how Britain lost most of its rainforests (and why we need them back).
Not all rainforests are found in the tropics. Britain has its own, and they’re mild, wet and teeming with life. Dan Ryan talks to Guy Shrubsole, the author of The Lost Rainforests of Britain, about his fascination with these overlooked treasures.
I first met Guy Shrubsole in a tiny hazel wood in Bodmin where we were looking for an incredibly rare and weird fungus. That tiny scrap of woodland, clinging on to life in the middle of a housing estate, is symbolic of a wider loss and fragmentation of Britain’s rainforests – something which is explored in Guy’s latest book, The Lost Rainforests of Britain. I recently caught up with him to find out more about these overlooked wonders.
What drew you to British rainforests? And why are they so special? I didn't really believe we had rainforests in Britain until I moved to Devon and started exploring the ancient Atlantic oakwoods that clothe the edges of Dartmoor. But it's absolutely true, we have rainforests right here in Britain – they're temperate rainforests, rather than tropical ones, but they too depend on high rainfall levels to thrive. And our temperate rainforests are in fact even rarer than tropical rainforests, comprising around 1 or 2 per cent of global forest cover, versus 12% for tropical rainforests.
Britain's rainforests are just magical
places to be in – they glow green all year round, even in winter; their gnarled trees are so festooned in ferns, lichens and mosses. That's what makes them so special – their covering of epiphytes, plants that grow on other plants. In a 'dry' woodland, we're used to seeing large trees ('standards'), an understorey layer of shrubs and bushes like hazel, and ground flora like wood sorrel or dog's mercury. But in a temperate rainforest there's an additional layer, the layer of epiphytic plants growing on the branches and trunks of the trees themselves.
Rainforest nation:
Illustrations by Charlotte Perry
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