There was a strong prejudice against pollards, which were supposed to be
"the maimed relics of neglect". Their antiquity and distinction were
disregarded; their beauty was not appreciated (the poems of John Clare had
been forgotten, and the pictures of Arthur Rackham were yet to come). The
Conservators would neither cut the pollards nor allow the commoners to do so.
When tracts of pollards got into a dark and overgrown state (as can now be seen
in Gernon Bushes outside Wintry Forest) they were thinned as if they had been
timber trees. Many thousands of pollards have been destroyed over the years in
order to give room to saplings and maiden (i.e. unpollarded) trees, and no new
pollards have been formed.
The importance of plains has been widely overlooked; although they have
not been actively destroyed, it is only recently that attempts have been made to
prevent them from being overgrown by trees.
Other changes have occurred since 1878 which were outside the Con-
servators' control. Grazing has declined because of the loss of farms and in-
creasing danger from road traffic. Even the deer, which increased up to 1900,
have now largely moved away. Numbers of visitors have increased, though there
are still many areas where this is not a large ecological effect. As in much of
England, there has been a rapid and mysterious increase of birch; though
recorded at intervals back to 1498 (67), this tree was uncommon until about
1880 when it suddenly began to expand; it is now an even more effective pioneer
tree than oak and rapidly colonizes all kinds of plains and clearings.
The increasing shade in the wooded areas and the disappearance of the
plains are dealt with in detail by C. E. Ranson (see page 58). The heavy and
permanent shade of tall unpollarded beech and hornbeam have destroyed other
trees, especially oak — as witness the many dead oak pollards. Only the shade-
resistant holly can survive.
Ground vegetation, no longer rejuvenated by the increased light after
pollarding, and buried in fallen leaves, has disappeared over wide areas. The
supposed depredations of visitors provide a convenient if doubtfully convincing
excuse for the decline of primroses and butcher's-broom and of the polypody
which used to grow in the crowns of pollards, but they cannot be blamed for the
loss of crabtrees. Lack of pollarding results in a few big trees with no vegetation
beneath. Eventually it shortens the lives of the great beeches themselves; they
blow down in every storm; the inevitable birch takes over the site, but too late to
save the ground vegetation.
The plains become invaded by either birch or oak and turn into woodland.
The most striking change is the loss of heather, which covered hundreds of acres
in the middle ages, was widespread even in Buxton's day, and was specifically
protected by the Act. Heather was destroyed mainly by shade, but where the
plains survive or have been restored it has been largely replaced by grass; the
periodic grazing, cutting, or burning necessary to rejuvenate it have been
allowed to lapse.
The Forest has changed more in the last 100 years than in the preceding
700. It used to be claimed that it was returning to a "natural aspect" that had
been upset by past land-uses, but this view is unfounded. The effects of a wood-
54