British Woods Research Articles

IDENTIFIKASI JENIS-JENIS UBI KAYU (Manihot esculenta) DI KECAMATAN TOMIA TIMUR KABUPATEN WAKATOBI

This study aims to identify and describe the types of cassava in Tomia Timur District, Wakatobi Regency. The research was carried out in Tomia Timur Subdistrict, Wakatobi Regency, in December 2021 January 2022. This research is a survey research that is analyzed descriptively by statistics that is describing, describing, and describing the object being studied. The variables observed were stem color, branched and unbranched, stem height, stem diameter, distance between stem segments, leaf color, petiole color, leaf lobe length, tuber shape, wet tuber weight per tree, outer skin color of tuber, color inner skin of tubers, tuber flesh color, benefits of cassava plants, cultivation techniques, and soil conditions. The results showed that there were 10 types of cassava in Tomia Timur District, Wakatobi Regency, namely Kalambe cassava, Kalambe Fanse cassava, Ndoke cassava, Bogoro cassava, Bogoro Mohoro cassava, Makuri cassava, Andapatua cassava, Salbia cassava, cassava English wood, and Andabula cassava.

Population Density and Stability of Breeding Birds in English Oak Woodland Over a 32-Year Period in Relation to Habitat Structure and Edges

Long-term breeding bird censuses in Białowieża National Park (BNP), north-east Poland, have revealed rather low densities of birds and high community stability which may be features of near-natural forest conditions. This paper reports on a long-term census of breeding birds in 50 ha of oak woodland in central England which contained both managed and undisturbed areas. New information is provided on breeding bird density and its spatial variation within English mature broadleaved woodland to address two questions: Under what circumstances are English woods likely to support higher densities than those occurring in BNP? Is there evidence that population and community stability is lower in English woodland? The overall bird density was lower than in the BNP oak-hornbeam stands, at the scale of both the whole study area and the undisturbed stands. Densities of three of the five dominant species (Cyanistes caeruleus, Parus major, Troglodytes troglodytes) were lower in BNP, Fringilla coelebs was higher, while Erithacus rubecula was similar. Within the undisturbed stands, densities of seven of 12 species, including T. troglodytes, were similar to those in BNP, two were considerably higher (C. caeruleus, P. major) and one much lower (F. coelebs). Selection of the external woodland edge by several species resulted in relatively high overall densities in the edge zone. The broad composition of the bird community remained fairly stable with the exception of declines in tropical migrants and increases in shrub layer nesters. Temporal abundance patterns of species showed much individuality. Trends of several species appeared to be driven by changes in habitat structure. However, the same species remained numerically dominant or characteristic of the wood throughout the study period. This suggests there was a core of resilient species, much as proposed for BNP. Although caution is needed in drawing conclusions from a single site, with the exception of a small number of species, in recent decades there is unlikely to have been a general pattern of higher densities of birds in English woodland than in BNP. However, some English woods with highly complex vegetation structures, or a high proportion of edge habitat, do have exceptionally high densities (> 100 territories/10 ha).

The Fate of the Extended Genome

The Fate of the Extended Genome

At War: Sylvia Townsend Warner and Maiden Newton

Sylvia Townsend Warner’s 1958 poetry collection Boxwood is an unusual book with an unusual genesis. This article examines how Warner and her neighbour, the wood engraver Reynolds Stone, collaborated on the project. It explores Warner’s meditations on rural life, storytelling and human mortality in the wider contexts of her own poetry and the history of British wood engraving.

Regions, Maps, Readers: Theorizing Middlebrow Geography

This article argues that endpaper maps in children’s and adult’s fictions, read in terms of the material contexts of the novels they illustrate and their specific historical contexts, point to new ways of conceiving and organizing middlebrow studies in relation to nation and region. It urges scholars interested in developing middlebrow studies beyond Anglophone cultures to pay greater attention to the materials and material cultures of the book. Based on a case study of endpaper maps by the English wood engraver Joan Hassall and illustrator E. H. Shepard, in novels by Francis Brett Young and A. A. Milne, respectively, it seeks to answer these questions: What kinds of illustrations, papers, endpapers, and designs, conveyed through what kinds of varied artistic, industrial, and commercial processes, are required for consumers in diverse regions to behold an object that they recognize as a “middlebrow book”? How are these materials and processes distinguished by region and more importantly, how do these materials and processes themselves produce ideologies of region? In short, how do book materials and processes create different kinds of regional middlebrows?

Parasitic nematodes of the genusSyphaciaSeurat, 1916 infecting Muridae in the British Isles, and the peculiar case ofSyphacia frederici

Syphacia stroma (von Linstow, 1884) Morgan, 1932 and Syphacia frederici Roman, 1945 are oxyurid nematodes that parasitize two murid rodents, Apodemus sylvaticus and Apodemus flavicollis, on the European mainland. Only S. stroma has been recorded previously in Apodemus spp. from the British Isles. Despite the paucity of earlier reports, we identified S. frederici in four disparate British sites, two in Nottinghamshire, one each in Berkshire and Anglesey, Wales. Identification was based on their site in the host (caecum and not small intestine), on key morphological criteria that differentiate this species from S. stroma (in particular the tail of female worms) and by sequencing two genetic loci (cytochrome C oxidase 1 gene and a section of ribosomal DNA). Sequences derived from both genetic loci of putative British S. frederici isolates formed a tight clade with sequences from continental worms known to be S. frederici, clearly distinguishing these isolates from S. stroma which formed a tight clade of its own, distinct from clades representative of Syphacia obvelata from Mus and S. muris from Rattus. The data in this paper therefore constitute the first record of S. frederici from British wood mice, and confirm the status of this species as distinct from both S. obvelata and S. stroma.

Atlantic Iron: Wood Scarcity and the Political Ecology of Early English Expansion

Fears of wood scarcity were common in early modern England, and proponents of colonial expansion into Ireland and Virginia drew on these anxieties to justify their enterprises and to solicit support for projects exploiting colonial woods. They argued that Ireland and, later, Virginia were the edges of a wooden frontier. Closely examining the connections between ironworks in Virginia, southwest Ireland, and the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries reveals a more complex political ecology that transcends broad concepts of scarcity and abundance. Contemporaries disagreed about the extent and severity of English wood scarcity. Colonial ironworks competed against each other and with domestic and European producers. Many investors in and leaders of ironworks understood that to compete on quality and price they needed to exploit regulatory differences, forge commercial connections with other producers and merchants, and secure access to markets, materials, and expertise. The Virginia Company’s attempts to build ironworks, culminating in a short-lived project at Falling Creek, demonstrate that early Virginia colonists saw their woods through an Atlantic lens and understood that North American natural abundance needed to be made, not just discovered.

Harvesting the dead and decaying forests: Potential carbon storage in harvested wood products

British Columbia (BC)'s forests and wood products industry face tremendous adversity in the face of the mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae) epidemic. The death and decay of one of BC's leading merchantable tree species (lodgepole pine; Pinus contorta Dougl. ex Loud. var. latifolia Engelm.) threatens both the sustainability and climate mitigation opportunities in BC forests. Our study investigates the potential for carbon (C) storage in wood products in the post-epidemic phase of the MPB outbreak. In particular, we contrast the C-balance implications of converting MPB timber into long-lived wood products (i.e., lumber) (scenario 1) versus softwood pellets for bioenergy (scenario 2). Our findings highlight the importance of the C-cycle neutral assumption in determining the net C-balance of lumber versus pellets. Timber harvests for lumber resulted in a net C storage with this assumption (case 1), and net C emissions without this assumption (case 2). With uncertainty surrounding the future C-balance of BC forests, the current assumption of biomass-derived emissions being completely C-neutral may need to be re-evaluated.

Wooden Os: Shakespeare’s Theatres and England’s Trees by Vin Nardizzi (review)

Reviewed by: Wooden Os: Shakespeare’s Theatres and England’s Trees by Vin Nardizzi Lowell Duckert WOODEN Os: SHAKESPEARE’S THEATRES AND ENGLAND’S TREES. By Vin Nardizzi. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013; pp. 224. Just how modern is the phenomenon of “green architecture?” Although it has recently become a catch-phrase for buildings assembled from recycle/d/able materials, structures were once primarily composed of “green” stuff—wood. Take the early modern English playhouses, a series of commercial theatres in the round—so-called wooden Os—that dotted the outskirts of London’s city limits, from the opening of the Theatre in 1576 to the closure (and eventual demolition) of all theatres circa 1642. And yet, as Vin Nardizzi pronounces, these wooden rings have somehow escaped environmental analysis. Wooden Os adds to the long-engrained critical history of early modern drama by magnifying the physical substance that most studies overlook: the woody matter of the stage itself. Investigating “the cultural pervasiveness of the material link between theatres and woodlands” (24), Nardizzi deftly employs an ecocritical methodology that examines (and frequently challenges) implied divisions between nature (trees) and culture (wood products). Wood works upon culture; what work would wood do? Using Jonathan Gil Harris’s term of untimely matter (4) to trace wood’s “eco-material effects” (22), Nardizzi’s answer is the book’s central argument: far from exhibiting a “green” abundance of forests that we might expect, the art of Shakespeare and his contemporaries responded to the real wood shortages facing England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Wooden Os traces an “eco-material history of English theatre” (30) that reacted to this scarcity. For playwrights, the response to ecological crisis worked synecdochally; wooden props on the stage (like stage trees) and the wood of the stage (such as ceiling supports) stand in for the once-living trees that fell in order to erect wooden theatre spaces. Plays highlight this crisis of deforestation, Nardizzi smartly shows, through their gestic and deictic language: for instance, a remark like “yon pine does stand” (4.13.1) from Antony and Cleopatra (ca.1606–07) may reference either a stage prop or the theatre’s built-in wooden columns (or both). For theatre entrepreneurs like the Burbages the response was pragmatic: the first Globe, the author reminds us, was a product of “recycling”: built from the Theatre’s wooden remains transported across the Thames to Bankside during 1598–99. Overall, we are implored to “see … the English woods inhering in the superstructure of the wooden O” (136). A play was not just imagined to be in the woods, but was within them already. Each of the four chapters addresses particular “eco-solutions and fantasies” (12), as well as “never-green nightmare[s]” (87) in response to England’s wood woes. Chapter 1 puts the “vanishing” onstage tree of Robert Greene’s play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (late 1580s) into conversation with sixteenth-century geopolitical and theatrical pressures: its magical departure symbolizes the salvation of wooden Os from the abuses of anti-theatricalists who wished to tear down the theatres; protection of England’s trees from the conquest of the Spanish Armada that wished to invade England’s forests; and fantasies of colonialist extraction in Virginia’s New World woods. Chapter 2 reads the “felling” (and burning) of wood/man Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597–98) as a middle-class act of environmental protest against the aristocracy (represented by Windsor Forest or the knight’s rotund body). Situating this class struggle onstage alongside John Manwood’s Treatise (1598) on better management of monarchical forests, civic pressures to shut down the theatres, and the company’s movement to Bankside, we glimpse a search for a more rooted “playhousehold” (77) within conflicts of the commons. Chapter 3 investigates the critically neglected composite version of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (ca.1600), claiming that the tree on which Horatio’s murdered body hangs, and that is subsequently destroyed by Isabella, demonstrates the process by which environmental devastation could be transformed into commercial gain: the hewn trees necessary for the Fortune Theatre’s construction (that made fortunes by restaging...

Winter habitat selection by Marsh Tits Poecile palustris in a British woodland

Capsule Radio-tracking and remote sensing showed Marsh Tits selected for English Oak Quercus robur trees within large winter home-ranges.Aims To investigate winter habitat selection by Marsh Tits in a British wood, testing for preferences in tree species and woodland structure.Methods Thirteen Marsh Tits were radio-tracked during the winter, and home-ranges were derived. Lidar and hyperspectral data were used to compare the vegetation structure and tree species composition of entire home-ranges and the core areas of intensive use within. Instantaneous sampling observations provided further information for tree species utilization.Results The mean home-range was very large (39 ha, n = 13). There were no significant differences in mean tree height, canopy closure, understorey height, or shrub volume between full home-ranges and the core areas of use. Core areas contained a significantly greater proportion of English Oak relative to availability in the full home-ranges. Instantaneous sampling confirmed that English Oak was used significantly more than other trees.Conclusion Selection for English Oak during winter contrasted with previous studies of breeding territories, indicating that habitat usage varies seasonally and demonstrating the need for habitat selection studies throughout the year. Large home-ranges help to explain the Marsh Tit's sensitivity to habitat fragmentation.

Models of the Dynamics of Mosaic Landscapes

Upon reflection, it seems ecological research often involves either dismantling ecosystems into their components or assembling “parts” into ecosystems. Thankfully, some ecologists do both. For example, A. S. Watt upon his return from the “Great War” produced a pair of wonderful papers deconstructing the components and processes of British beech woods (Watt 1923, 1925). These papers outlined the microsites favored by regeneration of different tree species, documented experiments on excluding seed predators and seedling grazers, and investigated how such processes influenced the regeneration patterns of the trees in the canopy gaps produced by tree falls of different sizes. A second “Great War” later, he drew this together (Watt 1947) as a towering synthesis paper, which theorized that vegetation pattern arises from the local spatial dynamics produced by deaths of dominant individual plants and the consequent recovery process. Summation across many mosaic elements with their unstable, quasiperiodic dynamics produced the on-average predictable spatial pattern of the vegetation —an ecosystem quantum mechanics with canopy elements as the quanta. Watt’s paper trail is but one of the threads that interweaves with others to produce the fabric of an ongoing synthesis of plant communities as working mechanisms. Consider Joseph Grinnell’s niche theory (Grinnell 1917a, b). The son of an Indian Agency physician, Grinnell grew up among the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) and was befriended by their chief, Red Cloud (Maȟpiya Luta, 1822–1909) in what is now the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Grinnell’s concept of the ecological niche is a huntergatherer’s concept, “What conditions (climate, soil, other associated species, etc.) determine where a particular species of plant or animal will be found?” Other threads include increasing quantification and observational capacity in ecology: remote sensing of large-scale patterns of ecosystems; systems ecology with dynamic equations to formalize theories on change; multivariate statistics to explore and interpret large complex data sets; increased computational power coupled with diminished per calculation cost. These come to together in the formulation, testing, and analysis of computer models of Watt’s mosaic elements based on simulating the birth, death, and growth of individual plants. Called individual-based models (Huston et al. 1988), these algorithms channel Grinnell’s niche theory to determine conditions that might produce successful plant regeneration. With a dollop of ecophysiology to simulate individual plant growth and death, one form of these models, called “gap models” (Shugart and West 1980), essentially reproduce the dynamics that Watt postulated to underlie vegetation pattern. Collectively, gap models (Botkin et al. 1972, Shugart and West 1977) produce a theoretical basis for forest dynamics.

Margaret Fuller and Mazzini again: an almost unedited letter

The essay examines two documents: the first is in part unedited, while, although the second was published in 1879, it has only recently been rediscovered by an American scholar. Both documents are of particular interest for what they tell us about the relationship between Margaret Fuller and Giuseppe Mazzini. In both documents the two protagonists are brought together by the well-known English wood engraver and journalist William Linton, who later in life emigrated to the United States. The first document consists of a letter that Fuller sent to Linton, accompanied by verses that were to be published in a journal edited by Linton. The letter is presented in its full and original form for the first time, and it shows that Fuller's verses were written as a tribute to Mazzini's patriotism. The second document is the transcription of a text that Linton published in 1879, in which long after their deaths Fuller and Mazzini engage in an imagined conversation in which both express their lifelong commitment. For Mazzini, the imagined dialogue provides an opportunity to reaffirm his conviction that religious and political faith are inseperable.

The Drunken Boat

The Drunken Boat Arthur Rimbaud (bio) Translated by Stephen Berg (bio) We sailed down the unexplored Amazon alone, Indians nailed our guides to painted stakes Naked, used them to practice archery, Bloody agonized targets riddled with feathered shafts. How could I worry about my barbarous crew? I hauled Flemish grain and English wood; I left the bargemen and their gossip miles behind, The river took my free mind anywhere. The tides tore at my little boat and blew away My cargo. I lived on land through winter, Hull empty, those fragile floating villages Along the shoreline amazed by our joyful shouts. Lighter than cork I danced on waves, The storm baptised my sacred awakening, Waves boiled endlessly on the sea bottom, The lanterns’ idiot eyes couldn’t reach them. Green shit spurted through my seams Sweeter than sour apples to a boy; It cleaned off stains of puke and cheap wine, sucked overboard my anchor and wheel. Since then I’ve plunged into The Poem Of a milky sea clotted with stars, Gorging on greenish blue where wreckage And brooding corpses often swim by, Where slow ecstatic rhythms, dyed white, Blaze in noon sun stronger than alcohol, Vaster than the infinite music from above That ripens the stinging wounds of love. [End Page 155] I know the sky slashed open by lightning, waterspouts, Relentless surf, I know the night, know sunrise widening like a continent of doves; I’ve seen what men merely imagined they saw. I’ve seen the sun sink beneath the horizon, its terrifying Mystic signs, and actors in a Greek tragedy With muscular violet arms on fire The fluted quivering waters millions of miles away. Listener, I touched astounding Floridas Mingling human-skinned panthers’ eyes with blossoms, Clutched rainbows stretched like infinite reins Tugging at glaucous flocks on the ocean floor, Seen whales rot in reeking marshes Nets of reed flung over the pathetic corpses. Waters brawling with each other in clear calm! Yellow horizons swarming into indifferent voids! I watched the deeps bellow and stampede the land, Cattle with flames for tails, gigantic eyes, But never believed Mary could walk on water And close those foaming muzzles with her hand. And glacial silver suns, red skies and seasick stars, Nauseating wrecks collapsed in brown gulfs Where giant snakes swarming with maggots Drop black-perfumed from crippled trees. If only I could show children those waves, And gilded singing fish gliding through emerald; Foam roses have blessed my pointless roaming, Imperceptible winds have changed my arms into wings. I was like a beggar on his knees. Then heaven Dissected me the way my mother did When I’d be sick in bed too nervous To concoct my great visionary poetry. [End Page 156] And there were days when everything was nothing: No islands, no gull droppings on my cannons; O golden flower cups trying to seduce me. I touched myself repeatedly to prove I existed. I strode the purple mists, steaming and free, Broke through the wall of bleeding sky Sprinkled with lichens of the sun and blue-black phlegm— All poets love that jam the way they love their sperm. I’ve wept too much; sunrise twists my heart. Every moon and sun is bitter, cruel. Drunk on love’s sour laziness, O Let my keel burst, let me return to the sea! If I want European water, all I’ll get Is a black pond against a twilight sky. The cows are gone. A sad child kneeling Launches his paper boat frail as a butterfly. Waves, I can’t bear it any more, drenched in your weary distances: No wings to cut across the cotton carriers’ wakes, Nor swoop against the flags of merchant ships, Nor dive past prison boats grazing their guns. [End Page 157] Arthur Rimbaud Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) is the poet beyond all categories and schools. His two most famous dicta—“I is an Other” and “One must be Absolutely Modern”—continue to challenge and, sometimes, to mock our most cherished notions of the Here and Now. Before abandoning poetry entirely at the age of nineteen, Rimbaud had written “The Drunken Boat,” The Illuminations, and A Season in Hell, any...

Pigs and Pollards: Medieval Insights for UK Wood Pasture Restoration

English wood pastures have become a target for ecological restoration, including the restoration of pollarded trees and grazing animals, although pigs have not been frequently incorporated into wood pasture restoration schemes. Because wood pastures are cultural landscapes, created through the interaction of natural processes and human practices, a historical perspective on wood pasture management practices has the potential to provide insights for modern restoration projects. Using a wide range of both written and artistic sources form the Middle Ages, this article argues that pigs were fed in wood pastures both during the mast season when acorns were available and at other times as grazing fields. Pollarded pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) likely dominated these sustainable cultural landscapes during the medieval period.

Opportunistic Use of a Wool-like Artificial Material as Lining of Tit (Paridae) Nests

Abstract. The lining material is a key element of bird nests, serving primarily as insulation for the adult, eggs, and/or chicks, but collection of such material has an energetic cost. Our study investigated the nest-building effort of four species of tit (Paridae) in an English wood by quantifying the use of colored wool-like artificial material in nest lining from 2000 to 2010. We recorded the distances that birds carried the material from source to nest for each nest as an indirect measure of the energetic cost of collecting nest material to individual birds. Birds did not always use nest material from the nearest source to their nest, and some birds collected material from two, three or four well-separated sources. There was no detectable color preference in choice of material, and few birds traveled more than 200 m to gather the material. Use of the material appeared to depend on the species. Within defined areas around material dispensers not all individual Great Tits (Parus major) used the artifici...

Where Have All the Woodsmen Gone? And Could Sustainable Timber Use in the UK Really Be Sustainable?

We import the vast majority of our construction timber from abroad, some of it from illegally logged sources. Incredibly with our rural economy still in decline we now import even thatching spars from Poland. Meanwhile, many privately owned British woods are used only for tax avoidance, recreation, or firewood and are not producing quality timber. What is the way forward for United Kingdom forestry at a time when even our national forests are vulnerable.

Aliens or natives: who are the ‘thugs’ in British woods?

The invasion of native habitats by exotic, or alien, plant species has received considerable attention recently from policy, research, and practical conservation management perspectives. However, a new hypothesis for species dynamics in Britain suggests that a small number of aggressive native plant species (termed ‘thugs’) may have an equal, or greater, impact on native species and habitats than exotic species. Here, we examine this hypothesis using multivariate techniques with field-layer cover data collected during a country-wide survey of British woodlands. Multivariate analysis of these data identified a north-south gradient on the first axis, and that 20 of the 25 National Vegetation Classification woodland types were sampled within the study. The most abundant field-layer species included three of the proposed native ‘thugs’, i.e. Rubus fruticosus, Pteridium aquilinum and Hedera helix in addition to the native woodland indicator species Mercurialis perennis. Variation partitioning was used to compare the relative importance of native field-layer ‘thug’ species with invading alien shrub and tree species relative to other environmental drivers. The variation in the field-layer data-set explained by the three native ‘thug’ species was significant, but they explained a relatively small proportion of the variation relative to other environmental variables (climate, soil, management factors etc.). They did, however, explain almost four times as much variation as the three alien species that were significantly correlated with field-layer species composition (Acer pseudoplatanus, Impatiens glandulifera, Rhododendron ponticum). The results of this analysis suggest that the field-layer of British woodlands is impacted as much by native ‘thug’ species, as it is from ‘aliens’. Concern about the impact of these native ‘thug’ species has been reported previously, but their impact has not previously been compared to the impact of invading aliens. It is hoped that this analysis will do two things, first to act as a sound baseline for assessing any changing balance that should occur in the future, and second, to prompt both ecologists and conservationists to develop woodland management policies based on sound science.

Why do species abundance distributions of individuals and of biomass behave differently under sampling?

A surprising and important difference between species abundance distributions (SADs) of individuals and of biomass has been found in a wide variety of taxa. On sampling, individuals SADs are ‘veiled’, the left tail is missing, to an extent depending on the sampling intensity, while biomass SADs appear not to be veiled. The explanation offered here is that sampling is always of individuals, biomass is sampled only indirectly. Graphs of the community of birds in an English wood show how the explanation works. Biomass SADs are different from individuals SADs.

‘Therapy of the Green Leaf’: Public Responses to the Provision of Forest and Woodland Recreation in Twentieth Century Britain

This paper examines the largely unexplored formative years in the development of forest and woodland recreation in Britain during the twentieth century, with a particular focus from 1940 to 1970, when many of the institutional and infrastructural developments were made by both public and private sectors, laying the foundations for modern mass recreation. The paper is founded on archival research in public and private archival holdings. It makes a plea for greater recognition of the value of understanding the past, as contemporary policy makers plan for a sustainable future for British woods and forests. The paper reveals how the current balance required between the demands of people and nature is nothing new; it has a rich and complex history. The paper notes that after decades of public interest in forest and woodland recreation, public values and preferences are now being pushed to the fore in woodland management issues. How much public opinion will shape the sustainable future of our forests remains a controversial question.

‘Therapy of the Green Leaf’: Public Responses to the Provision of Forest and Woodland Recreation in Twentieth Century Britain

This paper examines the largely unexplored formative years in the development of forest and woodland recreation in Britain during the twentieth century, with a particular focus from 1940 to 1970, when many of the institutional and infrastructural developments were made by both public and private sectors, laying the foundations for modern mass recreation. The paper is founded on archival research in public and private archival holdings. It makes a plea for greater recognition of the value of understanding the past, as contemporary policy makers plan for a sustainable future for British woods and forests. The paper reveals how the current balance required between the demands of people and nature is nothing new; it has a rich and complex history. The paper notes that after decades of public interest in forest and woodland recreation, public values and preferences are now being pushed to the fore in woodland management issues. How much public opinion will shape the sustainable future of our forests remains a controversial question.