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Starting at the end of the Joni Mitchell song, what illusions do I have about brambles? I suppose my illusion is that they are on our side somehow. On the good side: “blackberrying”, an Autumn harvest tradition for pies and jams with added nostalgia. But what do we have on the bad side? The bristling, barbed and boldly invasive bramble.

We have plenty of invasive plants on the Common: willowherb, bracken, nettles - not to mention the ones that have arrived unwanted, cast upon us by careless gardeners. We have just, after many years, finally got rid of the Himalayan balsam but the one I’m never concerned about is the dear old bramble.

However, it depends upon what you want from brambles: foresters, land managers and biologists of many disciplines have their particular attitudes to them. For foresters there is a lot of for and against. They protect regenerating seedlings from browsing deer, or shelter mice and rabbits which eat the seeds. They readily colonise disturbed ground and respond with frustrating vigour to the opening of the canopy; there is ever a reaction to any action. Biologists recognise the cover they provide for many species, especially small bird species while the larvae of holly blue, green hairstreak, grizzled skipper butterflies feed on bramble.

So, what should we do to manage them? They send their tendrils to creep out over paths and we know that when we open up rides or remove the willows which grow out over paths we will be giving them the opportunity to tangle the openings. Clearly we cut them back from the paths but we don’t worry if they fill the gaps left by clearing. In this we may have found an ally in that our main concern these days has become the rosebay willowherb. A very pretty plant and one that shelters much small wildlife in its closely packed stems, particularly the larvae of the elephant hawk moth. But it is very invasive and hard to control, readily colonizing bare ground where we would prefer grassland to develop.

Controlling brambles is like much else: the sweaty way, chop it down and dig it up; the noisy way, strim it; the chemical way, spray with herbicide. A salutary photo series in a Royal Forestry Society article shows bramble sprayed, dying and then being replaced a few months later in the bare soil by rosebay willowherb. None of these methods are permanent. Which leaves the ecological method - the use of light levels – and I think you can guess which one we prefer.

In conclusion, it depends upon where the bramble grows. It makes a good sheltering barrier to the wooded edges but where it encroaches on the paths and spreads out onto the pasture we strim it and stack it away in the undergrowth. Where it’s associated with the woodland clearings we let it grow, to be slowly and naturally limited by the development of the canopy.

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