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| North Pennines |
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| Habitat: Blanket bog (of national significance) |
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Blanket bogs form a mantle of peat not only in wet hollows, but also over large expanses of the undulating land surface. Their only source of water and nutrients is rainfall. The vegetation is dominated by Sphagnum bog mosses and heath species.
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Blanket bog is widely developed in the North Pennines Natural Area. The region's very bestareas of blanket bog display a vegetation which is virtually identical to that of the raisedmires which may once have occurred in the lowlands. Because their development requiresrain, they are found on plateaux and gently convex summits all over the wetter parts of theNatural Area blanketing the hills from Stainmore in the south to Whitfield and HexhamshireCommons in the north. More than 46,710 ha of blanket bog occur in all, making this themost abundant of any semi-natural vegetation type in the Natural Area. If the modified bogsare included, many of which still retain the capacity to revert to more typical, better-qualityblanket bog, this figure rises to more than 58,019 ha.
A typical tract of blanket bog in the North Pennines would contain most, if not all, of thefollowing species covering large areas or occurring frequently: heather, cross-leaved heath,hare's-tail cottongrass, bilberry, broad-leaved cottongrass, cloudberry, deergrass, crowberry,bog asphodel, and the mosses Sphagnum papillosum, Sphagnum capillifolium, Sphagnum recurvum, Pleurozium schreberi and Hypnum jutlandicum. There would be few other flowering plants, though the range of mosses, liverworts and lichens might sometimes be extensive).
The quality of a blanket mire is often judged by the extent of Sphagnum mosses. In some of the best areas in the North Pennines, for example on High Cotherstone Moor (Teesdale),these form extensive carpets; the characteristically wine-coloured Sphagnum gellanicum is usually prominent. Bog rosemary, cranberry and particularly large amounts of cross-leavedheath also distinguish this type which is less common than the typical type listed above.
One characteristic of blanket bog is its surface patterning. Although the bogs of the NorthPennines do not show the pronounced and varied patterning seen in the far north of Scotland,they do contain some depressions and runnels filled with lawns of Sphagnum. One of themost characteristic species of such places is Sphagnum cuspidatum, well-known to botanists because it is said to resemble a drowned kitten.
Occasionally, the depressions are large enough to support bog pools or small tarns. Oftenthese will include some of the following: Sphagnum cuspidatum, broad-leaved cottongrass, Sphagnum recurvum, bottle sedge, bogbean, common sedge and round-leaved sundew.
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