Willows in the farming landscape: a forgotten eco-cultural icon

Abstract

Recent studies have revealed a largely forgotten rural landscape in which Salix (willow) species were a characteristic, iconic, and utilitarian feature. In former wetlands, now largely removed by massive drainage schemes since the 1600s various willow species were distinctive features of the landscape and of major value to agricultural communities that inhabited those places. From lowlands to uplands across the British countryside willows dominated much wetter and more extensive landscapes. Remnant upland willow woods (now present as ‘shadow woods’) exist as isolated remnants in small wet habitats in an often desiccated landscape fragmented and drained. In the lowlands, especially former fenland areas, willows were present in extensive wet (carr) woodlands and in cultivated beds of withies or osier holts, and as coppices and pollards on boundaries and in field edges across the countryside. The economic driver of withy beds survived in the main English fenlands until the mid-twentieth century. Today these once extensive and important landscapes are mostly forgotten and derelict; and furthermore, the eco-cultural resource of the willows is currently under threat with unrecorded veteran trees being actively removed by farmers. This paper introduces the significance of the willow landscapes, the history of the eco-cultural resource, and the implications of neglect for future conservation.