January 2023, the Christmas holiday is yet unfinished and the early January weather is inclement, but a group of enthusiasts meet in a field and find their allotted place in one of two long hedges. The signal is given for five hours of unceasing effort. The national hedgelaying championship is on. Although there are about thirty local styles of hedge, each adapted over time to meet local needs and conditions, only nine categories are tested. Each of these has its own winner. There is a supreme champion and a ladies champion.
Hedges have great antiquity in North West Europe. Julius Caesar complained that in Belgium hedges obstructed his troops. As if the Belgae cared. Archaeologists think that there is a small number of hedges in England that were present in the Bronze Age, three thousand five hundred years ago. Many hedges in England date back to the eighteenth century enclosures, and these are often made of hawthorn. A few older hedges remain from the time when hedges were composed of barberry, but most barberry hedges were grubbed up when barberry was found to host a fungus that damaged wheat crops. Blackberry is often present, and I have often foraged this for making wine. I have also foraged elderberry from an old hedge for wine making.
The destruction of hedgerows in the name of modern farming after the Second World War was disastrous and has had to be rectified. Hedges provide shelter for sheep and cattle in winter conditions. For this reason hedges in the North often form a pretty solid barrier down to ground level. In sheep territory solid barriers down to ground level render the hedge stockproof against escaping lambs. So hedges not only defend stock against wind and rain, but also prevent it from escaping.
But there is another use not immediately apparent to the agri-barons who grabbed up farming land after the war. Hedge roots also serve to bind the soil together. Tree and shrub roots hold soil particles together and the barriers obstruct soil particles that are being blown by wind. This effect, discovered in America in the Dustbowl era, when soil suffered wind erosion, became evident on a smaller scale in England in East Anglia, when high winds over the peaty East Anglian soils resulted in dust storms that have eroded this precious resource.
Another use of hedges is as a home for wild life. Many birds, such as the tiny wren, nest in the intricate three dimensional maze of branches that the hedge provides, safe from larger predators. Hedgehogs and a multiplicity of insects find a home among the branches. There is also the capacity of a network of hedges forming wildlife corridors to facilitate wild creatures' movements, thus preventing the genetic threat that comes with isolated populations inbreeding.
Hedges, you might notice, are less susceptible to wind damage than solid fences are. You will often see a wind damaged fence, I have never seen significant wind damage in a hedge, save for the occasional uprooted tree. Wind passes through them ,but loses some of its force.
Comments
We don't have the Pacific when, and our wren never nests in houses, so it is the winter wren, Troglodytes hiemalis.
Your sub-heading The Role of Hedges includes a reference to the tiny wren.
Tiny wren on this side of the (Atlantic) pond may refer to house wrens (Troglodytes aedon), Pacific wrens (T. pacificus) or winter wrens (T. hiemalis), depending upon the source.
What would the scientific name be for you all's tiny wren?
It is a small hedge at the boundary of a field.I had to struggle hard to find an image that was reasonably suitable.
It's a nice choice that makes me want to read the article associated with it.
But would you be able to tell me what it is that I'm supposed to be seeing on a computer other than the nice one that I access but that sometimes crashes, sometimes is finicky about beautiful but petite-scaled images?
It likely would be a hedge, but from what angle and what kind and with what -- if any -- companions?
I needed a small picture and that one was the most suitable one.
As I've mentioned previously, the computer doesn't cooperate sometimes with the smaller images.
So I know that I like the colors in your image to the left of your title.
But computer preference for bigger images leaves me wondering what I like even as the article topic means that the fall-like colors likeliest are associated with a hedge!
But what kind of hedge and what else would be sharing the space with that hedge?!
No species has become extinct through hedge clearance, but many nesting birds have been diminished by the practice of cutting hedges in spring using a mechanical flail. Nowadays farmers cut hedges in Fall, when the fledgelings have gone. This is part of the duties imposed on farmers by the state in return for their payment as custodians of the environment.
Some abatement of drifts is certainly possible.
The fifth paragraph under your first sub-heading, The Role of Hedges, indicates that "Another use of hedges is as a home for wild life. Many birds, such as the tiny wren, nest in the intricate three dimensional maze of branches that the hedge provides, safe from larger predators."
Is there any wildlife extinction in general or in particular, such as of the tiny wren that you mention, associated with the hedge-less years in the United Kingdom?
For example, on this, western side of the (Atlantic) pond, Phytophthora root rot killed highland chestnut trees (Castanea dentata) - among whose owners that it grieved was President Thomas Jefferson in the 19th century -- even as blight (Cryphonectria parasitica) near-exterminated lowland chestnut trees -- among whose owners that it grieved was President Theodore Roosevelt.
The 19th-century extinction meant the same extinction for passenger pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius), whose sole host tree was the highland American chestnut tree!
In addition to wind reduction I see an advantage in having the trees and shrubs doing their job of removing carbon from the air.
I would think the orientation would be best if perpendicular to the prevailing winds. Is this a factor. To provide livestock enclosures I would think more distant spacing would be used between hedges parallel to the prevailing winds.
Do hedges abate snowdrifts on structures by having blowing snow accumulate on the hedges, thereby not reaching structures on the leeward side of the hedges?
Their use as an impediment to troop movement is practically nullified by tanks. But a few hundred years ago they probably were quite effective.