In a talk given at Dove Cottage in Grasmere, Ian Brodie explored the origins of the term and our modern interpretation of what is understood by ‘natural beauty’. This transcript of his presentation explores the historical background to the term with particular reference to William and Dorothy Wordsworth.

JUNE 22 DOVE COTTAGE GRASMERE

NOTES OF IAN BRODIE 

1. National Parks and the other nationally designated landscapes, for example Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, have been given statutory protection primarily for their natural beauty. The phrase is also crucial to the charitable objects of the National Trust. The cynic will argue that no landscape in the United Kingdom is natural, it has been altered and affected by the economic and food requirements of the human population over millennia. To a significant extent they are correct. So why have we come to use the term natural beauty? From what origins did the term evolve? And not unimportant at this venue, what is the relevance of the thinking of both William and Dorothy.

In this presentation I want concentrate largely on one specific aspect of natural beauty, and it is one which both William and Dorothy had particular strident, though arguably occasionally contradictory viewpoints.  

2. There is a danger that any quotes I use may lack a context of the full landscape setting which was integral to the thoughts of the siblings and, particularly in the case of my focus trees and woodlands, it is important to recognise our current artificial usage of habitat and landscape as if they are two separate concepts. Such an approach is neither helpful nor appropriate when reading the work of the Wordsworths. Trees are, for example, one of the natural devices they use for setting a description of the landscape, especially but not entirely so in the case of woodlands, as they are used for relating natural history either metaphorically or descriptively in their prose or poetry. 

3. Whether it was their domicile in Dorset, the Quantocks or around Grasmere trees and woodlands were a vital part of the character and genus loci of their home acres. But we have to be careful to remember the species of trees and the composition of woodlands can be very different from what we see today. By way of example Dorothy has several records of coppiced woodland, a system of woodland management the siblings would be all too familiar with the Lake District. A management system that is so infrequently used today. They make other references to wildlife which would be more meaningful in the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries as the populations of much of the flora and fauna, as with trees named, would have been potentially greater and more readily seen. Yet for other species the converse would now apply.

4. William several times commentated unfavourably on the destruction of woodlands but these references are conceptually very different from the felling undertaken in sustainably worked coppiced and timber woodlands of that time. It was the scale of a clear fell which informed his and Dorothy’s sense of outrage. Whilst over at Blowick, by Ullswater, William stated, with disgust, ‘The axe here indiscriminately levelled a rich wood of birches and oaks, that divided this favoured spot into a hundred pictures. It has yet its land-locked bays, and rocky promontories; but those beautiful woods are gone, which perfected its seclusion; and scenes,…’ (Guide to the Lakes). This was clear felling for short-term profit and not the more sustainable coppicing frequently practiced in the southern Lake District. The Ullswater site now has some regrowth of native woodland. The Guide also recalled the incident of a superb specimen of a tree outside a yeoman farmers cottage and which could have been felled for a good income. The yeoman is said to have responded ‘Fell it? I had rather fall on my knees and worship it.’ Such thoughts and stewardship resonated well with Dorothy and William.

5. William and Dorothy lived in an age of intensively worked woodlands which are recognised in their writings through the identification with coppices and coppice workings. They also knew of the then much used technique of pollarding trees. Langdale and Borrowdale are amongst the best places to see the results of pollarding and the National Trust is attempting to keep alive this age-prolonging practice in these dales. Significantly there was nothing distinguishable in their writings of wooded areas as landscape or habitat or work place, such a reading of separateness would then have been unfathomable to them. William recorded veteran oak, coppiced oak and spoke of old yew trees especially the most famous examples they often tried to visit during their travels. The values of woodlands and their constituent tree and shrub species is a fundamental part of understanding the legacy of William and Dorothy.

6. With respect to woody species William noted ‘The Woods consist chiefly of oak, ash, and birch, and here and there Wych-elm, with underwood of hazel, the white and blackthorn, and hollies; in moist places alders and willows abound; and yews among the rocks.’ (Guide to the Lakes) He also noted, in former times, that Scot’s pine (they referred to them as Scotch firs) would have been a common Lakeland tree. Thus we know the Wordsworths were well attuned to the nature of woodlands and other ways in which trees populate the landscape and the significant natural constraints as to where trees grow. In short their grasp of woodland ecology was impressive for a science which did not then exist. The continuation of this ‘Guide’ paragraph is also important for it shows an early, but basic, understanding of the changes that have occurred to the species composition of the Lake District over the millennia. The quoted paragraph continues ‘Formerly the whole county must have been covered with wood to a great height up the mountains; where native Scotch firs must have grown in great profusion, as they do in the northern part of Scotland to this day. But not one of these old inhabitants has existed, perhaps for some hundreds of years;…’ That statement does, however, raise questions which are still prevalent about the current perceived provenance of Cumbria’s Scot’s pine trees.
   
   
   Scots pine, Tilberthwaite

7. In contrast to expressions of regret for the extinctions of the native fauna we find an even stronger and more vociferous opposition to the introduction of non-native species into his beloved landscapes. William, again in his Guide to the Lakes, compared the landscape change of an area once dominated in the main by oak, holly and ash ‘But, in truth, no one can now travel through the more frequented tracts, without being offended, at almost every turn, by an introduction of discordant objects, disturbing the peaceful harmony of form and colour, which had been through a long lapse of ages most happily preserved.’ Such was the foundation for his justification of developing the concept of using native species in areas they were naturally part of the character of the land. His strongest, often acerbic, arguments were reserved in opposition to the introduction of non-native tree species such as larch. 

8. Perhaps the first reference to any preference of the siblings for native over introduced species related to observations made whilst they lived in Somerset and where Dorothy recorded in her Journal (15 April, 1798) ‘Nature was very successfully striving to make beautiful what art had deformed - ruins, hermitages, etc. etc. In spite of all these things, the dell romantic and beautiful, though everywhere planted with unnaturalised trees.’ Is this an early indicator of the rejection of the changes brought about to landscapes by the picturesque mentality of landowners, a start of what we call romanticism? Here nature knows better than people emerges as a nascent philosophy. Later a strong criticism of non-native plants introduced into the Lake District can be read in Dorothy’s note of 8 June, 1802 where she opined ‘Mr Curwen’s shrubberies looked pitiful enough under the native trees.’ 

9. During the 1803 tour of Scotland Dorothy noted, on 21 August, ‘and though the plantations were of fir, we looked at it [the house at Cartland Crags] with great pleasure.’ On the next day she added that ‘The new fir and larch plantations, here as in almost every other part of Scotland, contributed not a little to this affect.’ of ‘a notion of barrenness, of what was not altogether genial.’ Yet the siblings had resided in the Quantocks with a larch outside their door from where a Robin sang (To My Sister 1798). Yet they outspoken enough to point out such alien species as part of the character of a changing landscape. Dorothy, for example during the tour of Scotland in 1803 noted a house ‘with no trees near it except a new planation of firs.’ (26 August). It may, however, be the case that these ‘firs’ were Scot’s pine, a locally native tree.

10. It was during this 1803 tour we find in Dorothy’s Journal, a further account of the siblings preference for native trees over plantations of introduced conifers and which was, later, to find fine expression in William’s Guide to the Lake District. Whilst in Glen Tilt, owned by the duke of Athol (sic), Dorothy (7 September) noted ‘Within the Duke’s park are three glens, the glen of the river Tilt and two others, which, if they had been planted more judiciously, would have been sweet retirements; but they are choked up, the whole hollow of the glens - I do not speak of the Tilt, for that is chiefly natural; wood - being closely planted with trees, and those chiefly firs; but many of the old fir-trees are, as single trees, very fine.’ The use of ‘choked’ suggests a very close planting and, under which, the ground flora had all but been eradicated and thereby giving us an indication that brother and sister preferred more open, native woodlands even if these woodlands were used commercially as were coppiced woodlands. In essence we have an emerging outline of the Romantic construction of landscape, habitat and sustainable use of natural resources being regarded as the norm and which, now, we accept as a lead as to the way we should regard landscapes especially those which we have managed to designate. I try to use landscape and habitat as fully interchangeable concepts.
    
    
    Yew, Little Langdale

11. The same duke appeared again a transgressor in landscape taste when, [8 September] the siblings were near Dunkeld ‘We left the Bran, and pursued our walk through the plantations, where we readily forgave the Duke his little devices for their sakes. There are already no insignificant woods, where the trees happen to be oaks, birches, and others natural to the soil: and under their shade the walks are delightful’. On the same day Dorothy recorded some recent planting by the Duke of Athol which had taken place and where, shortly before, Robbie Burns had criticised the lack of trees beside the burn ‘We walked upwards at least three quarters of a mile in the hot sun, with the stream to our right, both sides of which to a considerable height were planted with firs and larches intermingled - children of poor Burn’s song; for his sake we wished that they had been the natural trees of Scotland, birches, ashes, mountain-ashes, etc.; however, sixty or seventy years hence they will be no unworthy monument to his memory. At present nothing can be uglier that the whole chasm of the hill-side with its formal walks.’ For all her knowledge of woodlands Dorothy had not, it appears, got to grips with the idea of forestry where the trees planted would have been clear-felled in sixty or seventy years time or less as a timber crop!

12. Dorothy had also railed against the introduction of larch into the Vale of Grasmere ‘six years ago a ‘trim’ box was erected on a hill-side; it is surrounded with fir and larch plantations, that look like a blotch or scar on the fair surface of the mountain.’ [letter to Lady Beaumont, 7 November, 1805]  This was the plantation begun by the Kings, who lived at the Hollens, and was situated directly across the lake from Dove Cottage. 

13. Dorothy also told her correspondent Lady Beaumont of William’s dislike of clear felling of native woodlands [7 November, 1805] when the owner of Rydal Hall, Sir Michael Fleming, after having his ‘woods appraised’  for felling and then ‘after Christmas the Ax [sic] is to be lifted against them, and not one tree left, so the whole Eastern side of the Lake will be entirely naked, even to the very edge of the water! …To him there is no Spirit in the Wood.’ (a possible reference to William’s poem Nutting)

14. William was perhaps better known for his dislike of introduced conifers as the Guide to the Lakes made clear when larch plantations are dismissed as a wretched ‘vegetable manufactory’. His Guide has several stinging and sustained assaults on the trend to the introduction of non-native trees, but not without some ambiguity - in some cases he felt introduced conifer trees may be suitably planted within gardens. He certainly welcomed a perceived failed attempt at the introduction of larch above Windermere ‘The view from the Pleasure-house of the Station near the Ferry has suffered much from larch plantations; this mischief, however, is gradually disappearing, and the larches, under the management of the proprietor, Mr. Curwen, are giving way to the native wood.’ 

15. William in his 1811 Epistle to Sir George Howland Beaumont, BART. referred directly to the appropriate use of ‘native’ trees. However, the Wordsworths become ambiguous about native and introduced trees and shrubs as time develops, not least when they offer advice on garden creation to Sir George and Lady Beaumont in their significant correspondence. Their advice includes the use of cypresses, pyracantha and other evergreens, not least for a winter garden.Whether this change of opinion was restricted to the efforts of large landowners to create ‘Picturesque’ gardens within their extensive country estates is beyond my talk. [See Dale & Yen (2018) for a well informed read on William and gardening.] However, with respect to the Lake District and to open landscapes, William and Dorothy appear to be consistently firm in their strictures about keeping non-natives trees away from the landscape whilst at the same time protecting the larger number of mature and semi-mature native trees in the landscape and woodlands. It may be concluded the wider landscape should be kept as a home to native species but, in gardens, any plants that served an appropriate purpose could be included.

16. William appears to dismiss the picturesque attempts at landscape change both in terms of it’s rapid and incremental change. This can be seen in a later warning from William to Sir George [Letter 28 August, 1811] ‘A man by little and little becomes so delicate and fastidious with respect to forms in scenery, where he has the power to exercise control over them, that if they do not exactly please him in all moods, and every point of view, his power becomes his law; he banishes one, and then rids himself of another, impoverishing and monotonizing Landscapes, which, if not originally distinguished by the bounty of Nature, must be ill able to spare the inspiriting varieties which Art, and the occupations and wants of life in a country left more to itself never fail to produce.’ The introduced concept of detrimental incremental change is still a bugbear for modern day conservationists.

17. It is a pity William is not around now to tell the National Trust, who now own and manage much of the woodlands he strongly criticised north-west of the ferry on the Windermere shores up to Claiffe Heights, how their retention of introduced conifers and other aliens is detrimental to the landscape of the area. Some of these trees may be the very same vandalism inflicted on the Windermere landscape by Mr. Curwen. For William such acts of non-indigenous planting would serve to destroy the ‘spirit of the place’ and where the self-styled landscape ‘improvers’ had failed to recognise ‘nature had no deformities and was impossible to improve. It was the unchecked spread of human cultivation which was the real threat.’ (The Prelude and The Excursion). 

18. So is this at all relevant today? The management of the World Heritage Site following the inscription of the Lake District in 2017, along with the principle woodland managers, the National Trust and the Forestry Commission, could do well to reflect on how William’s ethos might be reflected in the management of this designated national park and inscribed world heritage area. Of which the Tarn Hows example may serve as a useful starting point.

19. In a footnote to William’s Guide to the Lakes he suggested that Scot’s pine was much superior to the current trend to plant American fir trees and recommended that ‘Where the fir is planted for ornament, let it be by all means of the aboriginal species,’. The suggestion of re-introducing a species, which William (as do many people today) believed was extinct in the area, which people either had crassly eliminated or it was lost through natural changes to the floral ecology, appears to have been a novel concept at this time. Today there have been some successful re-introductions into the Lake District flora and fauna of the white-faced darter dragonfly and the Lady’s slipper orchid by way of example, but more can be done especially in ensuring our wealth of indigenous tree species. Some will also read the acceptance of such a principle as a moral ground for the re-introduction of animals such as the beaver or lynx, animals that were lost from the local area before the time of Dorothy and William. These should be live issues for the management of the World Heritage Site.

20. That said there would not be the same botanical knowledge at the time of the Wordsworths as to exactly which species, particularly trees, were genuinely native. Beech would be now regarded as native in the Quantocks but not in Lakeland or Scotland. Sycamore is a tree introduced by the Romans as might have been the chestnuts. Those species apart William was very certain about some indigenous species as we find in The Excursion (1797 -1814) where ‘Those native plants, the holly and the yew,/ Gave modest intimation to the mind.’  Let us not forget the first introductions of foreign trees would, however, date back a century or two earlier than Wordsworth’s time. In the Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1820) we learn of ‘The fostered hyacinths spread their purple bloom.’ The use of the phrase ‘fostered’ presents a delightful touch enabling us to discriminate native from introduced species for garden planting.

21. William’s most sustained condemnation of the use of non-native species in the Lakeland landscape is found in his Guide to the Lakes where one section is particularly telling ‘Other trees have been introduced within these last fifty years, such as beeches, larches, limes, &c., and plantations of firs, seldom with advantage and often with great injury to the appearance of the country; but the sycamore (which I believe was brought into this island from Germany, not more than two hundred years ago) has long been a favourite of the cottagers; and, with the fir, has been chosen to screen their dwellings; and is sometimes found in the fields whither the winds or the waters have carried its seeds.’ He was more acerbic when he came to compare the benefits of retaining native species such as sessile oak ‘There are few magnificent ones to be found near any of the lakes; and unless greater care be taken, there will, in a short time, scarcely be left an ancient oak that would repay the cost of felling. The neighbourhood of Rydal, notwithstanding the havoc which has been made, is yet nobly distinguished.’ Whilst such areas have changed much, especially through large-scale felling during the two world wars of the twentieth  century, we have since lost a great deal more of these magnificent aged native trees.

22. William believed ‘All gross transgressions of this kind originate, doubtless, in a feeling natural and honourable to the human mind, viz. the pleasure which it receives from distinct ideas, and from the perception of order, regularity, and contrivance.’ The paragraph does not stop there but I think that is enough to understand William’s point. However, it is a point he repeatedly comes back to. He acknowledged that a few exotics ‘confined to the doors of the houses,’ may be acceptable but the rest of the landscape should be ‘of the kinds scattered by Nature through the woods - holly, broom, wild-rose, elder, dogberry, white and black thorn &c.’. The whole of this section of the Guide to the Lakes often proves worth revisiting to remind ourselves as to how William saw native species as an integral part of the character and essence of the Lake District and the abomination of aliens, not least larch, especially if Lakeland was to become a ‘sort of national property’. William had ‘been induced to speak, thus at length, by a wish to preserve the native beauty of this delightful district,’. And surely this should be a key guide today for the management of our World Heritage Site and national park? But how does this help us in our quest to understand the phrase natural beauty?

23. The history of the national park movement and of national parks in England is often traced back to the thinking of William Wordsworth that the Lake District should become protected as ‘…persons of pure taste…deem the district a sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy.’. [Guide to the Lakes] The context of Wordsworth and the Romantics is central to the cause of designated landscapes as George Treveleyan argued‘The modern attitude to natural beauty, more philosophic and more conspicuous, began, ..with Wordsworth, who gave it not only its first but its finest expression.’ [Must England’s Beauty Perish?] William’s ‘national property’ is often quoted comment in publications referring to the history of national parks and the National Trust but less often mentioned is where Wordsworth places this clarion call in the text of his Guide. This placement is fundamental to understanding the values we hold today for designated areas as they are underpinned by their cultural dimension. Wordsworth places this seminal phrase towards the end of the third section of his Guide. In the first section he considered the natural forms and elements, the associative qualities such as light, which form the character of the area. Secondly he traced the history of people in the area and how they have evolved the living, working landscape which he and others regarded as beautiful. By now in the Guide we have an understanding as to how the works of nature and people have made the landscape so special. In the seminal third section of the book he looked at the changes affecting the landscape, many of which he disapproved, and his “rules” for preventing their bad effects. Whilst acknowledging the landscape has been changing over millennia there are some changes he sees as disfigurements and, as such, be resisted, In other cases he acknowledges change should occur and suggests how it might be achieved to retain the special qualities of the landscape. Here comes his pivotal statement of a “sort of national property.” In short his preservation of the area was not about resisting any change but accommodating changes which reflected the special qualities of the area in which they were happening but resisting changes which detracted from the character of what we call now a cultural landscape. This point is fundamental for whilst we have exchanged the term conservation for preservation we are talking about managing the rate, scale, nature and direction of change. Preservation of the beauty and special qualities of the area should, in Wordsworth’s view, be achieved by recognising the potential values such areas should have for the whole nation. It is these values which his disciple John Ruskin, and his followers in turn, developed and applied to protect our finest landscapes.

24. There was an element to emerge from the campaign to stop the creation of the Thirlmere reservoir which underpinned all future considerations of national parks; again it was a unique piece of British conceptualism in the use of a highly charged term ‘natural beauty’ as an appropriate presentation to describe our finest landscapes. The first written use of this specific phrase appears to be the petition to parliament (House of Commons Committee) in 1878 by the Thirlmere Defence Association (the TDA) when opposing Manchester’s Bill. The term appears to have become established at this time and became enshrined in the 1949 Act establishing national parks, and is still part of our current vocabulary for designated landscapes. In statutory terms natural beauty was first used in legislation in 1907 to establish the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest and Natural Beauty. As such it still carries significant material weight for the current activities of the Trust. The use in the TDA petition came from Ruskin’s disciples Robert Somervell or his fellow worker W.H. Hills the authors of the petition. The petition was eventually processed through the hands of the TDA chairman, solicitor John Harwood, who lived, in part, at Grasmere, in the house I believe which is now the NT office, The Hollins. It was Somervell and/or Hills whom I strongly believe took the phrase ‘native beauty’ from that crucial third section of William’s guide and re-worked it as natural beauty.

25. George Trevelyan valued the phrase “the preservation of natural beauty” with admirable clarity ‘Yet what if that vague phrase stands for one of the most important of our national interests? What if “natural beauty” be one of England’s greatest assets, spiritually and even, as I shall endeavour to show, financially?’  It was a phrase he understood was complex  ‘The appeal of natural beauty is not a single, simple thing. The aspect of nature varies from place to place and day to day; and its appeal is made to the highly composite mind of modern man, which contains an infinity of aptitudes, tastes, desires, traditions, mysticisms, primeval inheritances and physical and physiological urgings, to all of which natural beauty makes, in a variety of ways, its strange and haunting appeal.’  Trevelyan argued because the phrase has no clear interpretation ‘it does not lessen its value.’ It is, he said, ‘the highest common denominator in the spiritual life of today.’

26. Natural beauty is not, as many people today assume, used to describe untamed, self-willed landscapes in a way other nations define their national parks. Some of our natural beauty does relate to landscapes and habitats where through geology or geomorphology and climate or where the works of people have had a relatively minor impact on the landscape. It includes privately owned land where farming and woodlands and sometimes industrial activities have been instrumental in defining the surface appearance of the land over millennia. However, and this is what is crucial to our use of the word natural and to the understanding of the landscape conservation movement, most of the works which affected the landscape had been gradual and cumulative over a long-period of time. 

The English concept of natural beauty, for designated landscapes and nature conservation, is more about accommodating beauty within the everyday lives of people with the consent of people, a concept which other countries are now finding attractive for their designated areas. Such a concept can only be successful if consent is given with clear understandings of the values and benefits that are intrinsic to the phrase. The theory is, however, often better than the delivery and the lack of consideration for landscape aesthetics is as much due to greedy developers as it is of the landscape preservationist who has forgotten to explain the values of ‘living with’ rather than in ‘conquering’ nature and natural beauty. The needs of less intensively used landscapes for the re-creation, inspiration and spirituality of the nation is perhaps greater today than at any time in our history yet it is the minor consideration of governments and of people who have become unnaturally divorced from landscapes of beauty. 

27. Whilst William used the phrase ‘native beauty” in his Guide the key to understanding the derivation of the phrase natural beauty may lie in the passage he rejected for the Prelude Book 8 ‘his favourite theme of the union of the child’s imagination, through love and wonder, with the world of nature and the works of man.’ This perhaps takes us closer to what we in Britain understand by natural beauty, a working but symbiotic and respectful relationship with Nature.

APPENDIX

NATIVE TREES FOR CUMBRIA 

Recent plantings and applications for woodland grants suggest that some agents and consultants may not be fully aware as to what species of native woody plants may be appropriate in a Cumbrian setting. Some stick to a limited list whilst others rely on what suppliers may be able to provide (and without any reference to provenance). Consequently new areas of planting are too frequently of poor diversity or fail to be appropriate to the location. 

Obviously the use of such a list needs a balanced consideration of all the issues, for example, of landscape character, rock & soil type, availability, rarity or commonality of species already found in Cumbria. 

The following list, which is not intended to be prescriptive,  is an attempt to try and provide a guide to those species of woody perennials which are native to Cumbria and which could be used in future planting schemes. As such it is not an a la carte menu as the recognition of rarity, vegetational types, landscape character are amongst the primary considerations a selection must entail. Also important are the source of seed and where the trees, if planted, may have been grown. The provenance is more important than simply buying cultivars from local stockists. The list does not imply that natural regeneration only should not be used as a means of re-stocking or re-creating woodlands not matter how important such an approach may be. The list is largely based on The Flora of Cumbria by Geoffrey Holliday. The omission of any species should infer that it is not regarded as native in the county. 

No attempt has been made to list hybrids. 

Conifers:

Juniper - Juniperus communis

Yew - Taxus baccata

It is also my view that:

Scot’s Pine - Pinus sylvestris

should be included as it is strongly present in the pollen record, there are a few vetern trees in the county and it is an important food source for Red Squirrel

Broadleaved:

Wych elm -Ulumus glabra. (English elm U. procera may be considered an introduction) 

Sessile oak - Quercus petraea

Pendunculate oak - Q. robus

Silver birch - Betula pendula

Downy birch - B. pubescens 

Alder - Alnus glutuosa 

Hazel - Corylus avellana 

Small-leaved lime - Tilia cordata 

Aspen - Populus tremula

Black popular - P. nigra 

Field maple - Acer campestre 

Bay willow - Salix pentandra

Crack willow - S. fraglis

White willow - S. alba

Almond willow - S. triandra

Purple willow - S. purpurea

Osier - S. viminalis

Goat willow - S. caprea

Common sallow/Grey willow - S. cinerea

Eared willow - S. aurila

Dark-leaved willow - S. myssiniflia

Tea-leaved willow - S. repens

Downy willow - S. lapponua

Dwarf/Least willow - S. herbace 

Field rose - Rosa arvensis

Burnet rose - R. pampinellifolia

Dog rose - R. canina

a rose - R. sherardii

Sweet briar - R. rubignosa 

Blackthorn - Prunus spinosa

Gean/Wild cherry - P. avium

Bird cherry - P. padus

Crab apple - P. sylvestris 

Rowan - Sorbus accuparia

Wild service tree - S, torninalis

Common whitebeam - S. aria

Knowledge of locally important Sorbus species e.g Lancastrian whitebeam is vital. 

Hawthorn - Crataegus monogyma

Midland hawthorn, rare in Cumbria, has been omitted. 

Petty whin - Genista anglia

Gorse - Ulex europeas

Western gorse - U. gallii

Dwarf gorse - U. minor 

Dogwood - Cornus sanguinea 

Spindle - Euonymus europaeus 

Holly - Ilex aquifolium 

Buckthorn - Rhamnus cathartica

Alder buckthorn - Frangula alnus 

Field maple - Acer campestre 

Ash - Fraxinus excelsior 

Wild privet - Ligustrum vulgarae 

Elder - Sambucus nigra

Guelder rose - Viburnum opulas 

Mezereon - Daphne mezereum

Spurge laurel - Daphne laureola