I stumbled across a tree stump a couple of weeks ago, which was remarkable, as the higher parts of the Marsden Moor estate are now a treeless landscape. That wasn’t the case 6000 or 7000 years ago. I know that because peat is everywhere; testament to the fibrous disintegration of tree trunk and branch, leaf and root as well as grasses and moss.
I’ve seen bits of wood sticking out of some of the peat channels and cloughs during my wanderings over various parts of Marsden Moor. Some of it so well persevered through lack of oxygen, buried feet below the surface, that you can tell it’s birch by the still-visible white bark. Those branches or roots are occasionally exposed through the action of water and peat bog creep.