holyrood

Holyrood Park in Edinburgh used to have more trees, but they were cut down for fuel and other uses. The park is now mainly grassland and is important for recreation and urban wildlife. Planting trees is important for addressing climate change, but it wouldn't be suitable for Holyrood Park as it would disrupt the grassland ecosystem. However, there are some special trees in the park, such as the rock whitebeam and a genetic variant of the common ash. There is also a hidden area called Bosinch, managed by the Scottish Wildlife Trust, where all native British tree species can be found. Visitors can enjoy a stroll around Holyrood Park and Duddington Loch and also visit the new Parliament building nearby. Hi, welcome to Walking Woods. I'm Marlene Kramer and I'm taking you for a walk, not in the woods, but in Edinburgh. You should now have a good view over Holyrood Park. I'm sure you can see Arthur's Seat, the park's highest point. You'll also see the Salisbury Cracks, the impressive series of cliffs that are up to 46 metres high. Something that you might not immediately see are trees. This is why, even though you might be most interested in trees in the Scottish landscape, I am not here with a tree expert, but with a park ranger, Matt McCabe. My name's Matt. As you know, I'm a conservation ranger here in Holyrood Park and, kind of like most rangers, I'm kind of like a jack-of-all-trades. I know a bit about flowers, a bit about bumblebees and so on. I should be an expert in any one patch of trees. Obviously, I know a fair bit about trees, but Holyrood Park, it's not really famous for its trees. There are some special trees in the park, but it's much more important as a grassland. How come we see so few trees in Holyrood Park? I mean, it was covered in trees varying degrees until people started chopping them down. And in that, Holyrood Park is very similar to the rest of Scotland and Great Britain. After the latest Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago, virtually all of Britain was covered in trees, but our tree cover started to decline as early as 4,000 before Christ, when people started to clear the land in favour of agricultural uses. By the mid-14th century, England had a woodland cover of 10% and Scotland only 4%. By the early 20th century, woodland cover in England had also reduced to just 5%. The story of Holyrood Park is similar. I mean, there's some evidence that trees sort of came and went, but certainly since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, kind of like everywhere in Scotland, trees were cut down to initially fuel industry and then the British Empire, of course. And trees that were only used as fuel were, sadly, often not valuable enough to replant. And since most of the other timber industries had disappeared in favour of cheap imports, by the 20th century, people were not really planting trees. This has, of course, since changed. The Forestry Commission was founded in 1919, and this institution supported the planting of trees, and so the homegrown timber industry. We have come a long way since then, and the way in which we treat forests has changed a few times in the last century. Nowadays, Scotland boasts a 19% forest cover and is going on 14% in the UK. One of the things we are thinking about more and more is how forests can support different functions and be valuable for timber production and society and biodiversity at the same time. Of course, Holyrood Park, as one of the most well-known parks in Edinburgh, is mostly useful as a recreation space and urban wildlife habitat. And so, the non-existent forest in the park does exactly what we want it to do. People are aware that trees are good for throwing down carbon from the atmosphere, so yeah, planting trees is absolutely vital for addressing climate change. But, people ask, why don't we plant them in Holyrood Park, and it's simply because it is a grassland. We could plant 10,000 trees in Holyrood Park, but we won't have a woodland then, we'll just have a grassland with trees in it, because woodland is everything from the soil chemistry and the fungus that supports to the ground flora to the insects. It's not just about trees. So, you know, we could plant trees here, but all we'd end up with is a very, very denuded grassland and degraded grassland, and a lot of the species which are particularly rare in Holyrood Park are grassland specialists. So we'd lose all those species without really getting much benefit from the trees. So yeah, trees should be planted, definitely, but not in Holyrood Park. With no trees in the way, you also get spectacular views from the top of Arthur Estate, so do go on a hill walk if you have the chance. Plus, you might have the chance to spot a few special trees on the way. There are some special trees. There's rock whitebeam, which is nationally scarce. It's Aria repiccola, which is very similar to the common Swedish whitebeam you'll see all around Edinburgh, but it's specialised for rock faces. It's actually quite interesting because it does produce berries, kind of like rowan and whatnot, and it can take pollen from other species. So for example, things like rowan, if there's a rowan growing nearby, pollen is carried from rowan to the rock whitebeam. That will stimulate growth of the berries and the seeds, but it won't actually take any genetic material from the other sorbus species. So it can actually produce clones of itself, so it's quite interesting in that way. We've got about 22 individual rock whitebeam here, so part of the job is to protect them. If you want to see these trees for yourself, you can spot them along the path to the summit. So if you're coming in from the Commonwealth pool, you follow the path that splits in two. So if you follow the left-hand path, you'll pass four rock whitebeam. There's one other quite special tree, which unfortunately nobody will be able to see because it's right on the radical road, but it's a genetic variant of a common ash. It's a unifoliate ash, so normally the leaves are pinnately divided, so it's kind of like a feather with a central vein and the leaflets coming off it. But this one is not divided at all, each leaf appears as just one large leaf. So unless you do genetic studies, you probably wouldn't recognise it as ash. There's not many of them in the country, but there is one in Holyrood Park. But it's unfortunately you won't be able to walk anywhere near it because the path is closed for rockfall safety concerns, but it exists, you know, it's there. There's another very special area that is also hidden from view. I'm just thinking about Bosinch, it's technically is part of Holyrood Park. Again, people wouldn't be able to access it, it's managed by Scottish Wildlife Trust and you need to be a member. The most recent use was as a kind of sort of scrapyard in the 1970s. The council were going to build on it, but Scottish Wildlife Trust raised enough money to buy it and protect it as a reserve. And they planted trees there since the 1970s and there's at least one example in there of every tree which is native to the British Isles. So it's a really good place for doing tree identification courses. Well, why don't you do your own tree spotting on a nice stroll around Holyrood Park and Duddington Loch. But before you go, don't miss out on the last stop of the tour. The map takes you just around the corner to the new Parliament building.