When William the Conqueror surveyed his new kingdom in 1086, from lowland to upland, Britain was covered with trees. In low-lying Yorkshire, the East Anglian Fens and the Somerset Levels, wet woods of tall white willows and alders lined great rivers. On windswept highlands in the Pennines, north Yorkshire and Cumbria, goat willows shed fuzzy catkins in downy blankets and dead leaves of wintertime moor-grass formed dense carpets.
Along the western coast of Britain were extensive Atlantic rainforests: ancient, twisting trees enmeshed with boulders, all richly clothed in mosses, lichens and ferns. Now largely forgotten, these enigmatic forests once clad the lower slopes of hills and clifftops.
