Almost all woods in
Britain, though of natural origin, have been managed, often
intensively, for centuries. (The exceptions are a few very
inaccessible groves on cliffs, and some woods of recent origin.)
The following is the normal practice of woodmanship over most of
England.
Woodmen
traditionally make use of the self-renewing power of trees. As all
gardeners know, some trees such as pines can be got rid of by
cutting them down, but nearly all native species grow again either
from the stump or from the root system. Ash and wych- elm, for
instance, coppice: the stump sends up shoots and becomes a
stool from which an indefinite succession of crops of poles
can be cut at intervals of years. Aspen, cherry, and most elms
sucker: the stump normally dies but the root system remains
alive indefinitely and sends up successive crops of poles, forming
a patch of genetically identical trees called a
clone.
Coppicing and
suckering are efficient and reliable ways of getting a new crop.
Sallow can grow at 2 inches a day, reaching 11 feet high in the
first season after felling; even oak can stand 7 feet high and an
inch thick after one summer's growth. Such shoots, though largely
immune from rabbits and hares which destroy slower-growing
seedlings, are a favourite food of cattle, sheep, and deer; and in
places where these animals could not be fenced out it was the
practice instead to pollard trees in order to get a crop.
Pollards are cut at between 6 and 15 feet above ground, leaving a
permanent trunk called a boiling (to rhyme with 'rolling'),
which sprouts in the same way as a coppice stool but out of reach
of livestock. Pollarding is much more laborious than coppicing, and
is typical of wood-pasture and some non-woodland trees e.g. in
hedgerows, but not of the interiors of woods.
The trees of a wood
are divided into timber trees (a minority) and
underwood. Every so often an area of underwood, called a
panel, cant, or hag, is felled and allowed to grow
again by coppicing or suckering. Scattered among the underwood are
the timber trees, which are allowed to stand for several cycles of
regrowth and are felled when full-grown. Timber trees are usually
replaced by seedlings. The whole wood is demarcated from its
surroundings by an earthwork called a woodbank with a ditch
on its outer side, traditionally set with a hedge to keep out
livestock and with pollard trees at intervals to define the legal
boundary.
The wood therefore
yields two products, timber from the trunks of the timber
trees, and wood from coppice stools or suckers (plus the
branches of felled timber trees). Timber and wood had different
uses and are not to be confused; we still talk of 'timber'
buildings and 'wood' fires. Wood is rods, poles, and logs, used for
fencing, wattlework, and many specialized purposes but in large
quantities for fuel. Timber is the stuff of beams and planks and is
too valuable (and too big) to burn. Underwood was normally the more
important product; woods were traditionally regarded as sources of
energy.
Woods do not cease
to exist through being felled.Popular writers suppose that a wood
gets 'exhausted' as if it were a coal-mine or a pine plantation.
Not so: a wood is self- renewing, and is no more destroyed by being
cut down than a meadow is destroyed by cutting a crop of hay. The
Bradfield Woods have been cut down at least seventy times and show
no sign of disappearing. Woods cease to exist through being
deliberately destroyed (in order to use the land for something
else), through misuse (especially long- continued grazing), or
occasionally through natural encroachment of sand-dunes or
blanket-peat. When a wood disappears one should not ask 'Why was it
cut down?' - for all old woods have been cut down from time to time
- but 'Why did it not grow again?'.
