The vegetational history of south-east Dorset

Abstract

The present investigation was undertaken primarily to increase the limited data currently available on the vegetational history of southern England and to outline the vegetational history of the Poole Basin, the major geological region of southeast Dorset, paying particular attention to the origin and floristic diversity of its heath lands.The investigation is centred upon the application of stratigraphic, macrofossil, pollen and chemical analyses to valley bog and river valley sediments and has co-incidentally demonstrated some of the problems attaching to the application of these techniques to such deposits. Archaeological and documentary data have also been employed.Late-Devensian and possibly Allergd deposits with a highly herbaceous and heath flora have been described, and the early Flandrian spread of Pinus and Quercus and the later expansion of Ulmus and Corylus have been documented. Fagus was present in the Boreal period, Ulmus suffered at the end of the Atlantic period and Pinus may have persisted throughout the Flandrian in this area of southern England. It is suggested that despite the extension of woodland the heath element of the Late-Devensian survived into the early Flandrian and spread in the mid-Flandrian, natural soil infertility and interference by mesolithic man being cited as primary causes. Degradation continued into the neolithic period, but it was probably not until the bronze age that the formation of open heath and Corylus scrub took place, and no- until the late bronze age that heathland came to dominate the landscape. This latter condition persisted until the eighteenth century when the dominance was broken by the spread of forestry, agriculture and urbanism.Erica ciliaris had reached the Poole Basin by the Boreal period and it has been possible to relate the proposed expansion of the plant since [hot time to the development of the heathlands.

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