British woodland management in a European context

Abstract

Asholt Wood, near Folkstone in Kent, is closer to the Foret Dominiale de Guines, south of Calais in France, than to the woods in north-east Kent around Rochester and Dartford. Asholt is also ecologically closer to Guines, for both are broadly pedunculate oak-ash woodlands (Plaisance, 1963), whereas the Rochester Bridge Woods and Darenth Wood contain much hornbeam, chestnut and sessile oak. These two woods demonstrate and represent the natural continuum linking British and Continental woods, which is best appreciated through the floristic similarity between the woods of south-east England, Hampshire and southern East Anglia on one side and the woods of Brittany, Normandy and Picardy on the other.