Wistman's Wood on Dartmoor, with its stunted moss-covered oaks, is often thought of as being moribund. Yet the wood has doubled in size thanks to a temporary reduction in grazing pressures. All photos: Harper Collins
The 'lonely wood of Wistman' has given rise to many legends and tales of gothic horror. The 'Wisht hounds' said to haunt it probably inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'
The Dizzard in Cornwall, an ancient rainforest of gnarled and shrunken oaks, is thought to be thousands of years old
Ballachuan Wood on the Isle of Seil, western Scotland, is home to a prime example of the vanishingly rare Atlantic hazelwood, which may have stood on this spot since the last Ice Age
The ancient temperate rainforests at Ceunant Llennyrch and Coed Felenrhyd in north Wales are ecologically important but also culturally significant as the site of a battle in 'The Mabinogion', a book of Welsh myths
To Guy Shrubsole, a visit to a rainforest such as Coed Relubbus in north Wales, feels like entering a cathedral
The twisted, octopus-like branches that characterise many British rainforest trees are on display at Black Tor Beare, in Dartmoor
The branch of this oak tree, in the Dart Valley, Devon, has practically disappeared under the weight of mosses and ferns growing on it
William Wordsworth took inspiration from the magnificent Atlantic oakwoods of Borrowdale in the Lake District, above, and regretted how the region had been deforested over the centuries
