regular night-time amble-routes, digging up roots and bee's nests at their bases....
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| A sign Mr Brock has been out at night- a badger hole dug into the earth at the foot of the hedge. You can't see it in the pic but he'd found a succulent root to sup on. |
Hedges are symbols of safety, shelter, food, and navigation for a great many of our wild things. Take them away and what happens?
They are also hosts to hundreds of plants....
Here is a section of The Hedge. Looks like nothing much, eh? Raggedy, wild, overgrown, a tangle of indistinguishable branches, old bramble and drying grasses.
Look again, more closely...
Honeysuckle among the tangles...
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An oak sapling which will one day be an Oak way-marking the route for owls...
Hazel catkins forming along with nuts to feed the Wild Ones over winter...
There are blackberries enough for everyone...
And Field Rose..
Field maple...
Holly...
Ash...
Dogwood (Top Tip- told by the strings inside the leaf)...
Hedge Woundwort (beloved of one of my most favourite of all the Shieldbugs)..
Hawthorn...
Ferns..
And Thistles blowing their seeds to the winds...
I counted seventeen plant species in a fairly cursory look. No doubt there are twice that number, in all likelihood many more. Makes you think, doesn't it?
How many times have you walked past a hedge and taken it's presence there as mere background material, unimportant because you're used to it? I know I have. Next time, take ten minutes to look at it properly and count of the different plants you can see (it doesn't matter if you don't know their names, you'll be able to tell from the leaf shape and size that they are different plants). As a general rule of thumb, the more species you count the older the hedge. Often hedges are all that is left of Ancient Woods and I suspect some of them have in their deepest hearts a secret whisper that comes direct from the Original Wildwood that grew here after the last Ice Age ten thousand years ago.
A post wouldn't be complete without my two faithful Companion Hedge Explorers, T and P, so here they are....
And a Final Fling in the shape of a Rather Splendid Heat Haze that was shimmering away, just across the fields...
Blackberry ice cream (M's simple and delicious recipe which you can find here) has already been made from some of the fruit we collected. I will make some Blackberry brandy for Christmas recipes and some will go in the freezer for blackberry cake during the winter and M's favourite blackberry and apple crumble. Thank You Hedge.
Happy Days!
CT :o)
