Atlantic Hazel: Scotland's Special Woodlands

Description:

The Atlantic hazelwoods are one of Scotland's most ancient woodlands. They are older by far than the Atlantic oakwoods of Scotland, and older than some of the Caledonian pinewoods. Together with birch, hazel was one of the earliest woody species to establish along the western edge of Scotland, as far back as 10,000 years Before Present. Pollen evidence points to vast areas of western Scotland being dominated by hazel for hundreds of years. In that time, other plants and animals established amongst the hazel, forming what is today a unique habitat of great antiquity. Hazel can occur as wind-clipped coastal woodland, as small to large stands amongst (or adjacent to) other woodland, or as an 'understorey' with emergent trees such as ash and oak.

This book aims to change the way people think about hazel and in particular the hazel woods along the Atlantic seaboard. Until recently, most ecologists perceived hazel as just a coppiced shrub, the commonest component of the underwood in our widespread and enduring coppice-with-standards silvicultural system, and dismissed the hazel-dominated woods of the north and west as scrub - if they recognised them at all. Here, however, we are presented in a lavishly illustrated form with a more discriminating view, which sees the Atlantic hazel woods as a distinctive and highly significant type of woodland, the rain forest - no less - of the British Isles.