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Heathland

Heathlands are a distinctive and special part of the British landscape, and represent one of our rarest landscapes, occurring primarily on very nutrient poor soils.

Heathlands are more than just a community of heathers, heaths (ling), gorses and other ericaceous plants. A diverse and vibrant heathland landscape should include a mosaic of woodland, grassland, bracken , and scrub over and above the sweeps of purple heather. A scatter of flushes, bogs, mires, pools and water-filled rutted trackways often adds to this biological diversity.

The inherent infertility of the soils – they are both nutrient poor, and typically suffer from either excessive droughting (on free draining sands) or waterlogging (within the wetland systems) - means that heathland plants and animals have to be highly specialised to survive. The handful of heather species themselves have small, evergreen and often hairy leaves to reduce water loss in drought, whilst the infertile flushes and bogs are well known for their insectivorous plants such as common sundew, butterwort and bladderwort that supplement their meagre ‘diet’ from the soil by catching and devouring invertebrates. Dry, open heathland can be of exceptional importance for lichens, whilst wetter habitats often support an incredible variety of mosses and liverworts.

Habitat features

Dry heath

Dominated by heath (ling), bell heather and gorse, dry heath is of particular importance for a range of rarer lichen species.

Wet heath

Cross-leaved heath, purple moor-grass and deer grass are characteristic of damp and wet heath. Under the right grazing conditions, such heathland can be rich in rarer vascular plants and bryophytes, including Dorset heath, marsh gentian, marsh clubmoss and brown beak-sedge.

Mire

The valleys of our heathland districts often develop wetland communities: small fens in the Breckland district of East Anglia, black bog-rush mires on the serpentines of the Lizard, and cotton-grass/Sphagnum dominated valley bogs in the heaths of south-central England. Collectively, they can be very rich in species, including many species of insectivorous plants, together with rarities such as mud sedge, great sundew and bog orchid.

Grass heath

With grazing, heathland can develop a series of grasslands and grass heaths, both acid and base-rich, dry and wet. Such grasslands can be key to the successful running of traditional grazing stock across heaths as they often occur on relatively rich soils, and provide good forage. Short, damp, acid grasslands are important for rarities such as chamomile, pennyroyal mint and small fleabane, whilst grass heaths are important for declining species such as petty whin, heath lobelia and pale heath violet. Sadly, with a decline in grazing across most of our heathlands, such species have become very localised today, and are perhaps best seen in the New Forest.

Pools and trackways

Small pools and rutted trackways are often only seasonally-flooded, drying out in the summer months. Such conditions support a distinct plant community, rich in rarer species, perhaps best seen on the Lizard and in the New Forest. Rarities include pillwort, yellow centaury, Hampshire purslane and pigmy rush, as well as a range of stoneworts.

Key issues

In spite of the richness of their plants and animals, heathlands have often been regarded as mere wasteland, prime targets for improvement for forestry and agriculture. In the decades after the First World War, the newly established Forestry Commission set about planting tens of thousands of acres of heathland with plantation conifers: their holdings in Breckland (East Anglia) alone covers roughly 20,000 hectares, much of which has been planted on unique heathland habitat. During the 1960s, modern planning targeted agriculturally-poor heathland areas for industrial and urban development, as witnessed by the phenomenal growth of conurbations such as Poole, Aldershot and Southampton. And more recently, modern agricultural techniques have converted many of the remaining fragments to relatively productive farmland. On the Lleyn peninsula in north Wales, 97% of lowland heathland has been lost to agriculture and forestry. Little wonder that only about 70,000 hectares of lowland heathland remains in the UK, about 16% of its extent in the 19th century. Much survives as small, unsustainable fragments.

Today, the biggest threat facing heathlands is a simple lack of management. Historically, most of our heathland areas lay within commonland, managed by locals for grazing, fuelwood, gorse and bracken collection, and for localised, small-scale extraction of peat, turf, sands, clays, marls and gravels. It was centuries of commoners’ activities that created the winter-flooded trackways with pigmy rush and yellow centaury; dug the stock watering pools that today support pillwort and three-lobed crowfoot; heavily grazed the streamside lawns so essential to the survival of chamomile and pennyroyal; and ploughed fallows support field wormwood, sand catchfly and hairy birds-foot trefoil. In the absence of these activities, the rarer plants are the first things to disappear, but with time, even the open, heathery nature of such areas is threatened as sapling trees establish and grow.

What we’re doing about it

After many decades of absence of meaningful management, conservationists are, at last, starting to manage heathlands more effectively. Reinstatement of extensive stock grazing needs to be combined with more localised management of micro-habitats such as pools, fallows and trackways, to provide the conditions necessary for the full range of heathland species. Plantlife is working at both these levels to deliver effective heathland and heathland plant conservation on the ground.

Some of our ongoing projects, saving individual species and key heathland Important Plant Areas include:

• In the Thames Basin Heaths of Hampshire and Surrey, Plantlife has undertaken experimental management work at ‘lost’ populations of marsh clubmoss resulting in its reappearance at five sites.
• On the Lizard Peninsula, Plantlife, in collaboration with the Cornwall Wildlife Trust, restored Ruan Pool – a large traditional stock watering pool – plus adjacent trackways, resulting in the reappearance of no fewer than six nationally rare species, including pigmy rush, pillwort and three-lobed water-crowfoot. We are currently working with the National Trust to restore a further historic watering pool and trackways on Predannack Downs.
• In Ringwood Forest, Plantlife commissioned a full survey of over 1300 hectares of conifer plantation, identifying key areas for restoration to heathland and bog from species-poor plantation. The findings of this survey have been turned into action on the ground through restoration of a 1km length of valley bog (with sundews and marsh clubmoss), and have informed the Forestry Commission’s Forest Design Plan, influencing future management of this key area.
• In Breckland, major funding from GrantScape has allowed Plantlife to launch a major project focussed on the conservation of this area’s immensely rich plant life. Focussing on classic rarities such as perennial knawel and field wormwood, the project will monitor rare species, restore lost and declining populations through management, and through our involvement with the Breckland Biodiversity Audit, will influence the longer-term landscape vision for the area.
• At Mynydd Cilan on the Lleyn peninsula, Plantlife is working closely with Gwynedd Council, the Countryside Council for Wales and local commoners to restore the network of overgrown pools and ponds. As a result of this work, three-lobed water-crowfoot has increased from a handful of plants to a population of around 200 at sites across the common. Other species, such as pillwort and chamomile are also increasing in response to more favourable management.