CELEBRATING BRITAIN
Discover some wild and wonderful nature found right here in the British Isles
You don’t need to travel the world to discover temperate rainforests. Around a fifth of Britain was covered by rainforest in ancient times, estimates Guy Shrubsole, author of The Lost Rainforests of Britain, though less than 47,000 acres remain. Of these, a quarter are protected as sites of special scientific interest (SSSI).
FIND OUT MORE
Websites to visit include: lostrainforestsofbritain.org, plantlife.org.uk and woodlandtrust.org.uk. Or read The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole (£10.99, HarperCollins).
What makes a temperate rainforest?
Moisture-laden air from the Atlantic Ocean drifts across the landscape, creating the climate a rainforest needs to flourish, and heavy rainfall sends waterfalls tumbling down boulder-strewn gorges. Many UK oak trees are gnarled by harsh weather conditions blowing in from the coast, unlike their cousins in forests further inland.
VITAL PLANTS
Our temperate rainforests are home to a host of plant life known as epiphytes. These are plants that grow on other plants (in this case trees) without being parasitic. So a temperate rainforest is rich in moisture-loving lichens, mosses, liverworts and ferns. British rainforests offer a habitat to globally important varieties of lichen, such as white script lichen, which looks like writing or hieroglyphs, and is found only in Scotland. Mosses and liverworts are ancient plants that thrive in a temperate rainforest. Known as bryophytes, they grow in lush carpets even on soil-free areas like rocks or on sterile soil, where they slowly release nutrients and create new soil for other plants to grow in. They lock in carbon too. The nutrients provided by bryophytes allow ferns to establish themselves on trunks and branches. They unfurl their tightly curled foliage to reveal ladder-like, leathery leaves, which tumble in beautiful profusion from their host trees.
WHERE TO FIND THEM
Our temperate rainforests are found on Scotland’s west coast, Eryri (Snowdonia) in north-west Wales, Elenydd in mid-Wales, and in England at the Lake District, the Forest of Bowland, the Yorkshire Dales, the Pennines, and in Devon and Cornwall. See the map at lostrainforestsofbritain.org for their location.
One of the most frequently visited is Wistman’s Wood on Dartmoor, but visits are now discouraged, as its popul
