OS Map: Explorer OL2: Yorkshire Dales: southern & western areas The Quantock Hills are a sumptuous mix of woods and heathland, and the birthplace of Romantic poetry.
With poor sandy soils overlying chalk or clay, landscape features include heathland vegetation, small lakes, or meres, whose water level is variable, and plantations of trees.
New agricultural techniques brought wide areas of Breckland into permanent and stable agricultural use, while the spread of forest plantations obliterated much of the earlier heathland.
Much of the heathland has been laid to grass, and reclamation continues.
The terrain in the southeast, supporting woodlands, orchards, and Frisian cattle, is sandy heathland bordered by fens; some reclamation of peat areas continues.
The moor is mainly heathland used extensively for the grazing of sheep, cattle, and ponies.
Woodlands of Eucalyptus cover much of the eastern third of the continent, and a mosaic of remarkable temperate forests and Banksia heathland are found in the southwest.
While much of the region is predominantly grass and heathland, a number of other plants are also characteristic.
The area is predominantly heathland, grazed by cattle, sheep, and ponies, and is fringed by irregular fields.
Southeast of that undulating countryside, pebble strata underlie the barren heathland known as Cannock Chase.
The sands and gravels that underlie the area yield an acidic infertile soil supporting rough heathland, scrub, and pine forest.
