Woodland Plants

Woodland is the natural habitat that once occupied the largest part of Scotland's land surface.  It has been replaced by fields in much of the lowlands and driven off most of our mountains by grazing and burning but we still have some fine examples that enable you to imagine what living in Scotland was once like.  Plants make up much of that experience and its not just the trees. 

Bluebell woods

In summer the developing leaf canopy of the trees plunges most woodlands into deep shade starving the plants on the woodland floor of sunlight and food. To deal with this many woodland plants therefore start to grow in the winter, flower in spring and die back in mid-summer. The bluebell is the most spectacular of these species since it can turn whole woodlands blue in May but before that you may notice the gold of the celandine and the white of wood anemones (Flúr na Gaoithe or windflower - all its names Gaelic, English and Latin refer to the trembling of this plant in brisk March winds). Celandine leaves begin to grow in November to be ready for their 15 days of fame in the spring. These plants need an underground food store to sustain their burst of growth early in the year, just as the daffodil uses its bulb. The wonderful bluebell display is restricted to the Atlantic coast of Europe, where winters are relatively mild, and is at its best in Britain.

Pine wood plants

In our pine woods the canopy is stable all year and usually the most obvious plant on the woodland is heather.  There is some evidence that this has only been the case for a few hundred years and that the ground story was previously dominated by blaeberry Vaccinium myrtilus.  Amongst the blaeberry you will find specialist pinewood plants like the creeping lady's tresses Goodyera repens and the twinflower Linnaea borealis. The Latin name is named after the inventor of the Latin naming system for species, the Swedish botanist Linnaeus.  It has delicate pink or white flowers, two to a stalk and a faint but delicious scent of vanilla.