The two greatest threats to our native woods and their flora are deer and the nursery trade. So says Oliver Rackham in his new book Woodlands, published by Collins last year in the New Naturalist series and a surprisingly bracing read. We have never had so many deer in this country, he says, and there is little hope of controlling their spread. Even if we all chose venison instead of beef, it is too dangerous to shoot them in the suburbs where they lurk. Unless we deer-fence our woods, their seedlings, coppice stools, wild flowers and before long their whole structure will be destroyed. And fenced out of woods, of course, the deer will make straight for our gardens.
The nursery trade? It is the pattern of modern commerce we should be worried about. Mass production is the order of the day, wherever it is quickest and cheapest. British nurseries have almost given up propogating their own material, let alone local strains of anything. It matters less, certainly, that your azaleas come from Belgium than that oaks are grown from whatever acorns are most plentiful. It may be 50 years before we discover that Italian oaks are useless in Britain, by which time nothing can be done.
The most immediate threat, however, is the fungus Phytopthera. Rackham asked a Dublin conference whether Ireland had not seen enough of it to last 1,000 years. In the 19th century it caused the potato famine and depopulated the country. ‘That’s tricky,’ came the official answer. ‘If we exclude foreign plants we’ll be done for restraint of trade.’ In other words fingers crossed. In the dispute between plague and trade which side are you on?
