QUODITCH EDUCATION DEVON
QUODITCH MOOR NATURE
RESERVE
WHAT IS CULM
GRASSLAND?
Unimproved pasture on
the Culm Measures! There, you've got your answer!
Surely, there's more to
it than that, so if you want to find out more, you'll have to read
more!
In Devon we have a
great variety of scenery, but what causes it? To say "The answer lies
in the soil" is partly correct, but how did the soil get there? We
need to look even deeper.........You'll need your wellies
too!
If we look below the
soil, we start to find the answers. Some of the answers come from the
rocks beneath. As they erode or wear away, the fine particles that
are left, together with the remains of plant and animal life combine
to make the soil. Culm is a local name, given to rocks that lie
beneath the soil in a very large part of Devon. From the River Exe
valley, the Culm Measures extend westward, between the massive, hard
granite outcrop of Dartmoor and the softer red sandstones of Exmoor,
right through to the Atlantic coast. The area that we are
particularly interested in at Quoditch lies on rocks known as the
Crackington Formation. These rocks are a mixture of shales, slates
and sandstones, that were laid down in Carboniferous times, about 300
million years ago. These particular rocks have given rise to acid
soils that are poorly drained in most places, but in addition to
this, the high rainfall in the south-west of England has made the
land in this area very wet and it still stays comparatively wet, even
in the driest of summers.
There are some other
similar areas in Britain, but only in southern Wales and south west
Scotland, where the land is not known as Culm, but as Rhos pasture
which is Welsh for wet pasture. On a world-wide scale, a part of
north-west France is the only other closely related area, but there
might be similar areas in western Ireland, north-west Spain and
Portugal.
Culm Pasture or
Grassland has a very distinctive appearance. From the air, it is
really easy to identify it. Its wildness (or maybe untidiness is a
better way of describing it), colour, comparatively small field sizes
and scrub and woodland surrounding the grassland make it stand out
from the surrounding land.
There are a wealth of
plants that have adapted to living in these conditions, and because
of their success, a multitude of invertebrates live there also. These
plants and animals together attract yet other animals as well a wide
variety of birdlife to these areas.
In Culm Pasture, there
is a great variety of grasses. If there is grass, you can graze
animals there. Clear a few trees, clear a lot of scrub and you have a
simple field.
Culm Pasture is a
man-made environment that has sustained people through the cattle it
has fed. But space, in times past was not the problem it is today.
Life went on very much the same from year to year, decade to decade
and century to century.
You can imagine that
for people trying to farm in conditions like this, the living was not
very good. Imagine it. Poor soils produced poor crops, poor crops
produced poor yields, damp conditions rotted plants, so what could
you grow successfully? Try producing animals. There would be more
success there, but poor grass produced poor quality food for animals
and so you would need more land to let your animals graze. Sheep
wouldn't be very happy because in constant damp conditions, their
feet rot. It seems you're left with cattle, but the quality of their
milk would not give you a very good income, so beef production would
be the most profitable way to use the land.
When people wanted to
make more money from the land, their first priority was to drain it,
plough it and fertilise it, thus totally destroying it. Some people
inherited Culm Pasture, but they did not want to farm it as their
ancestors had. They did not want to farm. In many cases, the fields
were just left and with no management, the land quickly reverted to
woodland.
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