Were the moors deforested by humans for agricultural purposes? It doesn't seem like much is grown there.
Hipster Britain: we were Brazil before it was mainstream.
Not to be confused with erinaceous (pertaining to hedgehogs) plants.
Cacti, perhaps? English vocabulary can be weird.
Replanting some evergreen trees is a way to help the forest kickstart recovery on old strip mine wreckage.
There was a hard layer half a meter or so beneath the top soil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardpan
so with deep plow or in many cases back-breaking work, the land was made fertile again. And yes, pulverized chalk is one of the methods used to raise the pH.
It's not high-quality farming land, often too much sand and too little peat.
Nowadays the little heath left in Denmark is usually protected. It'll usually turn to forest if left alone with no grazing.
tldr - forest was cleared by about 2000-1500BC primarily for grazing although some evidence of cereal being grown. However, by 1000-1BC the climate deteriorated and spread of peat led to abandonment of higher moor.
Climatic improvement in early medieval times led to re-occupation, but by mid-1300's the population had moved again to better land. Black Death reduced Devon's population by 2/3 and meant that if you survived you went and farmed better land.
Farming is still hard on Dartmoor, driven by soil and weather. For example Princetown is 23Km and 400 metres away from Plymouth, but rainfall doubles from about 1000mm to 2000mm per annum.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2016/j...
The estates that owned them called them waste as nothing would grow there. Generally they are used for very low density livestock farming and most is common land.