Scrap-metal

One calls scrap-metal the area where the fields and the meadows are enclosed by ground liftings carrying of the Haie S or the lines of trees which mark the limits of pieces of unequal sizes and different forms, and where the habitat is generally dispersed in farms and hamlets.

The scrap-metal occupied a big part of the frontage European Atlantique , but it was also present inside the grounds. One still finds some in the North-West of the the United Kingdom and in France in certain parts of the Brittany, the Normandy and punctually in north. The “Norman scrap-metal” thus almost became a Tautologie. When it is reconstituted and returned " compatible" with industrial agriculture and his agricultural machines of big size, one speaks sometimes about néobocage . It can be associated with a Agroforesterie. It is an important component of the ecological Réseau. Its overlapping networks of meadows; Hedge S, slope and ditches is as many elements playing a part of biological Corridors.

Etymology and history of the word

The words scrap-metal ( Bôqueige in Burgundy, boscatge in Provence, boscage in Spain) would come from a form boscaticum , coming from Latin boscus or boscum (wood) which gave wood , bosc , thicket , form which had to precede frequent boss as former French, can be introduced or Co-introduces by the Scandinavians in Normandy. The old word Boscage or scrap-metal indicated glazing bar a long time, rather than a network of hedges (Auia virgulta evokes the “ Bocages where one cannot pass ”), Wace, in its " Romance of Rou " or " Novel of Rol (Rollonau), in XIIe century, distinguishes the inhabitants from wood and those of the plains “ Li païsan and unpleasant Li, Cil LED boscage and lash LED lime pit the plain”. at the 13th century, the scrap-metal still evokes a wild medium “ Close to him estoit wolf are boscages, If Li has fact sovent anui the Rose (Ren. 7398)”; “ If do not have my cure of hermitages; I laissié serve and scrap-metals (11906)”; “ Cil of Chartrouse is quite wise; Because it lessié the bochage Por aprochier the cheap bone ” (RUTEB., 167).

The word was written boucaige in XVIe and the 16th centuries. (Palsgrave note that it was pronounced “boquaige”).

According to the first Dictionary of the French Academy, (1694), the word scrap-metal “ has the mesmes significances that Bosquet ”. The “critical Dictionary of the French language” (Marseilles, Mossy 1787-1788) specifies that the word, like the adjective “ OF THE WOODLANDS, ERA ” indicates “ glazing bar ” and that “ It is of use only in Poetry, either that of the woodlands ” (“ loueroit like you them Nymphes of the woodlands ” (Gresset)).

The word is not any more with the mode in Paris; the Academy specifies that “ of the woodlands ages: it is that the kind of Poetry where it étoit employed, is enough out of mode. However, in Pastoral, a Poet would make use of it without scruple, and one would not make him a crime of it”. At the 18th century, the dictionary gives him a more positive connotation: glazing bar, or shaded and picturesque place ; In the shade of a scrap-metal. In the scrap-metal. Green scrap-metal. Scrap-metal fresh, pleasant, delicious (Dictionary of the French Academy, 6th edition (1832-5)). For the 8th edition of the Dictionary of the French Academy (1932-5), the word scrap-metal keeps the same direction and “especially gets busy in poetry” . The contemporary notion of mesh network of hedges finally was not widely diffused that in the years 1960-1980 at the time of the fast regression of the scrap-metal destroyed by the regrouping and the urbanization, via alarms of the scientific circles and environmental protection.

A landscape adapted to the agricultural activity

the scrap-metal is ideally adapted to the fouragère production and the breeding in pastures, and also offers fruit-bearing resources, out of game and mushrooms much more important than in the case of the Openfield.
a better retention and protection of the Water as well as a strong limitation of agricultural erosion are other remarkable aspects of the bocage landscape. In occident, when they are made up, the framed pieces of hedges, slopes and/or low walls and ditch contributed to preserve clear and pure rivers where salmons and sea trouts remained abundant a long time.

- At the time of the wet Season, the ditch drains the grounds. The slope blocks the streaming, and thus the deterioration or the destruction of the cultivable ground. The hedge protects from the Vent, likely to devastate cultures. In Brittany, in many cases, the ditches are sufficiently broad to form sunken lane.

- At the time of the Saison dries, the ditch hydrates the ground, and thus increases the output of the agricultural production.

It is a landscape in which one does not note or few invasions or biological pullulations, because the hedges shelter many regulating animals of the insects.
the hedge also allows, in the less opened economies, a contribution of Bois of heating and construction. It often shelters fruit trees, which supplement the production of the fields.
the scrap-metal requires a constant maintenance however. Thus, slopes and low walls must be repaired, the hedges must be cut and restored where time or the cattle degraded them.

Moreover, protection against the wind and the sun, if advantageous in summer, can increase the number of day of freezing, while attenuating the climatic shocks. This maintenance was to some extent compensated by the production of fodder and work, firewood, which are not attractive any more today for the farmers and often require to be flarings on the spot.

Ecological interest

The old scrap-metal is a kind of “forest linear” densément with a grid which knew to preserve relics of the ancient or prehistoric forest (one often speaks in these cases about patrimonial hedges). It offered to the species edges and clearings and the small forest species a habitat of substitution.
C' is a resilient ecosystem particularly where the pullulations (of rats, mouse, slugs, insects and other parasites of the cultures or livestock) are choked at their origin by their many predatory always present in the network of hedges. The disease of the Orme S (Graphiose, conveyed by a Scolyte) nevertheless made disappear from the million these trees at the end of the 20th century)

Scrap-metal and wood

If the large prehistoric forest for a long time disappeared from the areas of the woodlands, certain trees of the scrap-metal (Orme S, Chêne S) were regularly pruned. They produced particularly hard and resistant rectilinear trunks, that one in particular used as beams and for the frames of these areas where they preserved without pesticides nor treatments generally well.

- the scrap-metal is eligible with certain écosociolabel S such as FSC.

- In certain countries, it can be the subject of protection as a biological Corridor or landscape patrimonial element (the Loi Landscape allows for example the classification of hedges for their protection in France).

Contemporary upheaval

The Neolithic is regarded as the period of the beginnings of the Agriculture: a climate more lenient as well as the probable reduction in the resources of hunting and gathering, lead the populations gradually to set and undertake the domestication of plant species and animal.

The scrap-metal appeared during the first clearings and brought a masterly response to the degradation of the loess like grounds and the erosion of the grounds.

With the the Middle Ages, the increase in the requirements out of cereals, which constitute the base of the human consumption, involves great clearings. After 1100, the lords are interested by the ground profit and organize themselves the operations of clearing. One thus starts to set up fields of small size, squares, delimited by enclosures who are installed in the median parts of hills, where the ground is richest, in order to retain it, and in the bottom of the Vallée S, where the ground is hydromorphic.

Between 1400 and 1500, the noble ones seize the undivided grounds (not-owners) located in top of the hills, to develop to with it smallholding S made up of open fields. The Araire makes its appearance and imposes square pieces.

Starting from 1900, the scrap-metal is supplemented by of the same fields cuts and drawn with the chalk line.

At the time contemporary, the scrap-metal is upset. The hedge, the slopes and the hydraulic network of ditches and ponds associated, the three elements which are complementary to create the richest scrap-metals and ecologically most stable are also threatened by the same causes; appearance of the Tractor S and large agricultural machinery, and increasingly large pieces. The hedges, cumbersome, are destroyed by the farmers or at the time of the Remembrement S. One wishes broad passages, the ways and ditches are increased, put in culture or are left with the abandonment. The hedge loses its legal character.

Dans the years 1860-1990, the scrap-metal regressed or disappeared on most of its former surface: one estimates at 40 000 km hedges destroyed in the only department of the Finistere and 2 million km for the whole of France, not without consequences.
La management of water was some upset. The destruction is suspected of being at the origin of Inondation S and more frequent and exacerbated drynesses, pullulations of insects known as “ harmful ”, of water pollution and impoverishment of the soil by the streaming and erosion. Sometimes, the only preserved hedges are directed in the direction of the slopes. The rebuilding is locally subsidized, for example by agri-environmental measurements, allowing the restoration of the particular ecosystem which the hedges shelter.

Scrap-metals in France

Scrap-metals of the West (Brittany, Normandy, Maine, the Vendée primarily), developed during the Middle Ages, the area not having seen penetrating the systems of rotation that one meets in the openfield Is. They were packed with 18th and 19th centuries, then underwent the regroupings with.
Scrap-metal of Thiérache, whose first cores date from the 14th century, in an area where peasants critical and is carried to agrarian individualism. They were also packed, following the suppression of the collective constraints and with the development of the dairy breeding, with S. They also underwent regroupings.
the scrap-metal the Avesnois in the north of France was primarily reconstituted at the 19th century, with a genetic diversity, Aubépine S in particular poorer for this reason. The hedges are there often lower, narrow, regular and homogeneous that in the other French scrap-metals. The hedges almost disappeared between Maubeuge and the Hedge from Avesnes (red zone touched by the First World War), but they remain more in the south; hedge of Avesnes to Thiérache. This area now classified Regional natural park was at the 19th century very producing of apples, but from many apple trees were torn off at the beginning of the 20th century.
Burgundian Scrap-metal , which is also recent. It was set up, at the 19th century, with the bovine specialization of the area and the development of the race charolaise. It is a geometrical scrap-metal, which points out that of Thiérache and the Avesnois, but whose hedges - flat - richer, are made various thorn-bushes, elder trees, sloes and willows. One finds it starting from Moulins (03) with the Bocage bourbonnais, in departments of Burgundy strictly speaking (58, 71 and 21), but also in the Loire and Haute-Loire.

the Bocage charolais and Brionnais is one as of these oldest components, dating as for it from the old mode.

Scrap-metals of the Country of Bray (interior High-Normandy), scrap-metal of the Bolted. This last, made up after the clearings of the the Middle Ages, preserved more than one thousand of ponds which are additional elements of Biodiversité by supporting the blooming of a fauna and a specific flora: (Batrachian S, iris, watery Mint…).
One finds also structures Semi-of the woodlands in Charente and the Limousin.

Scrap-metal in Belgium (Walloon region)

The scrap-metal landscape is found in Belgium, in the Pays of Herve or plate of Herve. This undulating area is between the Meuse and the Vesdre, in the east of the Province of Liege. It covers an approximate surface of 450 km ². It is characterized by the omnipresence of the meadows, meadows, orchards, often surrounded by hedges, ponds. The dispersion of the habitat is total there: the villages gather the collective functions but the farms are dispersed through all the Finage, which is made possible by the presence of innumerable water points. Because of the increasing Urbanization and Industrialization of agriculture and breeding, this landscape is degraded today. Formerly area of cereal culture, the Pays of Herve was reconverted in zone herbagère and dairy in XVIe century. At that time indeed, the area was isolated from the remainder of its political territory by the Principauté of Liege. To avoid paying the taxation of cereals imposed by the latter, the Between-Vesdre-and-Meuse was reconverted into the breeding and arboriculture. Current productions: fodder productions, pork-butcheries, dairy productions (butter, Cheese of Herve, cream, etc), cider, Syrup of Liege, fruits, small animal breeding. Important boroughs of the Country of Herve: Aubel, Herve. The Pays of Herve also covers the communes of Blegny, Dalhem, Thimister-Clermont, Olne, Plombières, Soumagne.

History

The Breton scrap-metal was illustrated in the history of the Chouannerie in France. The chouans were protected a long time there from the armies of the pig mould.

At the time of the Second world war, during the Battle of Normandy, it is the Norman scrap-metal which was the theater of engagements between the allied armies (following the unloading). The network of the hedges, slope and ditches returning the passage of the tanks more difficult and multiplying possibiltés to hide for the two camps.

The English particular case

In the south-east of the England, in a ground Sediment surface which, traditionally, does not shelter this type of landscape, was established a scrap-metal resulting from the movement of Enclosure .
England having developed at the 17th century an ambitious maritime policy, started to import the Russian Blé , less expensive than English corn. The enclosure supported the breeding Mouton S and limited the production of corn anglais.
Among the consequences of this policy, the rural migration was amplified, the peasants, from now on without work, leaving downtown to become workmen.

Other directions

The word " bocage" was used as metaphor to indicate the pubic hairs at the woman, at the 19th century in the United Kingdom, like the word bush (bush).

See too

Random links: