Flora fauna and wildlife in the Lake District

The complicated geological history of the Lake District, together with the extremes of climate to which the district is subjected, combine to produce a distinctive and diversified flora and hence an astonishing variety of wildlife habitats.

This chapter summa rises the characteristic flora and fauna in turn, before considering the question of nature conservation and describing a small selection of the very large number of nature walks which have been made available to allow observers to sample the riches available in the area.

Lake District accommodation

Consider the hurdles to be overcome by plants trying to establish themselves on the mountain tops of the Lake District. Snowfall can be expected from mid September to Mayor even June, and in sheltered spots can lie for much of that time, and the chill factor from exposure to bitingly cold winds is considerable; one consequence is an extremely short growing season. Despite these problems, some plants do grow and the most tenacious of them thrive. The commonest are mosses, liverworts and lichens.

One of the most unlikely is dwarf willow, often only 21cm (1 in) tall and with catkins less than a hundredth as long as that, but surviving in cracks and crevices amongst the crags, for instance those below Foule Crag and Sharp Edge on Blencathra and also on the eastern side of Fairfield and Helvellyn.

Some protection from sheep is necessary for flowers such as alpine lady's mantle, alpine sawwort and the saxifrages, which ideally need water and the safety of ledges or gullies within crags or high corries. A real Lake District rarity, the red alpine catchfly, thrives in the safety of the crumbling, inaccessible cliffs of Hobcarton Crag, to the southwest of Grisedale Pike, where the Skiddaw Slates are threaded with quartz veins unusually rich in pyrites. A variety of ferns is also present in the uplands, especially where there is some shelter from the worst of the weather. Not surprisingly, several of the plants are relicts of the glacial interlude.

Flora and fauna on the lower fells

On the fells ides, and often in the wetter areas on the shoulders of the mountains, a somewhat more substantial flora exists, with bilberry, cranberry, and cloud berry together with a whole spectrum of the sphagnum mosses, varying from green to red in colour, in the wettest spots. These wet, marshy areas also have butterwort, which catches insects on its sticky leaves and then digests them, the equally insecti-vorous sundew, bogrosemary, the goldenflowered bog asphodel and occasionally the rare bog orchid.

On drier slopes the commonest sight will be of grasses and, increasingly, bracken. The grasses include bent grasses and fescues, the staple diet of the ubiquitous sheep, and (in wetter locations) mat grass and rushes, whilst amongst the grass cover other plants thrive, notably the common tormentil with its delicate yellow flowers, sheep's sorrel and heath bedstraw.

But bracken, with its long branched roots and dense cover, is likely to be encroaching everywhere except where the soils are thin or the young fronds are likely to be trampled on, especially on sheep tracks and footpaths.

Controlling this fern is expensive and difficult, especially on broken rocky terrain, but control is vital if farms are to retain their fell side pastures. An equally intractable problem is overgrazing of the mountain pastures, which leads to a preponderance of mat grass and rushes, rejected as inedible by the sheep.

On crevices and ledges in the crags plants such as bilberry, its growth badly affected by grazing sheep in more open situations, bell heather and ling are likely to be found, whilst the scree slopes, which are too unstable for virtually all plants, do support the bright green parsley fern, rare outside the Lake District, named after the vegetable it resembles, and able to survive in crevices between the individual blocks of scree.

Plants and flowers in the dales

The meadowland which is now so characteristic of the dales is the successor to alder and willow woodland which (together with boulders in the wilder locations such as Wasdale Head) was cleared by the Norse settlers and has been prevented from regenerating. There is a striking contrast between the present enclosed in bye fields, much improved and comparatively fertile, and the rough pasture on swampy and boulder ground immediately beyond the intake walls.

The meadow¬ land, visually so different from the unimproved land beyond the limits of farming, owes its appearance to the application of lime and fertiliser and above all to drainage. Without this it would revert to a swampy alder carr.

Sadly the meadows have been standardised in recent decades and many of them consist only of a stringently controlled mixture of hay grasses. Economic necessity has much reduced the incidence of plants such as the globeflower and great burnet, though some species rich meadows survive and provide a welcome splash of colour in a number of the dales, especially where wood cranesbills, windflower and (near Broughton, for example) daffodils are allowed to flourish as part of the grassland flora.

Plants of the dales include the sweet cicely, a pungent herb once used to disguise the flavour of dried meat, the Welsh poppy, the balsam (the yellow variety concentrated near Windermere) and the mealy primrose, which is widespread on the limestone’s of the southern Lake District.

The'mosses' formed on peat bogs around the margins of Morecambe Bay support a different vegetation, often now turning to pine or birch woodland Rusland Moss (occupying what was once a shallow lake) and Roudsea Wood are examples. Finally, plants of the lake fringes include the common reed and tall herbs such as yellow loosestrife, together with the white water Lily, shore weed and quiIIwort in shallow water.

Trees and Forestry in the Lake District

The prehistoric flora of much of the National Park was sessile oak wood, well adapted to the thin and acidic soils which are characteristic of the area. On soils derived from the encircling limestones, however, a richer flora based on ash, hazel, elm, lime and perhaps yew, with a varied ground cover, was common. Nearer the lakes and streams willow and alder were more likely to be present, while pine and birch dominated the poorer soils and the uplands.

Today, much of this 'natural' broad leaved woodland has gone, and except where a forestation has taken place the higher ground can offer only single trees or small patches of woodland, with juniper shrubs (dwarf in exposed sites or at high altitude), rowan, holly, hawthorn and hazel predominant.

The reasons for the loss of woodland are complex and include the effects of grazing by sheep and rabbits, burning to improve the quality and increase the quantity of pasture, and felling to provide the raw materials for the charcoal and woodland industries.

Lake District woodlands and places to stay

Places to stay in the Lake District include luxury hotels with hot tubs , steam showers , saunas , Jacuzzi , steam rooms, gyms , work out , bed and breakfast accommodation, guesthouses and a wide range of campsites with sports activities , biking , hiking , trekking , mountain climbing and romantic hotels in Windermere, Bowness, Grasmere, Keswick and Coniston.

There is, however, still a substantial area of woodland totalling about 10 per cent of the land area of the National Park and this results from a number of initiatives. The role of the Forestry Commission in afforesting large areas is well known and formerly attracted much criticism, but they were preceded by 'romantic' landowners who replanted areas of open fell in the nineteenth century, notably with larch (on the slopes around Derwentwater and Bllttermere, for example), and by the Manchester corporation, who planted spruce, Douglas fir and larch to reduce runoff and stabilise the shpes around their new reservoir of Thirlmere in the early years of the twentieth century.

The Forestry Commission and the Lake District

The Forestry Commission's interwar contribution was to plant large blocks of land in Grizedale, Ennerdale and around the Whinlatter Pass and elsewhere, and to do it unimaginatively and without much regard for its effects on the landscape. Public opposition to this largescale and unsympathetic afforestation did, however, lead to an agreement between the Forestry Commission and the Council for the Protection of Rural England, under the terms of which the Commission agreed not to encroach further on the bare fells ides in the heart of the Lake District.The agreement has generally worked well and is still in effect, though one consequence has been to increase the rate of afforestation in the outlying fells.


The present day broad leaved woodlands include one or two apparent survivals of the 'natural' woodlands, such as the Keskadale oaks, high on the stabilised scree slopes of a Newlands side valley, small and usually with multiple stems but possibly representing a remnant of the native forest; mixed woodlands such as those in High Furness, which include oak, ash, elm and birch, and which were often previously coppiced; and amenity woodlands, usually planted in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries on the larger estates, where larch and beech are also represented.

The means of ensuring the survival of these woodlands has become a matter of concern, and rightly so since they make a major contribution to the landscape quality of the Lake District.

The woodlands of Borrowdale

The woodlands of Borrowdale are of special interest, and are one of the most important natural Lake District attractions - so much so that some have attracted international attention. They are generally the descendants of woodland formerly exploited for timber or charcoal. A particularly fine example is Johnny Wood, between Seatoller and Rosthwaite and best approached across Folly Bridge, a fine packhorse bridge over the Derwent. It is protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, though a nature trail has been developed by the Lake District Naturalists Trust.

The tree cover is predominantly oak, though the occasional larch is present together with patches of sycamore and shrubby rowan, holly and hazel. The wetter ground has largely been colonised by the more tolerant birch.

The special feature of Johnny Wood is the remarkable variety of ferns, liverworts and mosses, wet habitat plants which succeed because the rainfall in this upper part of Borrowdale is so high. The ferns are predominant around rocky outcrops or where the floor of the oakwoods is bouldery or screeladen, while the liverworts and mosses (mostly of species confined to the damp Atlantic coasts of Europe) do best on the thin, damp soils with high humidity provided by the dense canopy.

The typical woodland ground cover, especially in the mixed and amenity woodlands, is well illustrated by Haws Wood near Boot in Eskdale, acquired from the Forestry Commission by the Friends of the Lake District in 1986. The wood includes oak on rocky knolls, with a ground cover of bilberry and mosses, and larch, birch and sitka spruce with, especially on the fringes, a carpet of wood sorrel, common dog violet and creeping soft grass. Other woods and probably Hows Wood before the conifers were planted in 1970 also support bluebells, primroses, wood anemones, foxgloves and meadowsweet.

Lake District accommodation

Wherever you decide to stay in the Lake District you will not be far from the beautiful countryside, the attractions and, of course the lakes at Windermere, Coniston and Buttermere, with a wide range of accommodation to choose from, including romantic hotels and luxury hotels.