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Species which are particularly characteristic of ancient woodland sites are called ancient woodland indicator species, such as bluebells, ramsons, wood anemone, yellow archangel and primrose for example, representing a type of ecological indicator. [8] Anemonoides nemorosa, the wood anemone
Very rare species are not considered axiophytes; for a species to be a useful indicator of quality habitat it must be relatively frequent in those habitats, but scarce elsewhere. A typical example would be dog's mercury (Mercurialis perennis), a plant slow to colonise new sites, but common in ancient woodland and old hedgerows.
In Britain Tilia cordata, traditionally called pry, is considered an indicator of ancient woodland, and is becoming increasingly rare. [9] Owing to its rarity, a number of woods have been given SSSI status. Cocklode Wood, part of the Bardney Limewoods in Lincolnshire, is the best surviving spread of medieval small leaved limes in England. [10]
A bluebell wood is a woodland that in springtime has a carpet of flowering bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) underneath a newly forming leaf canopy. The thicker the summer canopy, the more the competitive ground-cover is suppressed, encouraging a dense carpet of bluebells, whose leaves mature and die down by early summer.
There is also an extraordinary range of geophytes, the plants that have bulbs or bulbous growths that make them especially adapted to woodland. These include the ancient woodland indicators of lily-of-the-valley, herb paris and ramsons, but also the uncommon in angular Solomon'-seal (Polygonatum odoratum) as well as the common in bluebells ...
Aller and Beer Woods are outstanding examples of ancient, escarpment woodland managed in a traditional coppice-with-standards system. The woodland is a variant of the calcareous ash /Wych elm stand-type, with pedunculate oak ( Quercus robur ), and ash ( Fraxinus excelsior ) the dominant canopy trees throughout, and with scattered concentrations ...
Examples of plant formation include forests, woodlands, and grasslands. Because it may not be possible to determine whether a particular plant was an oak, eucalyptus, or other species, plant formations in paleosols make it possible to identify an ancient woodland ecosystem from an ancient grassland ecosystem. [2]
Some epiphytic lichen species may be used as "ancient woodland indicators"; they can used to quantitatively assess the degree to which a forest has had a long history of canopy continuity. [11] The presence of these species is a reliable indicator that the forest has existed back to early medieval times, without being clear-cut and regrown