Home of the ear-lobed dog
Craighall Gorge
Size: 53.59 ha Conservation rating: SSSI, SAC, designated landscape (Craighall Rattray Garden)
Core profile
Just about all the woodland at Craighall, near Blairgowrie, is ancient. It grows along a gorge, one of several that cleave the old red sandstone rocks in the area. The steep gorge slopes here are rich in ash trees, with some wych elm, growing above a woodland floor with many kinds of plants.
What’s special about it ?
Craighall is a type of gorge woodland. The lichens that grow on Craighall’s trees include ones that are indicators of old woodland. There’s an unusual one here – the ‘ear-lobed dog lichen’ (or Peltigera lepidophora to those in the know) that likes very wet conditions. It grows in the River Ericht at Craighall and nowhere else in Britain. Many kinds of mosses and liverworts grow on cliffs alongside the gorge.
Plants include the nationally rare whorled Solomon’s seal. There’s also plenty of dead wood to give life-support to beetles and other woodland insects and to hole-nesting birds.
What was up?
- Spread of Rhododendron, and exotic broadleaves shading-out native trees
- Overgrazing by roe and fallow deer
- Lack of public awareness of value of the wood
What’s been done?
- Rhododendron and exotic broadleaved tree removal (64ha)
- Deer cull to reduce numbers to less than 5 per 100ha
- Noticeboard describing the wood’s European importance
- 2 demonstration open days
What’s next?
Core connections
|
|
|
Desktop Pictures >> Help yourself to a refreshing and beautiful desktop picture, from Core Forest Sites. Download>> |
