County Wildife Site Criteria for Cornwall Appendices

TRADITIONAL ORCHARDS PHTGeneral DescriptionTraditional orchards are related to wood-pasture and parkland, but are characteristically different. Ingeneral, the trees are of the family Rosaceae and the scale is smaller. This is reflected both in the sizeof the trees and the size of the plots.To be classed as a priority habitat traditional orchards need to be managed in a low intensity way.This is shown by the fact that there is permanent grassland between the trees. It is known thatorchards with visible herbicide strips are probably using pesticides. A further distinction is thattraditional orchards are often planted at half the density of intensive orchards, though there may besome overlap.National ContextTraditional orchards are found throughout the UK, but the majority are in England. The total area oftraditional orchards in England is thought to be about 28 000 ha. There are concentrations in sixcounties, including Somerset in the South West. Somerset is one of the counties with large scalecommercial planting, but there is thought to be little commercial planting in Cornwall where the totalarea of orchards would appear to be only about 70 ha.Area of PHT in Cornwall (ha): 700.3% National TotalNumber of polygons: not knownThe habitat is: Very rareDistribution by Administrative DistrictDistrict P K CK R CN NC ΣArea (ha) 2 0 17 4 31 17 71Distribution by Natural AreaDistrict Pe Lz CKG BM Cu ΣArea (ha)For this habitat we will take all areasAppendix 4 - Information Relating to Priority Habitat TypesCounty Wildlife Sites Criteria