The Petrified Forest

Right next to the beautiful chalk downland meadow that I described yesterday is a yew forest, which remains one of the freakiest places I have ever been to. Seen from the other side of the valley, it looks much as a wood should do, but get inside and the place and it's a monochrome scene of bare ground and leafless branches. 

To me, it always brought to mind the seventh circle of hell in Dante's Inferno, written in the 1300s about a (hopefully fictional) walking tour through hell. One of the circle is called the 'wood of suicides', where the souls of those who commit suicide are transformed into a wood full of brittle, dead trees. 

Or possibly, the petrified forest on Skaro, the home planet of the Daleks, as explored by William Hartnell and friends in the first series of Dr Who.

What it really is, is a forest of yew trees, possibly dating back to the bronze age and definitely from at least the middle ages. Yew trees are evergreen, meaning that they never shed their leaves and evergreen woodland tends to be less biodiverse than broadleaf for just this reason. In broadleaf woodland, the trees shed their leaves in the autumn and regrow them in the spring, giving several months in which light will penetrate to the forest floor. This is why these woods have thick matts of bluebells and other flowers in March and April.

Evergreens do not do this and, while conifers are tall and thin, yews spread out  up and sideways and, in an established yew forest such as this, barely any light penetrates.

Without light, photosynthesis cannot happen and, without photosynthesis, barely anything else happens, so there is no matt of vegetation on the forest floor, just a thin layer of leaf litter and, below that, bare earth. This makes the topsoil very vulnerable to erosion, with only really the roots of the trees holding it in place.

Chalk soil is already free draining, and therefore not the most fertile (as described yesterday). So, altogether, the place is hardly the most fecund environment for new growth. 

That said, the place is not entirely dead of life. Where there is a break in the canopy, there will be a little oasis of green, while the outer edges are dotted with ash saplings and inch or so high. We saw a couple of badger setts and some deer, both of which probably appreciate the cover and the relative peace that the woods gives them, while the canopy was full of the twittering of birds and the floor covered in snail shells.

It just goes to show that nature will find a way and, just because you don't see anything, it doesn't mean that there is nothing there.

Some more info on these woods and other yew forests around the country: http://www.ancient-yew.org/mi.php/yews-at-sites-of-antiquity/104

The Seventh Circle Of Hell in Dante's Inferno: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wood_of_the_Self-Murderers:_The_Harpies_and_the_Suicides

A Yew Forest that you're allowed to visit (and don't have to clamber over a barbed wire fence to get into) plus some more florid prose on yew trees:http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2000/oct/07/unitedkingdom

Dr Who episode  'The Dead Planet', first series December 1963:
https://vimeo.com/108169426

...and show notes:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/daleks/detail.shtml