Culbin is a forest made by man, not by nature. Scots and Corsican pines were planted here in the 1930s to pin down dunes that had swallowed whole farms and refused to give them back. Three centuries ago, sand buried a whole estate of sixteen farms, and it has stayed buried ever since.
Before the pines, this was five miles of bare sandhills, over a mile wide in places. One account from the time describes a summer’s day with nothing to see but blue sky above and a glare of white and yellow sand stretching to the horizon, the hiss of loose grains blowing over the dunes only making the silence feel more complete1THE CULBIN SANDS. Aberdeen Press and Journal. 2 September 1922. Page 3.. A trig point still sits at 29 metres, a fair clue to how much sand piled up here.
Now Culbin is more than just timber. It is a site of special scientific interest, home to some 450 species of lichen and fungi, several of them rare2‘Holistic’ forestry boosting rare lichens at woodland in north east Scotland. The Scotsman. 13th Feb 2022. https://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/holistic-forestry-boosting-rare-lichens-at-woodland-in-north-east-scotland-3565545.
Lichens are an odd partnership of fungus and algae, and they turn up in every shape and mood: bushy, crusty, clinging to rock, wall or bark. Some smell faintly of fish. Others go into perfume. They quietly hold ecosystems together, feeding biodiversity and playing their small part against climate change.
Many are fussy things, though, needing just the right soil, light and air to survive, and will not touch polluted ground at all. Their presence is as good as a certificate of clean air.
Forest managers have opened up large clearings, partly for timber, but mainly to let in the light lichens need to spread. Lichens grow at a snail’s pace and take years to settle into a new spot, yet once established they shrug off drought and downpour alike. Here they spread across the forest floor like a pale, springy carpet. I think the supplementary photo is Reindeer Lichen, Cladonia portentosa, though lichens are famous for making fools of anyone who tries to name them on sight.
- 1THE CULBIN SANDS. Aberdeen Press and Journal. 2 September 1922. Page 3. ↩︎
- 2‘Holistic’ forestry boosting rare lichens at woodland in north east Scotland. The Scotsman. 13th Feb 2022. https://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/holistic-forestry-boosting-rare-lichens-at-woodland-in-north-east-scotland-3565545 ↩︎
Leave a Reply