John asked what the best plan would be, to renovate these trees. This is definitely the first thing to do: clear away everything other than Hazel, including ivy, brambles, and anything else growing around the base. Here's a picture of one of them, half-way though the holly clearance: So, this question: John said that he has been asked to renovate a couple of very old coppiced Hazels, which were choked with holly at the base, and are very congested. You are probably also familiar with pollarded street trees: this is just coppicing at a higher point above the ground. In fact, the very name "copse" means an area of coppiced woodland. You can see them everywhere: next time you are out for a walk, or visiting a stately home, look at any areas of woodland that you pass, and check out the trunks: are they all one-trunk-per-tree? Or do some of the trees appear to have multiple stems, all sprouting from the ground? These are the remains of old coppicing. We don't make our own walking sticks, or fences, or hurdles: we don't make our own charcoal, either! So most of the coppiced woodlands have been left to return to the wild, over the last 50 years or more. This is usually seen on trees such as Hazel, Willow and Sweet Chestnut, but is also used for Oak, Lime, Alder: depending on what the trees were to be used for.Īlas, these days we don't need much coppiced wood: we don't burn faggots (bundles) of thin wood, we buy in seasoned and chopped hardwood. When they are big enough, they are all cut off at the same time, and the cycle repeats. These new shoots will all be pretty much the same size as each other: so instead of one big central trunk with a lot of smaller, wiggly side branches, you get a whole bunch of same-sized shoots, and because they are crowded together, they fight for the light, which means they grow up vertically, nice and straight. It involves repeatedly chopping a young tree down to - usually - ankle height, which prompts it to send up new shoots from the chopped base. Now, before we get on to what to do with it, a quick reminder about coppicing: time out of mind, it was a way of managing woodlands, in order to produce useable materials for fencing, furniture, firewood and fodder - all sorts of things. Instead, the experts think that useful stems were cut selectively from each tree.Last week, I received a question: what to do with an enormously overgrown old Hazel coppice. In western woods, where stems are often coated in rare lichens, it seems that coppicing was never systematic – which would have removed lots of interest. These have been used traditionally for all sorts of things including barrel hoops and stock hurdles. Uses: If the young shoots escape deer browsing, they can form useful long straight stems.Native to: Europe (but not the Shetlands) and Asia Minor.Bark: Smooth, shiny brown with conspicuous yellow lenticels and scaly patches.Fruit: In October ripe nuts are enclosed in leafy bracts.Flower: In late winter, male flowers form ‘lambs-tails’ catkins.Usually a Hazel more closely resembles a shrub. Height: The hazel is rarely left to develop as a tree, but it can reach seven metres if left uncut.Use a magnifying glass to explore the rare species calling hazel home. Older stems then support frilly purple liverworts and large brown, green and grey lichens – some of which smell of rotten fish, others smell like TCP ointment. They soon colonise with silver lichens – even within the bark and then acquire dots and squiggles that look like markings on a map. If you live in the west of Scotland, or visit this area, you’ll notice that only the very youngest hazel stems are ‘nut brown’. These rare plants need a succession of different sized stems in close proximity so that some species can colonise the smooth bark of young stems and later, a whole suite of other species can grow on rougher texture of older, larger stems. In the west of Scotland and sheltered gullies further east, hazel is home to some of the rarest species of lichen, liverwort and moss. Look closely and you may see the tiny red female flowers that look like sea anemones and turn into nuts, oh hazel nuts! You might come across twisted, spiral stems. These catkins are the male flowers, full of windblown pollen. It is well known for its long catkins heralding the first sings of spring. The botanical name for this native broadleaved tree is Corylus avellana.
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