Wistman's Wood

Wistman's Wood, with its moss and lichens, on May of 2007.

Wistman's Wood is a national nature reserve in Devon, England. It is a remote, high-altitude, native upland oak woodland in the heart of the ancient West Dart Valley on Dartmoor, and it is one of Britain's last remaining old-growth, temperate rainforests. The woodland is most likely a remnant of the ancient forest that covered much of the area c. 7000 BCE. Growing in the mild, damp conditions of Britain's Atlantic cost, the woods are full of special lichens and mosses. The oldest oaks are thought to be 400 to 500 years old and have originated within the degenerating oakwoods that survived in scrub form during centuries of cold climate.

As a national nature reserve, Wistman's has no active management. Many people visit the site on foot. Wistman's is one of three remote high-altitude oakwoods on Dartmoor in Devon, England. The other are Black Tor Copse on the West Okement River in the north, and Piles Copse on the River Erme in the south.

Wistman's Wood is split into three main blocks (North, Middle, and South Groves or Woods), which in total cover about 3.5 ha (~8.3 acres). These occupy the sheltered, south-west facing slope of the valley, where a bank of large granite boulders ("clatter") is exposed, and pockets of acidic, free-draining, brown earth soils have accumulated. Additional copses of scrub extend beyond the main body of the wood, suggesting that it originally extended over the entirety of the clatter deposits on the hillside. In the present day, the clatter outside of the main wood is covered in bracken, bilberry, and occasional gorse.

The first written document to mention Wistman's Wood date to the 1600s, while more recent tree-ring studies show that individual trees could be many hundreds of years old.

Wistman's Wood is owned by the Duchy of Cornwall and has been managed since 1961 under a nature reserve agreement with the Nature Conservancy Council, English Nature and Natural England. The wood has no active management, but many people visit the site on foot (mostly accessing the southern end of South Wood), and cattle and sheep have free access where the terrain permits, outside of a small fenced exclosure in South Wood.

Toponymy

The name derives from the Devonshire dialect word wisht, meaning ‘eerie, uncanny’ or, in some readings, ‘pixie-haunted’.

Geography

The southern part of Wistman's Wood, with Littaford Tor behind

The wood lies at an altitude of 380–410 metres (1247-1345') in the valley of the West Dart River near Two Bridges, Devon, at grid reference SX612772.

The source of the[Devonport Leat (an aqueduct), at a weir (low dam) on the West Dart River, is just north of the wood.

Preservation status

The wood is one of the highest oakwoods in Britain, one of Britain's last remaining temperate rainforests, and, as an outstanding example of native upland oak woodland, was selected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1964. It is also an NCR site and forms part of the Wistman's Wood National Nature Reserve. The wood was also one of the primary reasons for selection of the Dartmoor Special Area of Conservation.

In 2023, William, Prince of Wales as Duke of Cornwall announced a scheme in collaboration with Natural England to preserve, regenerate and double the size of the rainforest by 2040. Work began in October 2023. Acorns will be collected from the ancient trees to plant new saplings and both animal grazing and human foot traffic will be reduced in order to regenerate it sensitively.

Flora

The trees within the wood are mainly pedunculate oak, with occasional rowan, and a very few holly, hawthorn, hazel, and eared-willow. The oaks are distinguished by their dwarf habit, and rarely reach more than 4.5m (14.8') in overall vertical height. The trees also developed highly contorted forms with procumbent trunks, and their main branches tend to lie on or between the rocks on the forest floor. A few trees reach from 6 to 7.6m in height and tend to have more vertical trunks and spread crowns.

Tree branches are characteristically festooned with a variety of epiphytic mosses and lichens and, sometimes, by grazing-sensitive species such as bilberry and polypody. The horizontal habit of the trunks and limbs allows organic debris and humus to accumulate on them, favoring extensive growth of epiphytic vascular plants. These occur in much greater variety than in other British woodlands; in addition to polypody, which is the most common recorded epiphyte, and bilberry, these include many of the same species found on the forest floor.

On the ground, boulders are usually covered by lichens and mossy patches – frequent species include Dicranum scoparium, Hypotrachyna laevigata, Rhytidiadelphus loreus and Sphaerophorus globosus – and, where soil has accumulated, patches of acid grassland grow with heath bedstraw, tormentil and sorrel. In places protected from livestock, grazing-sensitive plants such as wood sorrel, bilberry, wood rush and bramble occur. A fringe of bracken surrounds much of the wood, demarcating the extent of brown earth soils. The wood supports approximately 120 species of lichen.

Fauna

The wood is home to a large population of adders.

History

Wistman's Wood has been mentioned in writing for hundreds of years. It is likely to be a left-over from the ancient forest that covered much of Dartmoor c. 7000 BCE, before Mesolithic hunter/gatherers cleared it around 5000 BCE. Photographic and other records show that Wistman's Wood has changed considerably since the mid-19th century; at the same time climatic conditions have also generally become warmer. Over this period, the older oak trees have grown from a stunted/semi-prostrate to a more ascending form, while a new generation of mostly straight-grown and single-stemmed oaks has developed. The oldest oaks appear to be 400–500 years old, and originated within a degenerating oakwood that survived in scrub form during two centuries of cold climate. In c. 1620, these old trees were described as "no taller than a man may touch to top with his head". Tree height increased somewhat by the mid-19th century, and during the 20th century approximately doubled (in 1997 the maximum and average height of trees was around 12 m (~39') and 7 m (~23') respectively). In addition, a wave of marginal new oaks arose after c. 1900, roughly doubling the area of wood. Part of the evidence for these changes comes from a permanent vegetation plot located in the southern end of South Wood. This is the oldest known of its kind in British woodland, with a small part having been recorded by R. Hansford Worth in 1921.

The Buller Stone, a boulder to the east of the wood, commemorates an attempt in 1866 to date the trees, when Wentworth Buller (with permission from the Duchy) felled an oak, which was estimated to be close to 168 years old.

Myths, art and literature

The wood has been the inspiration for numerous artists, poets, and photographers. It appears in hundreds of 19th-century accounts. One tradition holds that it was planted by Isabella de Fortibus (1237–93).

Wistman's Wood and the folk tale of the 'Wild Hunt' served as the inspiration for the setting of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles following Doyle's own visit to the wood.

The wood is described in detail and discussed as a point of great interest in The Tree (1978), an essay on naturalism by English novelist John Fowles.

The name of Wistman's Wood may derive from the dialect word "wisht", meaning "eerie/uncanny" or "pixie-led/haunted". The legendary Wild Hunt in Devon, whose hellhounds are known as Yeth (Heath) or Wisht Hounds in the Devonshire dialect, is particularly associated with Wistman's Wood.

Attribution

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