Habitats

Blanket Bog - a Bowland Speciality

Beautiful, wet and boggy - blanket bog is confined to cool, wet climates, so it should be no surprise to learn that the UK is one of the best places in the world to find this type of habitat. The formation of peat is a response to the very slow rate at which plant material (mostly Sphagnum mosses) decomposes under conditions of water logging. However, it can form on quite steep slopes and effectively cloak whole landscapes.

Blanket bog is by far the most extensive semi-natural habitat to be found in this country, with a total of approximately 1.5 million hectares, the majority of which is found in Scotland. England has approximately 215,000 ha of blanket bog, though much of it especially in the southern areas has been damaged by a combination of pollution, grazing, draining and burning.

Most blanket bogs began to form somewhere around 5000 to 6000 years ago and have been linked to the clearance of the original forest cover by early man, though this hasn’t been proved.

The Forest of Bowland lays claim to some of the best blanket bog in England and this supports a range of scarce and unusual plant and animal species. Perhaps one of the rarest is bog rosemary, which can be found in abundance in some areas of the Bowland fells. This wild plant, though less aromatic than its cultivated cousins, has beautiful pinky-white bell-shaped flowers, which can be seen in April and May.

Other special plants include the Cloudberry (a relative of the Wild Rose), Cranberry, Round-leaved Sundew and, of course, the wide range of Sphagnum mosses that eventually create the peat.

Birds such as the ever-present Meadow Pipit, Golden Plover, Dunlin, Curlew, Short-eared Owl, and Grouse can be found utilising this habitat throughout the spring and early summer.

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