Woodland classification

Abstract

Any attempt to describe British woodland types is bedevilled by the absence of a stable, well-known and widely accepted classification, for unlike their continental colleagues who have put much effort into descriptive ecology, British ecologists have concentrated on the study of processes and the methodology of classification. For decades, the only available general ecological classification of British woodlands has been the classification contained in the woodland chapters of The British Islands and their Vegetation (Tansley, 1939) which developed out of the earliest activities of British ecologists (Moss et al., 1910; Tansley, 1911; Moss, 1913) (Table 7.1), the detailed studies of oak-hornbeam woods by Salisbury (1916, 1918) and the studies of beechwoods and associated types on the southern chalk (Adamson, 1921; Watt, 1923; 1924; 1925; 1926; 1934). It is now about 70 years old in its essential features.