A view over Adel Moor – heather to the right and bracken to the left.
Pteridium Aquilinum, or the lowly bracken is one of the most successful plants on Earth and is found on all continents except Antarctica. This is great if you like bracken but its success means that it out competes other plants which we want to see, reducing the variety of flora and fauna. Conservation groups in the UK devote time and effort in reducing the effect of bracken on the habitats they manage.
Bracken can be found throughout Adel Woods and in general we leave it to thrive. However, it has colonised a large section of Adel Moor and, left alone, it will eventually completely suppress the heather and the other plants we want to see there.
Therefore, in conjunction with Steve Joul of Leeds CC, Friends of Adel Woods have decided to start a program to reduce the area of Adel Moor populated by bracken.
There are two basic methods of removing bracken: bashing it or poisoning it. FOAW’s committee decided that in the first instance we would prefer to see what we can achieve by the organic or traditional method of bashing it. This is going to involve two bashing sessions at least this year and two or three bashing sessions next year. The aim of bashing the bracken is to weaken the plants until they die.
Today was our first ever bracken bashing session on the moor and we approached it in a spirit of scientific inquiry – to see how much we could achieve in two hours, and to see which form of bashing would be the most effective.
Three happy men and a pallet!
We had three different methods of bashing. First, there was the traditional method of bashing the bracken with poles. This was favoured by David H, Rob H and others. The second method was pulling up the bracken with as much of the root as possible favoured by Judith and Steph. The third method was to use a machine designed and made by our very own David S to squash the bracken.
Looking towards the East, the bashing area was to the left, the pulling area was to the right, and the area tackled by David, Andrew, James and your very own correspondent was in the middle.
In two hours we bashed, pulled or squashed thousands of bracken plants over a large area. It was a very satisfying task and one which we all enjoyed.
The David’s machine entailed pulling a pallet over the bracken. It soon became clear that it was simply going to slide over the top of the bracken without harming it. Accordingly, Andrew, our resident engineer, designed an adaptation involving tying 5 mattock blades on top of the pallet in order to weight it down – an adaptation which worked very well.
One thing that came as a surprise was to discover how much heather was managing to cling on underneath the bracken. However it was clear that if action was not taken, the surviving heather would have died out and the area of the bracken would have increased.
In summary, a very enjoyable and satisfying morning’s work.
The same three methods of “bashing” were used. David S had modified his bracken bashing machine by the addition of pieces of metal to act as blades. These were a good idea, but the effectiveness of the machine was probably reduced because we put fewer mattocks on the pallet to provide weight. Nevertheless, the machine provided much fun to its operators.
Friends of Adel Woods 