HEATHER or LING
Calluna vulgaris (L) Hull
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Calluna vulgaris (family Ericaceae) is variously know as heather, Scotch heather or Ling. The scientific name derives from the Greek kalluno, 'to cleanse' an allusion to the shrub's use in making brooms - vulgaris means 'common'. Heather forms the climax vegetation of dry heathlands and moors.

Apart from coastal regions where salt spray and winds prevent the growth of scrub and trees, if the heathland is not grazed it will revert to scrub and, eventually, forest. If the heather is grazed too hard, however, it will be destroyed and grassland will replace the heath.

The 'bell heather' which frequently grows with ling is a heath and not a heather - it is properly known as fine-leaved heath. The tiny, narrow and smooth leaves occur in whorls of three and the bell-like flowers which appear in July and August and give it the name 'bell-heather', although the same purple colour as those of the heather, are much larger.

Although the leaves of the densely-branched heather are tiny, the plants cast a deep shade on the soil which keeps it cool and smothers other plants.

In the areas of Dorset, Hampshire and West Sussex heathlands where they exist, smooth snake bask in the sunshine to increase their body temperature often entwining themselves in the branches of heather where they are perfectly camouflaged to blend with the dappled background of sun and shade.

The leaves of the heather are small to present as small a surface as possible to the wind not only to reduce the dessicating effect of transpiration but to prevent the leaves being damaged by the wind. They are hairy and slightly rolled at the margins. Their arrangement on the stem is opposite and decussate - thay also overlap each other and this, with the rolling, helps to reduce transpiration.

The roots of both heathers and heaths penetrate deep below the soil's surface in search of water and food. The roots do not bear root hairs in the normal way but are, instead, clothed by a mass of fine fungal threads with which the plant lives in symbiosis - a fungus of this type is known as a mycorhiza. The mycorhiza grows into the surface layer of cells surrounding the root and their long and very fine threads cover a much wider area than ordinary root hairs would reach.

 Dodder: Cuscuta spp.
Heather and other plants such as
gorse are often covered in the pink thread-like stems of the plant parasite dodder which has no chlorophyl and makes no food of its own but taps into its host for all of tis nutrition.

Heather is prized in bee-keeping - the honey made by bees from heather being favoured by many people. Behives are frequently transported to moors and heaths before the heather flowers open in late summer for the purpose. The nectar which attracts the bees is secreted by eight little swellings between the stamens at the base of the flower.

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Other Species

BIRDS
The rare Dartford Warbler nests in heather.

BUTTERFLIES
Silver Studded Blue (Plebejus argus)

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Taxonomy

Kingdom: Plantae (plants)
   : (vascular plants)
         : Magnoliopsida (flowering plants)
         : Magnoliidae (dicotyledonous flowering plants)
             family:
                Calluna vulgaris, heather

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Locally

DORSET
Agglestone Heath, Isle of Purbeck
Alder Hills Nature Reserve, Parkstone, Poole

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