Flowers of the Forest: Plants and People in the New Forest National Park

By Clive Chatters

This book explores the botanical richness and cultural heritage of the New Forest National Park in Hampshire, England. The New Forest has become an exceptional area for wildflowers, many of which were once common throughout the lowlands of Britain.



The Forest enjoys strong populations of many special wildflowers because it retains a living tradition of free-ranging domestic animals grazing its coastland, extensive commons, and village greens. This book is an exploration of how the wildlife of the Forest is the natural expression of the lives and economy of the people of the Forest.

• An introduction to the New Forest and how its commoning economy works


• A description of the principal habitats of the Forest and how they relate to one another


• Accounts of the people who have explored the Forest for wildflowers from the early 17th century to the present


• Descriptions of more than 100 species of the rarer flowering plants and ferns currently known from the National Park, many of which are nationally or internationally rare, scarce, or threatened


• An account of Forest conservation issues by someone who has participated in the life of the Forest for more than 20 years

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Release date: Oct 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9780691237602

Book preview

Flowers of the Forest

Plants and people in the New Forest National Park

Clive Chatters

First published 2009 by WILDGuides Ltd.

WILDGuides Ltd.

Parr House

63 Hatch Lane

Old Basing

Hampshire

RG24 7EB

UK

www.wildguides.co.uk

ISBN 978-1-903657-19-5

© 2009 Clive Chatters

Project managed by Dr Jill Sutcliffe (WILDGuides Ltd.)

Designed by Robert Still

Edited by Dr Jill Sutcliffe and Andy Swash (WILDGuides Ltd.)

Copyright in the photographs remains with the individual photographers.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

eISBN: 978-0-691237-60-2

R0

WILDGuides gratefully acknowledges financial support for this project which was provided by English Nature (EN).

EN is now part of Natural England along with the landscape, access and recreation elements of the Countryside Agency (CA) and the environmental land management functions of Defra’s Rural Development Service (RDS).

We will work for people, places and nature, to enhance biodiversity, landscapes and wildlife in rural, urban, coastal and marine areas; promoting access, recreation and public well-being, and contributing to the way natural resources are managed so that they can be enjoyed now and in the future.

Production and design by WILDGuides Ltd, Old Basing, Hampshire.

Version 1.1

‘I do not intend here to trouble you with an accurate distinction and enumeration of rushes; for if I should, it would be tedious to you, laborious to me, and beneficial to neither.’

Thomas Johnson’s 1633 edition of Gerard’s Herbal.

Dedicated to

Colin Tubbs,

without whom the Forest would be in a sorry state.

Contents

Foreword 9

Intentions and definitions 10

An Introduction to the New Forest National Park 11

How the Open Forest works 14

Geology 17

A botanical overview 19

See for yourself 22

For the record 24

Lower plants 26

The Open Forest 30

The woods of the Open Forest 31

The Christmas Green Oaks 31

Woodland management 35

Ancient trees 37

Woodland wildflowers 43

Butcher’s-broom 44

John Goodyer and Narrow-leaved Lungwort 45

Narrow-leaved Lungwort 46

Goodyer’s Elm 47

Ivy-leaved Bellflower – plant profile 48

Ivy-leaved Bellflower 49

Bastard Balm 50

Bastard Balm – plant profile 51

Scrub 52

Brambles 53

Roses 55

Ferns 55

Heaths and Bogs 58

Drainage 60

Management 62

After the burn 65

The marl heaths 66

The sandy heaths 68

Northern species of the Open Forest 73

Disturbance and upheavals on the heaths 77

Peaty paths 78

Life in a rut 80

Eyebrights and concrete 82

Summer Lady’s-tresses: a national extinction 84

Hatch Thoke 87

Cottongrasses and Beavers 88

Dwarf shrubs 91

Finding Early Gentians: X marks the spot 93

In amongst the Bracken 95

Angular Solomon’s-seal 99

– plant profile 100

The Wild Gladiolus 102

– plant profile 104

Grasslands 108

Lawns 109

Village greens 110

Chamomile 112

The Small Fleabane 116

Boom and bust 117

Streamside lawns 120

Woodland lawns 124

Bowman’s Horsetail 127

The Re-seeds 128

Open Forest Ponds and Rivers 129

The rivers 130

The many names of the Lymington River 132

Cut-grass 134

Forest ponds 136

Adder’s-tongue Spearwort 139

Floating Water-plantain 140

Forest ponds and the Avon Valley 142

Hampshire-purslane – plant profile 144

Hampshire-purslane and Coral-necklace 145

Coral-necklace – plant profile 146

The Coastal Open Forest 148

Tanners Lane and the Boldre foreshore 150

The Coast 157

The Coast: an introduction 158

Below the tide 159

The wooded marsh 162

Saltmarsh and strandline 165

A life in gravel 168

Little-Robin 170

Hurst Spit: Ray and Parkinson 172

Sea Campion and a lost Island 175

Calshot and vegetables 177

Tom Tiddler’s Ground 180

Mulberrys, sauce and spider-orchids 182

Cultivation and cliffs 184

Grazing marshes 186

The Enclosed Countryside 190

Within the hedges 191

Summer Snowflake 196

Summer Snowflake – plant profile 198

Sowley Pond 199

Suburban life 201

The Avon Valley 202

Arable losses 205

Looking forward 208

Appendix 1: Find out more 216

New Forest organisations 216

References 218

Appendix 2: A list of the rare, scarce and Red List vascular plants currently found within the New Forest National Park 222

Appendix 3: Some of the more frequently found plants in selected habitats around the New Forest 226

Appendix 4: Gazetteer of place names referred to in the text 227

Appendix 5: New Forest National Park: Facts and Figures 230

Appendix 6: Forest Code 231

Acknowledgements 232

Photographic and artwork credits 234

Index of English and Scientific Names 238

Index of People’s Names 244

Linwood from High Corner.

Foreword

Beautiful, diverse, unique, precious and important are all words that are frequently used in descriptions of the New Forest. But then so are fragile, threatened and pressured. Complex, politically challenged, paradoxical, frustrating and difficult could all equally be applied by those of us who have a life-long love for this place and a serious desire to secure for it a healthy future. Pessimists might say that it is ‘too many things to too many people’ and that this will be its undoing in the twenty-first century. But it is a dynamic manmade place so change is at the core of its existence and it is up to all of those ‘too many’ to make the changes positive. Through increasing awareness and recognition I think hope is rising and that it will survive, perhaps necessarily it will indeed be a new New Forest, and that will be a true reflection of its heritage.

However, the key to its survival in my opinion lies in the hands of those who do not necessarily live here, but those who work here: the communities who continue to shape its landscape. But whilst they might work in paradise their existence is often far from utopian and if the rural economy of the area cannot be restructured to become viable then I fear its degeneration. It is not the flowers, not the birds or the deer or the badgers or the butterflies that are in most urgent need of conservation here but the people, the real people of this place. Sadly many conservationists seem to continue to reverse this priority and this could prove a costly error.

One of the New Forest’s greatest values is that it is almost wholly accessible to the public. This is a place where folk can come to tread, listen, see for themselves, touch and feel the natural world. It is an available reality, hot, cold, wet and muddy, it is a healthy antidote to our virtual lives in front of the TV and internet and it is free. And it is so rich in things which excite us, stir young and old, and generate pleasure and occasionally awe. Those who come will naturally have their curiosities excited and they will want to know more.

This book provides plenty of gems of interest. Throughout its thorough ramble over all of the area’s green highlights it also creatively builds the whole landscape for the reader by referencing many delightful and fascinating aspects of its history. Nostalgics will love to romanticise in the footsteps of the naturalists of yesteryear whilst pragmatists will enjoy and admire the book’s accurate science and ecology and be left twitching in anticipation for the spring and summer when they can set forth and discover the flowers of this remarkable forest for themselves. I also greatly enjoyed the author’s raw passion for the subject and his candid honesty concerning upheavals past and present – not only does he know his stuff, but he also doesn’t pull punches, an artefact which is fuelled no doubt by a desire to see the New Forest blooming brightly for future generations of eager botanists.

Chris Packham, Naturalist and Broadcaster, 2009

Intentions and definitions

This is a partial and personal account of the wildflowers of the New Forest.

I have sought to draw together some of the more interesting stories and lines of research that I have encountered over the last 20 years. I hope that these tales will inspire others to get to know the Forest better, to record and share their experiences and to grow to care for the place.

This is not a text book but I have endeavoured to be factually correct and draw on the best available scientific information. Much of the important literature on the Forest is unpublished. Rather than providing references throughout the text in the academic fashion, I have set out the most important sources of information in Appendix 1 entitled Find out More.

The account concentrates on describing the nationally rare and scare plants found in the National Park. These plants are wildflowers, including grasses, sedges and rushes together with ferns and their allies such as horsetails and clubmosses. There are a number of botanical localities mentioned; in describing the localities of rarities I have followed the conventions established in the 1996 Flora of Hampshire. Similarly, I have adopted the English names for plants used in the 1996 Flora reverting only to scientific names where this may provide clarity. The 1996 Flora is the key reference book on the wild flowers of the Forest and is referred to many times in this account.

A checklist of the rare, scarce and Red List species of the National Park, showing their English and scientific names is set out in Appendix 2 (see page 222).

For the purposes of this book I have taken the New Forest National Park to be the same as the New Forest. Anyone who has ever studied the Forest and its boundaries will know the merits or otherwise of such an approach. The definition is convenient as it gives a definite boundary to work within, however imperfect.

Definitions are essential to ensure accuracy but are seldom inspiring. To avoid repetition in the text the following conventions have been adopted.

The definitive lists of what plants are rare and scarce are published by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), which is a government agency.

The word ‘scarce’ is used to describe a native plant found in more than 16 but fewer than 100 ten-kilometre squares of the Ordnance Survey national grid, as described in the 1994 JNCC publication Scarce Plants in Britain.

The word ‘rare’ is used to describe a plant found in 16 or fewer ten-kilometre squares of the Ordnance Survey national grid, as described in the 1999 JNCC publication the Vascular Plant Red Data Book.

The term ‘Red List’ is used to refer to species listed as extinct in the wild, critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable or near-threatened in the JNCC 2005 webpage-based Red Data List. This Red List took a very different approach from the Red Data Book as it considered threat and changes in population rather than intrinsic scarcity.

The Red List also identifies species for which the United Kingdom has an international responsibility. This responsibility relates to plants that may be widespread in the UK but of limited or declining distribution elsewhere in the world.

I am indebted to many friends and colleagues who over the years have shared their knowledge of the Forest with me. Any errors of fact or interpretation are, however, of my own making.

First impressions are important. To a fortunate few the New Forest is so much a part of their lives that they know little else. To many of us who have encountered the Forest it has captivated us and left its mark.

Richard Mabey, our finest living nature writer, recorded his first impressions in his journal:

‘Is it countryside at all, or just a specialised habitat artificially preserved inside what is now the commuter belt?’

This is a fair question. As countryside the Forest doesn’t conform to the comfortable image of rural England. It is arguably barely rural as it butts up against cities and is accessed by motorways and mainline stations; it squats below the cranes of ports, the tank farms of refineries and flights of commuter jets. Richard goes onto answer his own question:

‘The rattle of the cattle grids at Cadnam used to make my spine tingle. It was an overture to a different kind of England, unfenced and gloriously unkempt’.

The Forest is different. It can be unkempt and scruffy, prettiness mixed with grittiness, a landscape grown out of independence and poverty. It remains relentlessly feral, set out of time in a world of affluence.

The National Park is a newcomer to the Forest. The documented history of what is now the National Park goes back beyond the Norman Conquest into the Saxon land of Ytene. There is nearly 1,000 years of documentation, each Forest generation bearing its share of fresh bureaucracy.

The location of the New Forest in Britain and the National Park boundary.

The original proposal for a New Forest National Park was made in 1947 but it took until 2005 before a Park Authority was put in place. The original boundary proposed for the Park in 1947 reflected the Great Bounds of the Forest that were promoted between 1227 and 1280. The 21st century boundary finally adopted for the Park is a pragmatic line, defined by civil servants and public inquiries, then redefined through High Court challenges. The line wanders across the other boundaries that define the Forest. The legal limits of the Forest’s own Acts of Parliament are not bound wholly within the Park. The internationally recognised nature conservation designations straddle its borders. The economic lifeblood of the Forest, the community of commoners and farmers upon which the landscapes depend is cut about by the boundary. The New Forest is therefore more than what lies within the National Park.

This is England’s smallest National Park. Of all the Parks it has the highest concentration of internationally important wildlife sites, together with the greatest density of people enjoying the open spaces. Situated on the coast of central southern England it is progressively becoming the last green space between the cities of the Solent and the Bournemouth conurbations.

Is this too bleak a picture or is it the reality that we must recognise? The Forest is not some rural bastion, its borders and spirit a bulwark against the great wen. It is, and I hope will always remain, itself, the Forest; an entwinement of people, rough country, field and coast born of a curious outlook on life. There are wild places in the Forest but certainly no wilderness. Given the eyes to see, even the remotest heath, the deepest wood, the broadest marshes are all filled with layers of humanity. Nature may dominate but everywhere people work the landscape. The signs are not just of the past; the working landscape is very much alive, the workers are our contemporaries, our neighbours.

The binding force that defines the Forest’s character is its land economy, how the land is owned and managed. 200 years ago the Forest would not have been remarkable. Lowland England had many such places of wild open spaces, owned by the wealthy but exploited through ancient common rights by both gentry and peasant. It is only in the Forest that the traditions of lowland commoning survive on a large scale. It is a medieval pattern of land ownership and management that defines the landscape.

To a naturalist, a botanist, the Forest is a source of endless fascination. Any enthusiasm, any new line of enquiry, will reveal another layer of riches. The wildlife of the Forest is not a product of carefully structured scientific interventions. It remains for the most part wild, a manifestation of natural forces combining with human exploitation.

How the Open Forest works

To understand the flowers of the Forest it is necessary to understand the rudiments of how it works. In getting to know the Forest you learn a new vocabulary.

The first and principal word to understand is Forest. In the modern age, the term ‘forest’ is used to describe a large area dominated by trees. This is not how the word is used in the New Forest. Here the name Forest is a reminder that this was land set aside over 900 years ago to be subject to Forest law as well as the common law of the land. Forest law was a legal system through which the Crown reserved to itself rights to exploit certain products of the land. The law guarded the Crown’s rights to timber, deer and other game. Forest law did not take away the ownership of the rights of others to graze that land, cut turf for the fire, take small-wood, dig clay for the fields or graze pigs on acorns. These ancient rights are the rights of common. The people who own and exercise those rights are commoners and today between 300 and 700 people exercise common rights at any one time. All of the animals you see on the Forest are owned by the commoners. There are about 7,000 domestic animals, mostly ponies and cattle, turned out onto the common. In the autumn some commoners exercise the right of mast, or pannage, when their pigs have free range of the Open Forest to feed on seeds and fruits.

The next term to understand is the Open Forest. In practice this means all the land across which a free roaming grazing animal can wander. The Open Forest runs from the cattle grids in the Avon Valley to the mudflats of the Solent. This is not one big block of land but a series of interconnected commons joined by lanes through farmland and by passages under fenced roads. It is possible to walk from any point on the Open Forest to any other without ever crossing a fence. When animals wander from one common to another they are exercising the right of vicinage.

The commoners turn out animals on the Forest when they own rights of pasture. These rights come with the ownership of certain fields; the common grazing rights are bought and sold with the fields. Not only does the ownership of such a field give rights to graze the Open Forest but it also provides a base to keep livestock when they are not out on the common.

The whole of this system is closely regulated. The regulator is the Court of Verderers. The Verderers are a group of people, some elected by the commoners and some appointed by the state. The Verderers both regulate the commoners and champion the best interests of the commons. The geographical limits to the powers of the Verderers are defined by a boundary called the perambulation. The Verderers employ officers who oversee the commons and the management of the commoners’ livestock. These officers are the Agisters.

The majority of the Open Forest is owned by the state and is called the Crown land. The Crown land runs without a mark into the many other ownerships of the Open Forest. There are about 50 other owners including the National Trust, Hampshire County Council and parish councils together with many smaller private owners. The Crown lands are managed on behalf of the state by the Forestry Commission. The chief officer of the Forestry Commission in the New Forest has the title of Deputy Surveyor. The Deputy Surveyor is based in offices at the Queen’s House in Lyndhurst. ‘Queen’s House’ is often used as shorthand to describe the seat of government in the Forest in the same way as political journalists may use ‘Number 10’. The Forestry Commission employs a wide range of experts including education rangers, ecologists and keepers. Many of the Forestry Commission workers are also commoners.

This early stereo photograph was taken on the Crown land of the Open Forest in summer. The pig is therefore either a privileged pig turned out from a Crown freehold property, or has wandered in from an adjacent common.

Christopher Tower Library

The Forestry Commission has the role of managing their part of the Open Forest so that it is in a suitable condition to graze. There is an annually agreed programme of cutting coarse vegetation and burning over-mature heathland.

The living tradition. The Bridle family at their farm near Rufus Stone, 2007.

The Open Forest.

A white buck near Bratley.

The general distribution of Open Forest, Inclosures and layback land within the New Forest.

The Commission also manages the timber that the state has secured the right to grow on the Forest. These timber plantations are called Inclosures as they have, temporarily or permanently, inclosed land out of the common.

The enclosed farmlands support the grazing of the commons. The fields used by commoners are called layback land. At any one time a minority of the farmland will be used by commoners. Over the years farm holdings are bought and sold and the layback land moves around. Few commoners enjoy the security of owning all the land they need; as land becomes available the layback land will move to gain the best location and an affordable rent.

Geology

The geology underlying the Open Forest comprises a mixture of different clays and sands which are sometimes overlain by gravels and peat. Much of the heathland is formed over the Bagshot, Barton and Bracklesham Beds. These geological layers produce heavy, cold soils and there is little to distinguish between them by way of what grows on them. There are, however, two geological formations which are worthy of investigation by the botanist.

The dry sandy heaths that can be found in Surrey and Dorset are rare in the Forest. Summertime parched soils are best developed on the western fringes of the Open Forest along the terraces of the Avon Valley. The sands of the Avon Valley terraces can be very fine-grained. I recall in the late 1980s seeing sand whipped up by