Montane Scrub

Natural Heritage Management

• Foreword
• Introduction
• What is montane scrub
• The loss of the ‘wee trees’
• Plants of the scrub
• Wildlife in the scrub
• Restoring the landscape
• The woods and the trees
• Shelter on the hill
• Game benefits
• Enjoying the hills
• Ecological values
• Action for scrub
• Bringing back the ‘wee trees’
• Further reading

The wood and the trees

Without shelter, trees planted at or near the timberline are highly susceptible to wind damage. Even if gales do not blow them over, their growth will be severely retarded by exposure. Because of this, many forest plantations stop below the theoretical limit for tree growth.

However, montane scrub that is planted or encouraged above a plantation can provide valuable shelter. It streamlines the upper margins of the forest so that winds sweep over the trees. This helps to protect the trees from 'windthrow' and encourages better growth by reducing exposure. In turn, this may allow productive forestry to be extended right up to the commercial timberline, at relatively little cost in extra land and fencing.

The wood from the stunted trees and low-growing shrubs of the montane zone will be of no value to traditional timber industries. However, high-value craft industries might be able to use the gnarled shape and contorted grain of some 'krummholz' wood to good artistic effect.

Other products from the scrub may also be of value in craft industries - for example dyes from lichens - while some scrub material could also be used for thatching. However any extraction would need to be restrained because of the slow growth of scrub.

Montane scrub, therefore, offers a new opportunity for the forest industry, providing a legitimate use for land that is unsuitable otherwise for commercial tree crops. However, its establishment or restoration is only ever likely to be commercially feasible if it is incorporated into the management of existing forests or into new native woodland or forestry schemes, where little additional fencing would be required. Even so, such schemes are unlikely to be fully viable without grant aid.

This has been recognised by the Forestry Commission. Its 1998 Guidance Note, Treeline Woodlands and the Woodland Grant Scheme, affirms that the Commission will make funding available in certain circumstances, through the Woodland Grant Scheme, to support the expansion of woodland and scrub above the commercial timberline. The incorporation of montane scrub into Woodland Grant Schemes and Forest Design Plans represents an exciting and cost-effective way to conserve and expand this 'Cinderella' habitat.