#21 White Willow by Ian Rotherham
Meet Ian Rotherham emeritus professor at Sheffield Hallam University!
Ian Rotherham is Emeritus Professor at the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University. Former Principal City Ecologist for Sheffield City Council, he is a landscape historian, ecologist, and specialist in wildlife tourism development. He works on projects with local groups and with regional and national conservation organizations. Collaborating widely with popular media he also writes books, papers, popular articles, and social media features. He chaired the British Ecological Society’s Peatlands Special Interest Group and is a passionate advocate for restoration of peatlands, bogs, and fens. Ian is also an authority on ancient woodlands and on veteran trees. You can find Ian on Twitter at @IanThewildside.
Ancient pollard Willow at Fishlake (c) Ian Rotherham
Ian’s chosen species is the White Willow Salix alba, an icon of Yorkshire’s lowland fens. Recent research has indicated the unique importance of ancient willows, largely unrecognised and unnoticed in the former fenlands of South Yorkshire and probably across the Vale of York and in Holderness too. Willows are often ignored and overlooked, deemed species of little ecological note, or ‘controlled’ in efforts to regenerate woodland – all the more reason to feature this iconic and important species.
The White Willow is a typical willow and the largest of its kind – growing up to 25m. Its leaves are slender and oval, with silky white hairs on their undersides, whilst its bark is grey-brown. A dioecious plant, the male and female flowers of White Willow grow on separate trees. Its catkins can be observed in early spring. Whilst these features can be used to identify it, this isn’t always straightforward. The willows are a complex group, with inter-species hybrids and numerous cultivars too. For White Willow (S. alba) and Crack Willow (S. fragilis) there are issues too because genetic research suggests the latter is in part a hybrid with the former and an exotic willow species, and the two now freely hybridise as well. Both species have been present in wet landscapes for many centuries, and with the extent of the former wetlands before widespread drainage, it seems likely that White Willow is in fact native.
Both White and Crack Willow, along with other species, were certainly hugely important in the fenland landscape probably before the ‘Great Drainage’ of the 1600s and later, and certainly in recent centuries before the advent of modern ‘improved’ and industrial farming. Managed by pollarding (cutting the main stem or bole at around eight to ten feet to produce a mass of regrown ‘wood’), or else by coppicing (routinely cutting back to about ground level and triggering a regrowth of several stems), the willows were important features in the landscape and the management extended their lifespans.
Veteran Crack Willow Staffordshire from Hadfield 1967
Products from the willows were then harvested as wood or withies for smaller building works, floating causeways across wet fens and bogs, fuel, basket-making, and for other manufacturing or construction. Smaller willow species were widely cultivated for producing withies or osiers for basketry and similar products; a practice widely known from Somerset, the Cambridgeshire Fens, and the Trent Valley but actually widespread throughout Yorkshire too. They were made in the Lake District as ‘swills’ and along the Severn Valley as ‘cribs’. Evidence of former withy beds is often in place-names and field-names like ‘holt’, ‘withies’, ‘osier bed’, garth’, ‘carr’, and ‘willow garth’.
Willows are well-known as a natural source of aspirin or salicylic acid, also called salicin. Interestingly, the active ingredient (salicylic acid) was isolated from both willow and meadowsweet in the early nineteenth century and the widely-used drug was being synthesised by 1899 as ‘Aspirin’. In country areas local people used bitter infusions of willow bark to treat chills, rheumatism, and the marsh malaria of ‘ague’. The logic of sympathetic medicine of the time associated the use of willow extracts (as a plant growing in wet areas) with the treatment of diseases emanating from marshy places. Extracts from the bark of willow and other parts of the tree were used as a tonic, and were astringent and antiperiodic meaning it alleviated recurrence of symptoms. It was also used for dyspepsia and what was described as debility of the digestive organs, for chronic diarrhoea, and for dysentery. Extracts were widely used for a variety of other ailments, and the source prescribed was generally a compound of the powdered dry root or of the bark.
“Though often overlooked and underappreciated, these great willows not only have an interesting social history, but are also wonderful for wildlife”
Today, the magnificent veteran trees mark the wetter lowland countryside with their silvery-white leaves flickering on the breeze, and the gnarled, twisted stems making old lanes, greenways, and former carrs especially distinctive. These are indeed the iconic trees of these landscapes. Though often overlooked and underappreciated, these great willows not only have an interesting social history, but are also wonderful for wildlife and provide habitat for birds like Barn Owls, roosting bats like Noctules and Pipistrelles, for fungi and lichens, and for abundant saproxylic insects such as Lesser Stag Beetle. And yet, it seems not only do we have little idea of the numbers and distributions of the great trees themselves, but almost no insight into the associated ecology. Indeed, both these oversights are aspects that we are seeking to address through citizen science projects with key partners such as the Woodland Trust’s ancient tree verifiers and local communities.
White Willow in the farming landscape at Fishlake (c) Ian Rotherham
Monitoring
The local use of willows in the fenland farming landscapes of the lowlands probably ended by the 1950s if not earlier. These eco-cultural trees managed traditionally for centuries then lay derelict; former ‘working trees’ but now ‘retired veterans’, the ancient willows are vulnerable to neglect and to deliberate removal. If abandoned and unmanaged the great pollards grow to become unbalanced and can break or topple. If unmanaged and unwanted, farmers tend to knock them over as a ‘weed’. This means that the iconic veterans and their remarkably distinct landscapes are themselves vulnerable and under threat.
Furthermore, the little known but probably rich biodiversity of associated plants, animals, and fungi is also at risk. The trees must be found, catalogued, and where necessary, managed. Where trees are being deliberately felled then the act itself could be illegal, since almost all these mature trees will likely have both breeding birds and roosting bats. So alongside necessary surveys urgently needed, it is vital that we raise awareness of the wonderful old veterans and their legal protection. Our citizen scientists can then become the eyes and ears to protect and watch over the old trees into the future.
Further information and acknowledgements
NEYEDC would like to thank Ian for his time and expertise in helping to create this blog.
Further resources, including Ian’s own blog:
https://ianswalkonthewildside.wordpress.com/2021/03/26/wonderful-willows/