UKC

Bracken:

The curse of the Lake District is returning.
Ticks, death of all indigenous grasses and wild flowers.
Smothering of all things beautiful.
Bracken is ugly, toxic, not indigenous.
Nasty, damp, horrible green smog.
Don't believe them when they say it is great for binding soil and stopping the release of Carbon.
Doh .. .. .. 
It was fine in 1953 when the LD was beautiful and given NP status for that beauty.
Bad management allowed this to happen, twas never like this.
There is NOTHING good about bracken.

PLEASE - wherever you go, take a stick, beat it and limit the spread, otherwise your right to roam will be irrelevant.
DC
 

Just stay above 400m

A while back, there was something about bracken spores being potential carcinogens.  Might want to have a search to see what came from that.  If you could gather evidence to support a headline-grabbing statement such as, "Walking through field of bracken is like smoking 20 fags a day" then there'll be a spot in every tabloid waiting for you and the case for getting rid of the tedious green menace becomes easier to make.

T.

It's a forest clearing plant. Reforest the hillside, less light, no bracken.

Bracken + bovine papilloma virus in cattle cause bladder cancer so there is some evidence  of carcinogenicity in animals.  

These guys near Helton Penrith do a good job in cutting it back, though they can only get at certain places with their machinery.

Have you not seen some of the areas they clear year on year?

https://www.dalefootcomposts.co.uk/our-products.aspx

This very aggressive plant competes with other native vegetation to the extent that other plants fail and available grazing is reduced. Bracken has become a problem - ecologically and economically - so what better, more sustainable solution than to harvest it in a managed way, thereby husbanding the beautiful hills of the Lake District and utilising a resource in a way that it used to be many years ago.

never heard that bracken isn't a native plant in the UK before, (see eg

https://www.brc.ac.uk/plantatlas/plant/pteridium-aquilinum  )

do you have a reference ?

I too struggled to find anything that said bracken is not native. I'd be interested in learning though if OP can direct me somewhere.

Found this though:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/proceedings-of-the-royal-society-of...

I knew the author of that article & would describe him as the leading expert on the taxonomy & ecology of British ferns. He's never doubted the species being native. Out of interest I've just looked at Godwin's History of the British Flora (old but usually reliable) & that has pollen records for bracken going back to the bronze age & earlier.

Excellent. Thanks for the information. I'll try and pick that up at the library, it looks interesting!

So the irk is more about the deforestation of upland areas than it is about the bracken?

Lepidoptera (?)enthusiasts like a certain amount of bracken, as on the margins the composting bracken and the light levels are a good environment for dog violets to grow which are a great nectar source for High Brown Fritillaries, an endangered species.....once used to be common. 

I also hate the stuff though.

just noticed I wrote pollen records, should have been spores !

Its native. More so than humans.

And its spread is done to forest clearances, overgrazing and burning.

Just toot my ownn trumpet here

https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=9669

The Romans used bracken as a floor covering at Vindolanda and probably other forts. I'd guess that was something they picked up from the local Britons.

Nice article.  Thanks.

I live in the NYMNP and they too talk with concern about the spread of bracken.  

I can understand the concern and control of none native plants, piri-piri, himalyan balsam, Japanese knotweed and so on .- as they are non native and replace native habitats which generally have more wildlife associations.  

But I really don't quite understand why bracken is seen in the same way*  Here I've noticed woodland cover increase over my own lifetime and no one complains about the damage that does to moorland flora & fauna or the wildflower meadow I remember from my youth.  A number of  open ponds I knew as a child are now 'overgrown' with rushes or reeds and willows.  Bracken certainly doesn't appear toxic in a way that should be of major concern..  I've never seen humans dying of it.  Sheep shelter in it, cattle graze amongst it, birds use it along with many insects.  And when I was younger, farmers on the edge of the moors still cropped it for bedding stock.   There doesn't appear to be a great danger posed by its presence.  Its always been around.   I guess its called nature - it does its own thing. 

*Perhaps bracken is disliked for some of the reasons you give - it annoys us humans - a bit like ivy?.  Here it is controlled by the shooting estates because it occupies land which could have heather growing on it - for grouse !!! and I guess If I had common rights to graze stock on our moorland, I'd prefer them to have access to grass rather than bracken which is no longer used for cattle bedding. 

Sure its a pain to wade through it but then its not quite as bad as the brambles which are currently having a lovely time of gradually blocking off large parts of the countryside.  Many of our footpaths which currently have had little, if any use, since Covid-19 came along  are now blocked by brambles.

Thats the trouble with nature.  When it annoys us we don't like it. 

An interesting post. As you suggest nature is never static, except perhaps where ecosystems have reached their climatic climax and there is no significant human intervention, eg rain forests when only a few primitive tribes occupied the area. In the modern world nature is always responding to man's deliberate or accidental interventions and we often don't like the results. Many people, of course, don't realise that areas like the Lakes and other NPs are an almost completely man-made landscape, and they like it like it is, or perhaps as in the OP's case as it was in their youth. Whereas many ecologists would love to see forests return wherever conditions would allow them to grow, most of the people who flock to the Lakes wouldn't want to see the hillsides returning to scrublands and the footpaths lined with brambles and thorn bushes, or whatever else nature would decide was appropriate. Re-wilding is quite a thing these days, but the trouble is the results are by definition not under human control.

I seem to remember reading that most of Britain had tree cover up to about 3000 feet (presumably since last ice age). As you say if this returned most people wouldn't appreciate losing open moorlands etc , including climbers who'd have to put up with damp, overshadowed crags. Incidentally I also remember it being pointed out that bracken was often a successful plant throughout the world, including north and south America.

The most frequently cited remaining 'natural' tree line in the UK is at Creag Fhiaclach in the Cairngorms at about 650m, so more like 2000 than 3000ft. Likely to be lower further north & near the coast. But there would have been large areas of bog which would have stayed more or less treeless.

There's an increasingly health population of planted Scots Pines outside the ski centre at Glencoe and also around the footpath area in the 'gorms as you leave the ski centre main car park to go over  the Faicail ridge.  The number and hight  of these Scots pines have increased over the last 30 or 40 years.  More would probably grow if there were more 'donor' trees nearbye.  No map at hand to find the hight though.  But I'm guessing over 2000'

Tree cover re open moorland is subjective isn't it?  One half of me loves our open moorland, the other half thinks it would be wonderful if we had native forests instead.  But you can't have it all ways can you.

In our national park (NYMNP) most of the main roads were fenced off around 1981 to prevent sheep road kill.  The amount of trees now growing in the fenced off road sides will, without human intervention, will mean we could end up driving through a corridor of trees without seeing the open moorland beyond (the fences are 20 - 50 meters away from the road).

The scattered pine at the level of the Cairngorm ski centre and above on the way into the Northern Coires is all natural regeneration, not planted. 

I think a light scattering of trees on the moors would be very nice, at a savannah-like density. Probably the worst of both worlds though, not properly natural and not helpful for farmers etc. 

Well aware of the pine regeneration in the Northen Corries, some of my former colleagues published this several years ago -

Recent development of high-altitude Pinus sylvestris scrub in the Northern Cairngorm mountains, Scotland

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320796001048 (may be behind a paywall)

Still closer to 2000 than 3000 ft.  The highest pine tree I've seen in Scotland was at about 1000m on Sgor Gaoith above Glenfeshie - although I wrote 'tree' it was about 30 cm high in the lee of a large boulder, looked quite old & I guess it would never grow much higher.  Its common in the Alps to find isolated stunted trees much higher than the general treeline and I'm sure the same would be true in Scotland if the treeline was ever to re-establish itself.

How long ago is 'a while back'? I remember going to shit in the woods about 1973 and being told not to wipe my arse with ferns coz they give you cancer. 

Late 80's, I think.  Presumably your arse survived unscathed from any fern-related wiping incidents, which has to be a good thing.

T.

An argument based on a false premise is not an argument, it's a rant.

Bracken is native. 

Thanks. My possibly inaccurate memory of a potential 3,000 ft treeline is based on a short undergraduate dissertation I had to do in early 1970s, on regeneration of mountain woodland. 3000 ft may then have been a figure for the original British treeline. Looking on the internet modern references do give a level well below this. I think the conclusion of the dissertation was that natural regeneration was unlikely, partly due to soil erosion where trees had once existed, as well as several other factors.  Ideas have obviously changed. Incidentally it was interesting to see that the treeline is often higher outside the UK, including Norway (though much lower there near the coast, maritime influence also being given as the reason for the low level in Britain).

I think part of the problem is referring to the 'British treeline'.  That figure is going to be much lower the further north you go. There isn't one simple figure.

T.