History of the natural forests of Britain: establishment, dominance and destruction

Abstract

The Cambridge data-bank of Quaternary fossil plant records has been used to derive an objective outline account of the chief British forest trees through the Flandrian Period, i.e. the last 10000 years. Their history is evidently related to the climatic pattern of an uncompleted interglacial cycle, showing response to pre- temperate, early-, middle- and late-temperate stages and passing through phases of establishment and dominance before becoming subject to the destruction initiated by Neolithic man about 5000 years ago and disastrously accelerated afterwards. The native birches and pine were essentially protocratic: pine, established abun­ dantly through south and east England in the first two or three millennia gave place to the mediocratic elm, oaks and limes dominant thereafter, save in Highland Scotland where pine forest, established late, continued as climax community. Beech and horn-­ beam, telocratic in character, spread only in the latest millennia, possibly in relation to relaxation of clearances but possibly also in relation to altered climate.