HARVESTED HEATHER SHOOTS AS A RESOURCE FOR HEATHLAND RESTORATION

Large quantities of woody stems bearing seed capsules can be cut readi ly from heathland in the autumn and winter. Unlike other sources of he athland propagules, harvested shoots are a renewable resource which ca n be collected as part of routine conservation management. A study on heathland in Dorset, England compared the regeneration capacity of har vested heather shoots on both abandoned farmland and mineral wastes. H arvested shoots contained large numbers of seed of heather species. Se ed of other heathland plant species was present, but in a smaller prop ortion to that of intact vegetation. Variations in the amount of bioma ss and seed collected from different sites were due to differences in vegetation age and composition, management history and topography, as well as the time of year when collected. Adequate reinstatement of the heathland plant community could be achieved using as little as 0.6 kg m(-2) of harvested shoots, and it is possible to restore between two and five times the area harvested It is likely that the woody stems pr ovided suitable microsites for the germination and survival of heathla nd species and acted as a mulch, conserving moisture on skeletal miner al wastes and suppressing weed growth on farmland. The depth of harves ted shoots applied to the substrate was found to have a critical effec t on heather seedling germination and recruitment at the small scale.