This Forgotten Tree is Rewilding Scotland - here’s how

Aspen is an incredible tree a pioneer species found on the side of mountains in poor soils as well as down in the Lush river valleys a keystone species that supports biodiversity from the ground up it's the preferred food source of the beaver and when it forms in its iconic stands it supports rare invertebrates like the Aspen hoverfly as well as over 100 different species of fungi and lichens Aspen is widespread and found all over the world from Japan to North America however in Scotland it scares a rarity isolated within the patchwork of the Scottish landscapes in this video we're not only going to explore the great Ecology of the Aspen but also its story here in Scotland why it struggled and the work that's been done to bring it back while in Scotland I had the chance to meet up with Peter from aher who specializes in the nursery and rewilding of rare plants in Scotland but hey how's it going I'm Rob and this is live curious where we create content about rewilding here in the UK and I can tell you it feels so so good to be featuring a tree on the channel again because while my background's in trees and so I started off the channel I started by making identification and facts videos about trees so that seems like a great place to start one of the best ways to identify Aspen isn't with your eyes but with your ears it makes a beautiful fluttering sound on the Wind here's Peter to tell us more about it so we have dissipated in the wind wind and the triassa boys as well as allowing it to photosynthesize on both sides of the leaf there's loads of kind of Mythology around football around the the trembling leaves you know they whisper I think um was it Aspen was known as old wife's tongues you know I read that yeah I thought that was a bit harsh on both the trans old wives well exactly we planted them about seven eight years ago yeah and they were a good size Peter showed me to some Aspen clones which he had cultivated and planted in his local Village of lock winner although there was quite a bit of invasive Himalayan Balsam the trees had reached a decent height and the rounded leaves with their wavy margins and the bright Gray Bark was unmistakable during the Autumn the different clones will produce a stunning array of yellow leaves and ecologically there's not many better trees in the UK it's a pioneer species meaning it's one of the first to grow colonizing bare ground creating a valuable woodland habitat relatively quickly it primarily does this by producing suckers from its root system which can form great Aspen stands stemming from one original tree when it grows near watercourses it is the preferred food of the Beaver but its deliciousness has also been to its detriment in Scotland with grazing animals offer nibbling stands to the ground before they can mature and coupled with this as Peter explains has been the tree's inability to produce seed Lake Willow it's delicious so it means you either get a male or a female tree and because Aspen is is really here often these surviving stands of Aspen are isolated from one another so you make a male miles and miles and miles from the nearest female just by planting like here a collection of males and females together that gives them more of an opportunity to cross-pollinate when the chat when the conditions are right we're only talking there was only five rent for sure Aspen left when when we when we started I mean that's how rude it was locally you know so it's so important to get each of those conserved and and reproduced and that's I know for a fact this Aspen here is from a local clone in the Hampshire Hills and I mean that tree is a kind of gnarly little um when sculpted a little tree hanging on and away from the munching sheep you know at the side of a little rocky Crag and yet here we are planting it in a completely different location it shot up nice specimen you know vigorous looking we headed to the nursery where Peter showed me the process of cultivating the Aspen and the many other rare plant species locating them in the wild taking a cutting bringing them back and nursing them through to much larger specimens Aya has been up and running for 10 years now and in that time they produced about a million Aspen that have gone on to be planted but they didn't grow all of these at the nursery here's how they do it that basically involves a lab-based cloning system uh using plant tissue culture so basically growing trees in a pizza dish so all they need is a tiny sample of a bud a leaf we send them to the lab we use gen Tech and indeed and they will clone the trees and they Mass produce them and it's these trees which have been rewilding Scotland projects just like the ones set up by our friends over at Mossy Earth who are currently planting and protecting 10 000 Aspen trees in Scotland focusing on restoring both open ground riparian zones and planting them alongside thorny species to naturally protect them from grazing animals as well as creating great rewarding videos on their YouTube channel they also have a membership which I encourage you to check out as it ensures they can continue running these really important projects you can also support the work that Peter does at Aya links to both of these are on the screen now but in the meantime thanks for watching leave curious foreign

Channel: Leave Curious

Views: 70,637

Keywords: aspen scotland, rewilding britain, rewilding scotland, aspen tree

Id: tIcM9wPVbKU

Length: 5min 42sec (342 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 12 2022