Moorland - Heather Moorland

Heather Moorland

Along with heathland, moorland is the most extensive natural vegetation of the British Isles. The eastern British moorlands are similar to heaths but are differentiated by having a covering of peat. On western moors the peat layer may be several metres thick. Scottish ‘muirs’ are generally heather moors, but will also have extensive covering of grass, cotton-grass, mosses, bracken and under-shrubs such as crowberry; with the wetter moorland having sphagnum moss merging into bog-land.

There is uncertainty about how many moors were created by human activity. Rackham writes that pollen analysis shows that some moorland, such as in the islands and extreme north of Scotland, are clearly natural, never having had trees; whereas much of the Pennine moorland area was forested in Mesolithic times. How much the destruction of this forest was caused by climatic changes and how much by human activity is uncertain.