The Breckland Pine Rows - Norfolk's Biodiversity

irds, as well as by hares. The pine rows, perhaps more than other field margins in
Breckland, form important feeding territories for hawfinches and crossbills. There is also
some evidence that the rows are favoured by bats (pipistrelle and barbastelle especially)
and perhaps Barn Owls, while – like farmland hedges of normal form – they may serve in
important role as wildlife ‘corridors’, linking larger areas of woodland and unimproved
grassland
The invertebrates associated with the pines themselves have received less attention. In
Rothera’s words, ‘these trees and their insects are not well studied’ (Rothera 1997).
Nationally, it has been calculated that Scots pines have 91 associated insect species
(compared with 41 for ash, 28 for hawthorn, but 284 for oak) (Southwood 1961). They
have 132 associated lichen species - again, in the UK as a whole (Rose and Harding
1978). At a local level the numbers will be less than this and, as already emphasized,
pines are not themselves rare in Breckland. However, it is now well-established that the
biodiversity of individual trees increases with age, as cavities and areas of rotten wood
proliferate in the body of the tree (Rose 1991; Kirby and Drake 1993); and this may be
especially true of Scots pines which over time develop, not only large areas of dead wood
and rotten material, but also large layered plates separated by deep fissures. This is the
real value of the rows in terms of their pines: the trees they contain are, almost without
exception, nearly 200 years old, and thus more than twice the age of the oldest surviving
Forestry Commission plantings. Dead wood is particularly abundant given the fact that,
as already emphasized, the rows frequently contain the stumps and broken trunks of
failed trees, squeezed out by competitors; and, in the case of the more twisted and
contorted examples, an abundance of fallen and broken branches (Figure 16).
Figure 16. Pine row at Tuddenham, showing large amounts of dead wood.