This week, enjoy some of our many stories about our forests and trees.
Providing trees in a built up city landscape is a noble mission - but sometimes a challenge. In many British cities, the species of choice has been the London plane - an impressive deciduous tree with hand-shaped leaves, and bark that flakes off.
This mystical stunted oak wood in Dartmoor in Devon is a Nature Reserve, important for its fragile mosses and lichens.
The Scots pine is one of only three native conifers in Britain, and our only native pine. Found all over the UK, this long-lived and majestic tree is important to wildlife. It has earnt its name for being particularly abundant in the Caledonian pine forest in the Scottish Highlands and the lynch-pin of that habitat.
London's expansion over the last few centuries is legendary. Many station names on London's Underground hint at lost greenery, especially in the northern section of the Piccadilly Line - Finsbury Park, Wood Green, Bounds Green, Arnos Grove and Oakwood. So was there some great lost forest covering what is now north London?
Ancient trees can be considered as much a part of our heritage as stately homes, cathedrals and works of art. But they arguably don’t get the same protection. It is believed that there are hundreds of very old trees still living, and yet not recorded as significant and properly protected.
Also known as Atlantic or Celtic rainforest, the special temperate rainforest habitat is extremely rare. It exists in a number of specific locations on the west coast of Britain, and is regarded as more threatened than tropical rainforests. The lush conditions it provides are perfect for scarce plants, lichens and fungi, as well as a number of unusual animals.
