Should I be Horrified!

The picture below is a Google Earth screenshot of the Colden Valley. The dark dots in the heath above the plantation are young Sitka spruce trees. Self-sown in from plantations, Sitka spruce are gradually colonising our moorlands from the top of South Barrule to the upland road verges. This tree, originally from North America, is finding it quite likes the Isle of Man, but should the Isle of Man like it?

Sitka Spruce is the most common rainforest tree of the giant North American temperate rainforests; its their equivalent of our oak. Growing up to 100m high and living up to 700 years they are one of the planet's true giants.

They have been commercially grown for their timber on the Isle of Man for over 100 years and are planted over hundreds of acres of Manx hills to become the most common tree on the Island. Their attraction to foresters is they grow on poor soils and exposed sites; they grow straight and fast; and their timber is strong but lightweight. A typical commercial tree will be grown for 40-50 years before it is felled for timber.

In dense plantations they create a dark, somewhat lifeless woodland and have gained a well deserved notoriety among conservation circles for destroying all ecological interest where they are planted.

But listen out on a still summer day. You may hear a faint buzz from the canopy. These are hoverflies laying eggs for their greenfly-munching larvae, as spruce aphids can be abundant. These aphids also mean that dense plantations can have a surprising density of spiders and small birds, indeed young Sitka spruce plantations can be dense with nesting birds.

They do not always have to produce bleak plantation habitat either, look the picture gallery below from Manx plantations, they can be just as moss-covered as they would be in their native habitat.

Do they have a role for our developing Celtic rainforests?