The Swidden That Would Not Turn Purple

Here, on Great Ayton Moor, a swidden burnt a few seasons back to bring on fresh heather for the grouse. But judging by the tussocks, deer-grass had other plans.

The plan was for heather — tender purple shoots laid on like a buffet for red grouse. What grew back was this: a spiky green swathe of deer-grass, tussock after tussock, heather reduced to the odd shy patch squeezed in between. Muirburn does not always play fair.

Deer-grass has form for this sort of thing. It began life in 1753 as Scirpus cespitosus, filed away by Linnaeus himself, before the Swedish botanist Carl Johan Hartman moved it into its own genus in 1849 — Trichophorum Cespitosum¹“Trichophorum Cespitosum.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichophorum_cespitosum.. Tidy taxonomy, untidy plant.

Despite the name, deer do not exactly queue up for it. Its russet, straw-coloured spikes in autumn are the real reason people started calling it deer-grass, not any great appetite among the herds²Hostile Habitat: Scotland’s Mountain Environment. Page 123. Scottish Mountaineering Trust. 2006.. What it lacks in charm, it makes up for in stamina. Burn a moor, graze it hard, and deer-grass simply moves in on poorer ground and stays put, long after the sheep or the fire that let it in have moved on³“Moorland/Hill Grazing.” Species on the Edge, Oct. 2024, speciesontheedge.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Moorland-hill-grazing.pdf..

That stubbornness is the real story of this photograph. A swidden meant to favour heather has instead handed the ground to its plainest neighbour, tussock by dogged tussock, the moorland equivalent of nature quietly claiming an abandoned garden.

• 1
  “Trichophorum Cespitosum.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichophorum_cespitosum.
• 2
  Hostile Habitat: Scotland’s Mountain Environment. Page 123. Scottish Mountaineering Trust. 2006.
• 3
  “Moorland/Hill Grazing.” Species on the Edge, Oct. 2024, speciesontheedge.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Moorland-hill-grazing.pdf.