Plantwatch: Britain’s ancient endangered rainforests

It may seem bizarre, but Britain has rainforests. These are temperate rainforests, far cooler than the hot steamy rainforests of the tropics, but just as wet and humid, drenched in huge downpours of rain and very clean air off the Atlantic, and mild all year round thanks to the equable ocean currents originating from the Gulf Stream.

These British rainforests are just as lush as the tropical ones, but far rarer. They are relics of the great Atlantic forests dating back to the end of the last ice ago 10,000 years ago, and some of the best surviving forests are in Scotland.

They are magical places like something out of Tolkien – gnarled old trees and rocks dripping in moisture and smothered in carpets of fungi, ferns, mosses, liverworts and lichens, with fabulous names such as the golden specklebelly lichen and greater fork moss, some of the species found nowhere else in the world.

Undervalued and largely forgotten, Scotland’s ancient rainforests are in trouble. They are not regenerating, threatened by overgrazing from deer and livestock, conifer plantations, invasive plant species and ash dieback disease.

The Atlantic Woodland Alliance of 16 charities and organisations has recently proposed eradicating the alien plant species, such as Sitka spruce and Rhododendron ponticum, to give the rainforests a chance to regenerate.