[HN Gopher] What the world can learn from Britain's humble hedge
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What the world can learn from Britain's humble hedge
Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 44 points
Date : 2021-11-25 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (knowablemagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (knowablemagazine.org)
| robotmay wrote:
| This'll likely make me sound like a lunatic, but when I go abroad
| from the UK, hedgerows are one of the top 3 things I miss (the
| other two being beer and tea). They're just so ubiquitous when
| travelling here, and they make the world feel a bit smaller.
|
| As a wildlife photographer I probably take 75% of my photos of
| birds in hedges. I don't have to camp out for hours - I just walk
| along the hedgerows aimlessly.
|
| Also, if other countries don't have hedges, what happens to the
| grotty pornography magazines that dwell natively in the
| hedgerows? Are they in some sort of meta-state of quasi-
| existence? A theoretical hedgerow porn mag?
| sirdavidof wrote:
| How unique is this to Britain? Do other countries have similar
| hedge density?
| mro_name wrote:
| when flying in to Gatwick (LGW) from MUC 10 yrs ago, the land
| looked like an image of microscopic cell structures - the
| hedges were omnipresent. Bavaria knocked down most hedges in
| the 70ies during "land consolidation" to optimise agricultural
| land for industrial cultivation:
|
| Coherent and larger patches per owner, rectangular, enterable.
|
| Land here seen from above looks tiled. Not cells.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| It certainly wasn't unique to Britain at all.
|
| Many of these hedges were removed with farming mechanisation
| and industrialisation, though, and have completely disappeared
| in many places.
| masklinn wrote:
| In many places they were torn down following mechanization as
| they're inconvenient when tractoring about.
|
| I know that some places are starting to incentivise planting
| them again, because bare fields let wind race and as soon as it
| rains a bit hard half the field ends on the road blocking it.
| Angostura wrote:
| I don't have a definitive answer, but I've flown to quite a few
| places around the world and coming back to the UK, the
| patchwork of fields and hedgerows is really _quite_
| distinctive. I can 't think of anywhere else that really has
| them.
| mc32 wrote:
| I believe Normandy France, if not a lot of western France also
| has hedgerows "bocage".
| zabzonk wrote:
| Normandy is English! Or vice versa.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| I've seen similar hedges in northern france, particularly
| Brittany
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I grew up in Illinois. The fields there are often surrounded on
| all sides by a narrow woodland area, sometimes only 10s of feet
| thick.
|
| I was told the woodland areas are maintained as wind barriers
| for the otherwise flat plains. Not sure how true that is, but
| they're definitely home to normal woodland fauna: dear,
| squirrels, rabbits, turkey, etc.
| c54 wrote:
| My brain is apparently poisoned, I thought for sure this was
| about financial hedging, or maybe brexit as a hedge against the
| rest of Europe, or some other political-economy hot-take garbage.
|
| Anyways, glad it's about plants. Happy Thanksgiving, all!
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Anyways, glad it's about plants.
|
| confused me, what with there being nothing about foreign agents
| being used to manipulate the media, but then I realized it was
| about vegetative matter. :)
| tomxor wrote:
| > then I realized it was about vegetative matter
|
| Manipulating vegetative matter into homogeneous shapes. Not
| entirely dissimilar then?
|
| On topic... While we still have a lot, we have also _lost_ a
| lot of our hedgerows to commercial farming practices. So
| Britain aren 't exactly great examples either. These are
| supposedly insect habitats - insects which have all but
| vanished in recent years which will no doubt have a large
| ecological impact.
| hanoz wrote:
| The etymological connection being - one you plant as a boundary
| to your land, the other you plant as a boundary to your losses.
| blocked_again wrote:
| Yeah. I thought Britian bought a lot of BTC to hedge against
| inflation.
| TickCount wrote:
| I thought at first this was about hedge in the linguistic sense
| (which is closest in meaning to "humble" of all the senses of
| that word)
| seltzered_ wrote:
| To frame this in a different way, how would woodland areas (or
| what the article is calling hedgerows) work before the Enclosure
| Movement? Would there have been more diversity? A different
| approach to agriculture?
|
| I find this article a bit odd in it's approach (although
| supportive of more hedgerow area) and in inquiry of where the
| concept of hedgerows came from.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| I don't think hedges are really woodland areas? It's only a
| small line of hedge for many acres of corn or grass or
| something.
| multjoy wrote:
| Hedgerows pre-date the enclosure act by centuries, land has
| always been demarcated. The enclosure act relates to the
| takeover of common land.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying, didn't know that.
| FundementalBrit wrote:
| I knew a lot of farmers who managed to get rid of problem hedges
| during the height of the pandemic because local planning didn't
| respond within 42days when we had the first major lockdown.
| garrtt wrote:
| Hedging (1942) https://youtu.be/WoprVhpOKIk
| musicale wrote:
| Popup #1: Support Science Journalism!
|
| (who wouldn't want to, right?)
|
| Popup #2: Stay In The Know!
|
| (well I certainly do, right?)
|
| Popup #3: Explore More
|
| (wait, what was I doing here again?)
|
| <closes tab>
| tomgp wrote:
| Worth watching the short video embedded in the article to get an
| idea of what these hegerows look like in practice. The
| illustration makes them look like standard manicured garden
| hedges rather than the reality of impenetrable intertwined masses
| of different species. [edited to fix a typo]
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