Natural regeneration ( or regen, as it is known in the woodland world) is a lovely subject. It is a pleasure to watch and to understand and it is even more rewarding to be a part of this complicated sequence of events.
There are two ways to look at regen, one is leave it well alone and do nothing and the second, is to become involved and be part of the chain.
Funny enough, there is no right or wrong answer. I practise both, for different reasons and for different results. If we take a good strong Oak with a very healthy crown then in a good seed year it may produce up to 25,000 acorns. Now you may have ten oaks, like this per acre, so you could end up with 250,000 acorns per acre. Now this example is nature at it’s best and when the Oaks have a had a good seed year, you will know about, the woodland floor is inches deep in acorns, the birds and the animals are all wonderfully plump, ready for the onset of winter.
So with this many seeds being dropped you would be under the impression that you really don’t need to help nature on it’s way. And you would be right, wouldn’t you? Just have a look this Autumn at an Oak and see how many seeds it drops and then look 18months time and observe how many acorns they are at the cotyledon stage. I would have a guess at 12 acorns have germinated, out of the many thousands shed. Trees are a bit like pigs. Pigs give birth to many piglets as they suffer from high mortality, the same applies to plants. So nature knows that it has to produce many thousands of seeds to ensure that one survives into maturity, remember when we first saw David Attenborough on the beech watching millions of Turtles struggling to make it to sea.
In a woodland environment the whole process regen is governed by the amount of light that reaches the woodland floor, so we are better off making sure that we fell our trees when they reach maturity, if you don’t then end up with a woodland of a fixed aged structure as opposed to a woodland with a diverse age structure. As soon as you allow in the light, regen will flourish.
If you a leave a field fallow, it will soon be invaded and colonised by trees, the only thing that prevents this from happening in our countryside is, agriculture.
So, are we making much difference in the big scheme of things by heeling in an acorn or two or the odd Hazel nut? I am not so sure that we are, nature is very clever at it’s job, in fact it’s the master. Here in Dorset, we have plenty of chalk and the Ash tree adores chalk so as you can imagine we have plenty of Ash but not so much Oak, so am I better of planting Ash as I know that this has a good chance of surviving or should I go for Oak, as we could do with more of them but the likely hood of it becoming a seedling is very low.............so I dam well do both!! But I would much rather be healing in large and small leaved Lime, we don’t have many of those in Dorset.
Nature will look after itself, if we leave it alone but it is a great repayment seeing a seed that you have planted grow.......you just have to spend the next ten years keeping the destructive side of nature at bay – the animals.
If you are heeling in seeds, always make sure that you plant it as deep as the seed is long!
Just remember this;
Nature never ploughs and it doesn’t know what straight lines are.
julian
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