BRITAIN'S LOST RAINFOREST

Cool and wet, the UK is perfect for temperate rainforests, rich with rare fungi and flora. But they cover less than one per cent of the country.

- ANDREW GRIFFITHS

THIS STORY IS A PLEA FOR the small things, those forms of life that prop up so much of our natural world, yet that we seldom notice. This is a story about lichens, mosses and liverworts.

We may be aware of these lower plants in the vaguest sense, yet for few of us do they become the focus of our attention. They came to the fore for me one day when I stood on the moors of my native Peak District and looked out on the blue-grey-green of the drystone walls stretching far into the distance.

A closer inspection of the wall beside me revealed that the blue-grey-green was not the colour of the stone at all, but of lichen. I wasn't looking at a stone wall, I was looking at miles upon miles of lichen on a stone wall.

Guy Shrubsole, writer and environmental campaigner, laughs as I describe my moment of epiphany. It is the same with trees, he tells me. "Have you ever seen tree bark? Or have you seen a covering of whatever particular lichen thrives in that area?" he asks.

"Particularly in a temperate rainforest, you're hardly seeing any tree bark; you're seeing a massive mat of mosses and liverworts and lichens, all jostling for supremacy - it is amazing!"

IT SO HAPPENED THAT TEMPERATE rainforest, a rarefied woodland habitat that is clinging on in parts of western Britain due to the (relatively) mild and wet climate, was very much on Shrubsole's mind when I spoke to him he was in the middle of writing a book about it. If the small things, such as lichens, mosses and liverworts, form the background music to much of the natural world, in the temperate rainforest that low hum bursts forth into the most wonderful orchestral crescendo of joy and delight.