Plants and conflict landscapes – the Somme and beyond

Changing landscapes

Driving along the country roads – once punctuated by ruined villages surrounded by bustling networks of trenches and shell holes, scarred and pock-marked as if the Earth itself was suffering some kind of chronic disease – at first glance all is now serene. Yet the (still deadly) ‘iron harvest’ turned over each year in the fields, the numerous timeless cemeteries and memorials dotting the horizon and the lasting craters such as Lochnagar, leave anyone passing through in no doubt that this has become a ‘sacred and mythological land’, still full of the dead and dominated by remembrance.

At a physical level the landscape has endured turmoil, yet is once again much like its former (pre-WWI) self. Many of the concentrated patches of woodland take similar forms as they did before July 1916, whether regrown or replanted, appearing as inoffensive now as they (deceptively) did then.

At an experiential level, the landscape engaged the emotions of those who fought there just as it does with those who visit today, through its outward scars, memorials, and the numerous narratives of events which took place there. The primary driver for memorials immediately after the war was personal and national mourning, but their form and simple messages etched upon them now leave a significant challenge to the Commission for communicating meaning to modern society.

In a similar way, climate change and sustainable land management have led to a renewed Kew-CWGC interaction to consider science-based horticultural practices going forwards.

The interplay between the brief but forceful militarisation of the Somme, its reversion largely to agriculture and chalk downland, and multiple sites of remembrance, has determined its current morphology and our perceptions of the landscape.

Imagine your pleasure in seeing the first flower after a long winter. Now imagine that ‘winter’ spanned years and that you observe a colourful bloom emerge from a morass of twisted scarecrow-like trees and mud. It is unsurprising that service personnel throughout the centuries have actively gathered and carefully pressed small floral symbols of hope, for themselves, for loved ones back home, and even for the advancement of science (e.g. Wearn, 2015).

Post-war landscapes have frequently taken on new characteristics; both morphologically and through the way they are perceived (Wearn, 2016b). Conflict landscapes often also develop a flora quite unlike the surrounding regions. Cultural and political divides in the form of demilitarised zones, such as that between North and South Korea, have become areas of conservation importance. Acknowledgment of this resulted in a special publication for the 12th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (DEPG, 2014). Similarly, Kew’s botanical research within conflict landscapes in Angola is finding that land mine fields (from the civil war of 1975–2002) can also become unintentional protective zones for biodiversity. The presence of mines set in motion a series of interactions among conflict, livelihoods, settlement, development and conservation. Post-conflict mine field clearance is allowing resettlement, grazing and infrastructural development, often with associated declines in natural biodiversity resulting from environmental degradation. Furthermore, drawn out conflicts can render regions scientifically undiscovered, such that entire landscapes of new plant species may be found (e.g. Mabberley, 2009).