I am walking through Glen Derry, a glen that cuts through the heart of the Cairngorms, coires (bowl-shaped valleys) sprawling along its flank. Ancient Scots pine trees sprawl along the valley, each grown into its own unique mass of large trunks, big limbs and open canopies.
They proudly sport blue-green needles and scaly, rusty red bark. A black grouse sends snow shivering from the canopy to the forest floor.
There is a fresh, savoury flavour to the air. Glen Derry has been draped in woodland for 8,000 years, and it is wooded with Scots pine.
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What is a Scots pine?
The iconic Scots pine is an evergreen conifer tree native to northern Europe
How big do Scots pine trees grow?
After 10 years these elegant pines can be three metres tall, after 100 years, they can grow to up to 30 metres. The largest pines in Scotland can reach a girth of over six metres.
How long have there been Scots pines in Britain?
A hardy ‘pioneer species’ (the first to colonise a barren ecosystem), Scots pine arrived in a wave across the British Isles as the last Ice Age ended. A pine stump in Glen Derry pokes forlornly out of the peaty moor. Last year, it was radiocarbon-dated and found to be 6,500 years old. It is joined in this glen by a great survivor, a gnarled, twisted thing sitting solemnly in ice-slicked scree: a tree 570 years old and counting, one of the two oldest pines in Scotland.
People and pines have lived together in Britain for millennia. In Glen Derry, this relationship is written into the landscape. In its 570 years, our great survivor has seen Scots pines retreat, cut out by people for fuel and timber (some trees in this glen still bear the axe marks of people, centuries ago, cutting out the heartwood to use as ‘fir candles’).
Why have pinewoods declined?
Pine, which grows tall and straight, has always been supremely valuable to people, for firewood, building materials and ship masts. This has been both a blessing and a curse. Pinewoods across Britain have been actively conserved for their timber for centuries, but they have also been exploited for commercial gain. As the industrial revolution took shape, dams and sawmills were built in Glen Derry, people made and lost fortunes from its timber, and the pinewoods retreated inexorably.
In the wake of this enterprise came Highland sport. For 200 years, artificially high numbers of red deer were kept for hunting – so many that pine seedlings were eaten before they could grow to maturity. The pinewoods aged and further fragmented.
As late as the Second World War, old-growth pinewoods were being felled for pit props. Native Caledonian pinewoods once covered as much as 15,000 square kilometres of Scotland. Through the millennia-long mixture of long-term climate change and human interventions, they now cover around 180 square kilometres. So the recent history of Scots pine has been one of decline. But that is, possibly, no longer the case.
How long can pines live for?
Scots pines generally 250 years, but they can live to be over 500 years old
How do Scots pine survive in tough conditions?
Scots pines sit well in a Scottish glen. Cold-adapted, tolerant of free-draining, acidic soils, Scots pine can thrive in places too tough for other trees. The pine’s skinny, leathery leaves are frost-resistant and allow it to photosynthesise in winter when deciduous trees have lost their leaves. Its thick bark makes it able to survive wildfires. Indeed, fire can create an excellent seedbed for young trees to grow in. For these reasons it is the most widely distributed pine species in the world, ranging from Scotland to Siberia, Scandinavia to Spain.
Scotland is the western limit of the species’ global range, and our Caledonian pinewoods, with their globally unique ecology and biodiversity, form part of the great boreal forest that encompasses the Northern Hemisphere.
Young pines grow straight and proud like a Christmas tree; when grown closely together
in plantations, pines can appear somewhat uniform, developing straight trunks that make excellent timber. But in the old-growth woods, where trees have the space to express themselves, they grow into centuries old ‘granny’ pines: gnarled, intricate, unique. Where the species reaches its altitudinal limit, high up in the mountains, trees grow into bushy forms, beaten down by wind.
The pinewoods of Scotland provide a last refuge in Britain for hundreds of boreal species, from capercaillie to tiny wood ants. Here in Glen Derry, I see a golden eagle soaring high. Given the choice, eagles will choose to build their massive eyries in these grand old trees.
The retreat of Scots pine from the rest of the British Isles makes our remaining fragments of Caledonian pinewoods all the more important. Faced with long-term climate change and the attention of people, native pinewoods can now only be found in Scotland.
But pine is a very useful timber tree, particularly as it grows well in sandy soils. Scots pine plantations can now be found in Norfolk, Surrey and Dorset.
One fascinating grove of granny pines sits in Kielder Forest in Northumberland. Recent research does not rule out the tantalising possibility that this is native, wild Scots pine, a final link to the boreal past: the ancient forest that once sprawled over Northern England.
Gallows Tree o’ Mar
Even in death, this tree is a great survivor. Not far from Glen Derry is the Gallows Tree o’ Mar. Full of macabre history and surrounded by legend, it finally died in 1922, but the local community propped it up with cables. It may be dead, but here it still stands to this day, more than a century later, providing a home for the many species that need deadwood to survive.
The Scots pine lives long in the memory of a landscape, too. A few miles away lies Glen Geusachan: the glen of the little pinewood. No pine has grown there for at least a century, but the name speaks to the resonance and importance of this tree in Highland life.
Will Scots pine survive?
In places, there is hope. Our 570-year-old tree is now surrounded by saplings for the first time in two centuries. Pinewoods are reclaiming ground in the Cairngorms at Mar Lodge, Glen Feshie and Beinn Eighe, thanks to intensive conservation efforts.
However, a recent survey by charity Trees for Life found the majority of our Caledonian pinewoods are ailing. Climate change is pushing Scots pine further up the mountains, as areas previously favoured by the species become too warm and too wet for it. The pernicious impacts of overgrazing (mainly by deer) stop seedlings from maturing. It is outcompeted by non-native forestry trees.
For all that, I wouldn’t bet against this great survivor. Scots pine has been part of our landscape and culture since the ice retreated. With our help, they will persist, wreathing our doors at Christmas, the fire from their wood keeping us warm in the long winter nights.
Did you know the Scots Pine was voted a Scottish national emblem?
What wildlife and fauna live and thrive in Scots pine forests?
1. Capercaillie
The great grouse capercaille of the pinewoods, famous for lekking, is sadly on the verge of extinction in the UK.
2. Red squirrel
Pinewoods provide a refuge for our native red squirrel from invasive grey squirrels.
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3. Pine hawkmoth
Weirdly, this large moth is a pine specialist that is not found in Scotland.
4. Twinflower
A delightful, delicate boreal wildflower, and the subject of intense conservation efforts across the Highlands.
5. Pine hoverfly
One of our most threatened species, it lays its eggs in the rotting deadwood of pine trees.
6. Crested tit
Listen out for the distinctive call of this bird high up in the canopy of the pinewoods of Speyside, Moray and Inverness.
7. Scottish crossbill
Specially adapted to live in Scotland’s pinewoods, where it prises cones open with its curved bill.
4. Ostrich-plume feather moss An intricate moss that forms carpets in pinewoods and birchwoods.
8. Creeping lady’s-tresses This orchid is a Scottish pinewood specialist, but can also be found in pine plantations in Norfolk.