25 Sep 2023 at 15:44
Twente fluttering elms, Limburg pepper trees, Frisian laurel willows and South Holland barberries. The last wild trees and shrubs in the Netherlands are endangered and rare. But every province still has its specialties, according to a new overview from the Cultural Heritage Agency.
In 1936, Hendrik Marsman wrote a famous poem about the Dutch landscape from the south of France. ‘Memory of Holland’ begins as follows:
“Thinking of Holland, I see wide rivers flowing slowly through endless lowlands, rows of unthinkably thin poplars standing like high plumes on the horizon.”
It underlines what the most characteristic tree in the Netherlands is: the poplar. But which one actually?
How the wild poplar disappeared from poplar land
The towering tree that should actually be along the Dutch rivers is the black poplar. But this ancient poplar, up to 40 meters high, has become a rarity.
What then is the tree that we see everywhere nowadays in long rows on the horizon? That turns out to be the ‘Canada poplar’. The name already reveals that it is not native. It is not even a ‘wild tree’ anywhere, not even in Canada. The Canada poplar is a cross between the native black ‘primeval poplar’ and a North American species.
Like many hybrids, the Canada poplar is largely infertile. The large-scale spread is due to the planting of cuttings from the same tree. This also means that the genetic variation in the species is very small.
Great gene diversity in the last remnants of wild trees
And that narrow genetic variation is a risk. Most poplars are currently healthy, but we know from other species that things can go wrong. For example, elms and ash trees are threatened by fungal pests. The smaller the genetic variation, the greater the risk that such a pest will affect all trees of a species in one fell swoop.
It is one of the reasons why the last remnants of wild trees in the Netherlands can count on extra attention. Staatsbosbeheer is trying to secure and cultivate the seeds so that these endangered trees can also return through new plantings.
And slowly, attention is also being paid to better protection of the last wild trees themselves, which often grow unnoticed in the landscape as small tufts. We should also view those trees as cultural heritage, tree expert Bert Maes previously told NU.nl.
And the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands responds to this. Together with tree experts such as Maes and Lodewijk van Kemenade, the government agency a list of species of interest per province drawn up, which was published on Monday.
Supermarkets full of pears, but in the meantime the ‘primeval pear’ is almost extinct in the Netherlands. This also applies to the wild apple, which was still found everywhere in the Middle Ages. Tree experts also speak of cultural heritage. Photo: Getty Images
Forest strategy poses a threat to old forest edges
Van Kemenade is concerned about the government’s forest strategy. To help reduce CO2 emissions, the Netherlands must have 10 percent more forests by 2030. Not only are large numbers of trees from other origins still being planted, these tufts of new forest are also often growing against existing forest cores.
That is a threat to unique species of forest edges, says Van Kemenade: shrubs and small trees that need a little more light. They form the ‘mantle’ around forests, and cannot thrive in a closed, dark forest.
This applies, for example, to the wild pear. All supermarket varieties are descended from it, but the original version is almost extinct in the Netherlands. There is only a small group at Winterswijk. Van Kemenade advises not to allow new plantings to be directly connected to such ecologically and culturally-historically valuable forest cores.
You can also be too late, as in ‘millennial den’
Landschap Overijssel is one of the first provincial nature managers to take up the challenge. All nature reserves will be there carefully checked, in search of remaining ancient forest cores. And to endangered wild species that may need extra protection. Van Kemenade is one of the project’s advisors.
If you see a large pine cone somewhere, it is a reminder that you can also take action too late. Those pine cones fall off the Scots pine. Together with the yew and juniper, it is one of the three native coniferous trees in the Netherlands.
But all Scots pines that now form Dutch forests are descended from plantations from other countries. The probably last wild Scots pine in the Netherlands was the ‘thousand-year-old pine’ near the Veluwe town of Wolfheze. In 2006, the 22-meter-high tree fell, and the “Dutch wild pine” officially became extinct.
2023-09-25 13:44:28
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