Author: Neil
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Safety in numbers
These animals look like cars parked in the autumn sunshine. They look harmless enough, but they have some gruesome secrets. What are they and what are they doing? They are called cluster flies, and they are warming their bodies in the sun, before flying to feed on the fruits of the wood. They are having…
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Climate change and the leavers
We can spot new arrivals in Nowhere Wood, if we have time and patience. Anyone can do this if they walk through the wood often, thinking about what they see. It is much harder to notice species that disappear because the changing climate does not suit them. Species come and go from the wood all…
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Time travellers to Nowhere (2)
We are not alone in Nowhere Wood, about 300 million years ago. We are deep in a forest of tree ferns, towering above us, fifteen metres high. The damp air has a sweet and woody fragrance, heavy with spores, heavy with promise. The plants are silently photosynthesising, growing ever taller and adding oxygen to the…
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The story of bluebells
If primroses and cowslips are our favourite flowers of early Spring, then it is the bluebells that steal our hearts in early Summer. On a sunny day, they dust the floor of the wood in a blue mist. Many poets have written in wonder of them. Alfred, Lord Tennyson may have walked the bluebell woods…
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Time travellers to Nowhere (3)
We are in Nowhere Wood, about 300 million years ago, staring at a forest of tree ferns, watching them make oxygen. Over the years, these tree ferns have made so much oxygen that its concentration in the air has risen to about 35%, (compare that with the 21% found in the 21st century). There is…
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Early risers!
Every year, the snowdrop is the first plant to flower in Nowhere Wood. It is a symbol of the birth of Spring, bringing good cheer and hope at the end of a long winter. This is one reason why people plant snowdrops in their gardens. Snowdrops are tougher than they look: they can grow through…
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The Apple Tree Man of Nowhere
Once upon a time, there lived a young man called Henry Summers, who lived at the Farmhouse over at the East End, just below the quarry. He was a wise man, strong in the arm and of calm manner. He never beat his animals or his wife. The family farmed ten fields and had several…
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The singing trees
Winter has come to Nowhere Wood and ice has formed around the fallen trees in the pond. Everything shivers and wood is silent again. Squirrels search for food in the frozen mud, but everything else is waiting, biding its time. Silent, except for an ancient overgrown hedge formed from a row of old trees, bound together…
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Yellow flowers
Early spring in Nowhere Wood is the season of yellow flowers. Cowslips have an inelegant name: originally called ‘cow slops’, they were thought to grow where cows have trodden their poo into the ground. The old Somerset name of “bunch of keys” is much nicer – the arrangement of flowers on the head were thought…
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What is a frog?
It is late February, the cold weather has moved away and the frogs have moved back in. It’s been a couple of years since they were last here, but here are their newly-laid eggs and the female is hiding beneath the leaf in the top left corner of the photograph. What is a frog and…
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Climate change: what can we do about it?
The climate of the whole world is changing because of the rising temperatures. Scientists think that increasing levels of carbon dioxide gas in the air are making these changes worse. The Earth is now an average of two degrees warmer than it was in the 1700s, before the start of the industrial revolution. We should…
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Spring is coming!
Nowhere Wood on December 23rd was silent and still. The wood was in midwinter, at its furthest point from the Sun on its journey through the seasons. At only 7 hours and 49 minutes, this was the shortest day and darkness ruled the wood. From now onwards the days will get longer by about two…
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A year in the life of a sugar factory
The leaves of plants are everywhere in Nowhere Wood, helping to keep the wood alive. Leaves are organs: collections of living tissues and cells, having adventures in time and space. This is the story of a year in the life of an oak leaf. Leaves are factories for making sugar from sunlight, water and carbon…
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All change!
When you next look into a mirror ask yourself if you are the same person as you were yesterday. Well, of course you are. Even people who last met you ten years ago can still recognise you and call you by your name. Although they might add, “My, how you have grown!” And yet, if we…
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Life is a relay race
This story continues the adventures of the ferns in Nowhere Wood. The first part of the story is Climbing the walls. The genome of the fern contains essential information that the fern needs to grow and make new cells. At different times the fern produces spores, sperm and eggs and the two forms of the…
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Climbing the walls
A hundred years ago, Nowhere Wood was a sandstone quarry, and there is still a cliff face at the end of the wood.How can this hart’s tongue fern grow on a vertical cliff face about two metres from the ground. That is quite an adventure in time and space. This story explains how this fern…
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Moving things on
The weather is warm and wet in Nowhere Wood. These are perfect conditions for growing the fungi that spread everywhere throughout the soil of Nowhere Wood. Fungi are Nature’s recyclers, feeding on the fallen leaves, fruits and wood. Fungi feed on the wood of the dead oak trees, turning it into nutrients that provide energy and…
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Squirrel wars
One hundred and fifty years ago, the oak woods near Nowhere would have been home to red squirrels. Now they have all disappeared. The red squirrels have been replaced by grey squirrels that were introduced into the UK from the United States in the 1870s. Grey squirrels spread to nearly all parts of the UK,…
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Organise and stay alive
Living organisms have very organised structures. Everything depends upon the way that the different parts of their bodies work together. The parts of this watch work together, so that the hands of the watch move round in a rhythm that we use to tell the time. The hands do this because of the precise organisation…