Main content

Got to rot

We tend to be very tidy-minded today even in our woodland. Fallen trees are cleared to allow access, some of them are sawn up and taken away for firewood. But in the Wildwood trees would have lay where they fell and been allowed to rot. This place is unusual for modern British forest, but it gives a flavour of how the wild wood might have been - a right old mess! But the amount of dead wood lying around can have a dramatic effect on any forest. More than half the wildlife in a woodland lives on rotting timber. This is absolutely teeming with organisms; ironically, a woodland which is full of death is simply teeming with life. With so much dead wood at its heart the wildwood must have been bursting with life, and not all of it familiar.

Release date:

Duration:

1 minute

Featured in...

More clips from Islands Apart