The Breckland Pine Rows - Norfolk's Biodiversity

Figure 2. Pine row expanded into belt, Eriswell.
trees, will either have been removed during ‘beating up’ and thinning operations,
due to their misshapen form; or, if they survived, felled with their neighbours at
the end of the first rotation, in the last decades of the twentieth century.
• Although we have so far described the pine rows as a discrete and easily defined
landscape feature, in reality there are a number of variant and intermediate forms,
hard to classify. For example, in a number of cases closely parallel staggered rows
of pines have been noted, difficult to categorise as either pine rows or as narrow
belts. In addition, line of pines sometimes occur within a matrix of other shrubs or
trees. Good examples line both sides of the road called Spalding’s Chair Hill to
the south of Rushford in Suffolk: here close set-pines occur, but with no evidence
that they have ever been managed as hedges, and separated by outgrown hedges
featuring privet, hawthorn and blackthorn.
In spite of inconsistent recording of such anomalous features, and the possible omission
of genuine pine rows from the more inaccessible areas (especially within the larger
forestry blocks), we are reasonably confident that at least 85% of examples have been
mapped, and certain that no significant concentrations will have been missed. This makes