Trees Outside of Woodland

The trees that grow outside woodland – in hedgerows, parkland, wood pasture, orchards and along roadsides – are one of the Suffolk landscape’s most important ecological components, supporting greater biodiversity per individual than almost any other habitat feature. A single ancient oak in good condition can support over 2,000 invertebrate species, and the associated communities of lichens, fungi, hole-nesting birds and bats that depend on veteran trees represent a lineage of ecological continuity that cannot be replicated by planting.

Suffolk’s parkland and wood pasture heritage is extraordinary. Staverton Park near Woodbridge, with its grove of ancient pollarded oaks and the associated “Thicks”, is one of the oldest and most important wood pasture sites in England, with some of its trees dating back to the medieval period. Helmingham Hall, Ickworth, and several other estate landscapes contain veteran tree assemblages of national significance, whose ecological value is rooted in the centuries-long continuity of open-grown, low-density tree cover that allows the progressive development of deadwood communities, bark-dwelling invertebrates, and the epiphytic lichens and fungi that are among the most sensitive indicators of habitat continuity.

The white-letter hairstreak (Satyrium w-album) is the assemblage’s flagship species, its dependence on elm making it a particular focus for conservation in Suffolk. Unlike most of England, where Dutch elm disease has all but eliminated large elms from the landscape, parts of Suffolk retain significant elm populations – in hedgerows, wood pasture and coastal scrub – giving the county a disproportionate importance for this butterfly’s survival. Traditional orchards, another component of this assemblage, support their own distinctive communities of fruit-tree specialists, including the noble chafer beetle and a suite of lichen species that require the rough, furrowed bark of old fruit trees and the veteran tree conditions that only develop in long-established orchards.