Species: Alder
Compared to cities and countryside hedgerows, it's actually quite difficult to forage for colour on the high moor of Dartmoor. The earliest tree colonisers of Dartmoor after the glaciers were dwarf willow and birch. Dartmoor has seen the comings and goings of trees for thousands of years. Most
Field Notes
If you've been to Princetown, you no doubt will have travelled through many habitats to arrive in the village: lowland farms, valley forests, and the bleak high moor. If we were to take a sample from each of these places, they would have slightly different contemporary pollen assemblages.
Pollen Record
The history of plants on Dartmoor is known from only a handful of studies which have been conducted on Dartmoor. Each of the studies has taken a sliver of dirt, and then examined it under a microscope to find the pollen from the plants that have grown here over time.