Autumn fruits in Nowhere Wood. [photograph: Neil Ingram]Autumn is the time for fruits to become ripe enough for animals to eat. This time last year, Nowhere Wood was full of ripe acorns and the squirrels and birds had a heyday. This year, there are no acorns, at all. Life is uncertain, in Nowhere Wood.
Somewhere, inside a fruit, is a seed and seeds contain new lives – the next generation of the woodland plants.
Blackberry fruits in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
These fruits are blackberries. The seeds are found inside the berries. They are tiny, with hard tough seed coats.
Birds, especially blackbirds and thrushes, love to eat blackberry fruits. In doing so, they help the plant to spread its seeds away from the wood. The seeds are tough and survive digestion inside the backbird.
The seeds are dispersed around the wood in the blackbirds’ poo!
To survive, the blackbirds need the blackberry fruits and the blackberry plants need the blackbirds.
Think about what happens to the seed when the fruit is eaten by a blackbird.
How does the blackbird help the blackberry plant to spread its seeds away from the wood?
A fallen ash tree in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
It was a stormy August night in Nowhere Wood. The wind was tearing through the leaves and branches and was strong enough to pull the whole tree down.
And so, a tree that had been growing in the Wood for fifty years or more was felled to the floor of the wood.
Leaves damaged by ash dieback disease. [Photograph: https://www.rhs.org.uk/disease/ash-dieback]
In the tangled wreckage of leaves, twigs and branches, we can see the tell-tale signs of Ash-dieback disease. This probably weakened the tree, so the wind could blow it over more easily.
Most of the ash trees in this region have the disease, which is caused by a fungus that produces sores that blow away in the air, spreading easily through the wood. One day they will be cut down.
The tree is a store of nutrients. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Although this tree has died, its adventure through time continues. It is becoming useful because it is a large store of nutrients that other organisms in the wood will use to survive and grow.
Over time, insects and fungi will break down the tree wood releasing nutrients that to the organisms in the wood.
Left undisturbed, nothing will go to waste.
New trees will grow up to replace those that have fallen, using the nutrients that are in the soil. Fallen trees are an opportunity for the wood to re-grow itself.
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of some fungi. [Photograph; Neil Ingram]
There are lots of fallen trees in Nowhere Wood. The autumn is a good time to see fungi feeding on the wood, because this is the season when they produce their fruiting bodies that make spores. Mushrooms are examples of these fruiting bodies.
It is sad when we lose trees that we have known for years. Yet there is hope for the future. How does the wood recover from the loss of trees?
An ash tree showing symptoms of ash dieback disease. [Photograph: M. J. Richardson, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5465604]We did not want those trees in Nowhere Wood to be felled, but we accepted that the trees were infected with Ash die-back disease and had to go.
Growing and managing trees is something that people of done for tens of thousands of years. One secret is to use every part of the tree mindfully, to benefit the community.
And so it was that fifteen volunteers from the Friends of Trendlewood group came together to drag the fallen branches (“brash”) to the edge of the pond.
Dragging Ash branches to the pond. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]We worked alongside the council parks team, who piled wooden stakes in the ground across the edge of the pond. We then weaved layers of branches between the stakes to create a “dead hedge”, separating the pond from the children’s playground.
Laying a dead hedge, using ash branches. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]The pond is fed by streams and disappeared for many decades, only to return as a permanent feature in the last few years. Watercress plants grow in the water, as they would have done in the 1800’s, when people used to collect them to eat.
Water cress is a salad crop. [Photograph: Laura Whitehead, https://www.flickr.com/photos/thewhiteheads/8693844036]It took a morning to build the dead hedge, which will help to protect children and dogs from getting wet in the pond. It is a good use of waste wood that would otherwise be burned. Burning wood releases stored carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
The completed dead hedge. [Photograph: Simon Stannard]It is another example of how the park is managed in sustainable ways.
Sustainability is an important idea. The United Nations has a sustainable development goal for life on land, (number 15). Find out what it says and why it is important.
The old oak tree said to the traveller passing by:
“You know me, you see me everyday. I am that oak tree that has stood here longer than any of can you remember.”
The oak tree in Trendlewood Park, viewed from the author’s study. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
“I am on the 1840 Ordnance Survey map and I was a sturdy tree, even back then. Let’s say, I’m two hundred years old? I am still in my prime, though. I won’t be celebrated as old for another two or three hundred years. Don’t wait up for me.”
A leaf of an English oak. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
“I am a patriot, a true blue English oak: look at the ear-shaped lobes at the bottom of my leaves and the very short leaf stalks. Pedigree characteristics, those.”
Long stalks on the growing acorns of an English oak tree. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
“And look at the length of the stalks that hold up my acorns – the longer the better. Need I say more, I am as English as St George, cricket and cider.”
“I have never been a wildwood oak: a farmer’s tree, that’s me. My roots are deep in the clay, fed by a spring that kept the animals safe and watered. I had space: my limbs lifted upwards to touch the sky. I’ve seen the storms lash the fields and the brambles come and go. I wear the years in my bark and the seasons in my leaves.”
The oak tree is about 200 years old. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
“I am a good neighbour – well after all of this time, why not? In the summer I play host to lots of welcome visitors.”
Spangle gall on an oak leaf. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
“The gall wasp comes to lay her eggs on my new leaves and I make spangle cradles to help to keep them safe.”
oak galls. [Photograph” Neil Ingram]
“It happens again and again. Not just the spangles. Look beneath my leaves and you might find round, knobbly balls, like hard brown marbles. These are oak apples, swollen with the same curious purpose. A different gall wasp requests a grander chamber, and I oblige. Within each one lives a single larva, safe and fed by the very cells I’ve grown to protect my own buds.
Why do I do it? I don’t know. Perhaps I am too old to care. Or perhaps I understand that these wasps—these minute engineers—are part of the pattern. They do no great harm. My crown still grows. My acorns still drop. My fungi and birds and lichens still cling and sing and creep through me.
So I let them stay.
When my leaves fall, the spangles fall with them. Some young mothers emerge come spring, and they begin again—quietly weaving their lives into mine, asking nothing more than a shelter made of leaf or bark.
I am not hollowed by this. I am enriched. Insects, wind, rain, rot, and sunlight—they all shape me. I am a home, not a fortress. I bear their homes, too.
And you, traveller —if you lie on your back and look up through my summer canopy, you might see more than green. You might see a world.”
Jules Acton’s book, Oaklore, Greystone books, 2024, is an essential companion piece to this story. Jules helps us to think about all of the things that the English oak tree has given us as society and individuals.
Update, 20/07/25:
A new gall has appeared on our favourite oak tree. This is a Knopper gall, caused by the gall wasp Andricus quercuscalicis. The wasp secretes chemicals that distort the growth of an acorn. This is a rather more serious pest to the tree than the two show above, because it can reduce fertility of the tree.
Protected inside the gall is a developing larva, which will develop into a pupa and will emerge as an adult wasp in the next spring.
A landscape of the Carboniferous era. [Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Bulgo_Sandstone_biota.jpg/1456px-Bulgo_Sandstone_biota.jpg]
Imagine you had a Time Machine: where and when would you go to? Come with me back to Nowhere Wood, about 310 million years ago. That is long before humans, mammals or even dinosaurs existed, but frogs laid their eggs in pools, much as they do today.
Today it is hot, humid and very quiet: with no birdsong or animal noise, apart from the distant croaking of frogs.
Extinct tree ferns from the Carboniferous era. [Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Lepidodendrales_reconstrucci%C3%B3n.jpg/1280px-Lepidodendrales_reconstrucci%C3%B3n.jpg]
We are in the northern foothills of an enormous mountain range, bigger than the Himalayas. It is unbearably hot and humid. We are next to a river flowing from the Southern mountains, surrounded by thin horsetails that grow up to 10 metres tall. Tomorrow, there will be a raging tropical storm and the mountains will be pounded by its violence. The rain will flow in torrents in rivers towards us.
Nowhere Wood is located just below the equator, and we are looking up at the aftermath of a series of global catastrophes, which has taken hundreds of million years to happen. Two continents collided and sent shockwaves through the land, pushing upwards to form the mountains that we can see to the South of us. We are in a valley, downstream from the mountain peaks.
Muddy water flowing in a stream. [Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/Uruzi_hamwe_n%27ikirere.jpg/2560px-Uruzi_hamwe_n%27ikirere.jpg]
The mountain rock is soft and is easily weathered by the stormy wind and rain. Cascades of small, eroded particles surge down the mountain slopes, transported in the muddy river waters.
Mountains become tiny grains of sand settling at the bottom of the smaller rivers and streams running through and around Nowhere Wood. The streams are running from South to North, and criss-cross each other to form a network of channels.
Layers of sandstone on Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Layers upon layers of sediment are depositing in the streams, blocking the channels. Over time, the increasing weight of sand squeezes the water out. Minerals like feldspar and mica help to cement the grains together to form sandstone. These are the cliffs that we can see today at the far end of Nowhere Wood.
Pennant sandstone was used to make flat roof tiles. [Photograph: https://www.beechfieldreclamation.co.uk/shop/paving/reclaimed-welsh-pennant/]
Pennant sandstone used to be quarried to make roof tiles for the people of the town and local areas.
It is easy to think of living organisms having uncertain adventures through time and space. But the same is true of rocks, although on a much larger time scale.
[updated 14/02/2025]
1. Find out where the matter that makes up planet Earth originally came from.
2. Think about what has happened to the sandstone in Nowhere Wood since it was formed.
This fungus grows in Nowhere Wood. It has the glorious scientific name of Polyporus squamous. That’s hard to say, harder to spell and even harder to remember!!
Scientific names are important though: they give the accurate name of the organism, and they also tell scientists quite a lot about how the organism lives. These scientific names are a kind of code that give the name and address of the organism in the living world.
However, the names that ordinary people give organisms are just as important. They are easy to remember and often tell an interesting story. This fungus above is called the Dryad’s saddle. If you look carefully, you can see that it shaped a bit like a saddle that someone would use when riding a horse.
Is this what a dryad looks like? [An AI generated image]
Dryads are nymphs that live in the world of myths and legends. They live inside trees, often oaks.
Oak trees can live for a 1 000 years, and the dryads are the spirits of the woods, protecting and nurturing the trees. They are the guardians of the woodlands. They are invisible, unless they choose to reveal themselves to us.
Perhaps you will see a dryad in Nowhere Wood? You will have to be quiet and be thinking the right kinds of thoughts.
Dryads observe the changes in the seasons, the rhythms of nature and their deep connection to the Earth. Perhaps we need to think the same way if we are to be allowed to see them for ourselves.
Scarlet elf cup [photograph: Andrew Town
There are lots of fungi with interesting fairy names. This is the scarlet elf cup and grows in Nowhere Wood, feeding on fallen sycamore and hazel wood.
Find out what the scientific name is for our human species. What do the words mean in English? Do you think they are a good description of us?
Very few people believe that there are dryads protecting our woods. Can you think of any benefits to thinking like this? Are there any disadvantages?
The effects of horse chestnut leaf miners, on a horse chestnut tree in Trendlewood Park, July 2025 {Photograph: Neil Ingram]
By the high summer of July, the new fresh leaves of the horse chestnut are losing their lustre. The proud spread of leaves are now crumpled and marked—creased with dry, papery wounds edged in rust. At first glance, it looks like disease or drought. But the truth is stranger, and smaller.
These are the workings of a moth barely visible to us—Cameraria ohridella, the horse chestnut leaf miner.
The horse-chestnut leaf miner insect. [Photograph: Soebe https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cameraria_ohridella_8419.jpg]
The insect arrived in Britain around 1990, a quiet traveller from North Macedonia, and it has found homes wherever horse chestnuts grow. As the climate warms, insects from the southern regions are able to live successfully in more northern areas.
The female lays her eggs on the newly opened leaf, which hatch to form lavae (caterpillars).
The larva of the holly leaf miner insect. [Photograph: Been-tree https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cameraria_ohridella_larva_beentree.jpg]The larvae feed within the leaf itself, tunnelling through the soft tissue, leaving behind pale blotches that crackle in the sun.
What’s remarkable is how unnoticed it all is. The adult moth is just five millimetres long and flits at dusk, almost never seen. The eggs are microscopic. The caterpillar never breaks the surface of the leaf. And yet, whole avenues of horse chestnut trees wear the evidence every July—brown-scarred leaves fluttering like worn-out flags, months before autumn should arrive.
The tree will survive. The damage is cosmetic, mostly. But it leaves a strange melancholy in the woods: an early whisper of decline in the green heart of summer. A reminder that even the mighty horse chestnut has its unseen vulnerabilities. And that nature’s smallest players are often the most quietly transformative.
What benefits do the horse chestnut leaf miner gain from living with the horse chestnut tree. What benefits does the horse chestnut tree get from the arrangement?
The trees in Nowhere Wood are always there, going quietly through the motions of the seasons: noticed only when we stop to look and reflect. But we feel their presence strongly, just out of sight and mind.
Until today, when their absence feels like the loss of dear friends.
Fallen ash tree trunks at the quarry face of Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]It only took a morning, and nearly 100 years of growth has ended. Yes, they had Ash dieback disease and were marked with a red spot. Yes, they were unstable on the quarry floor. Even so, we feel their loss keenly.
Trees with Ash dieback disease are marked with a red spot. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]The wood will regenerate, but only if we can remove the trunks from the woodland floor. Else we shall see little re-development in our lifetimes. This problem is one that we have to own.
The robin is an optimistic opportunist. Making the best of new opportunities amongst the fallen branches of ash. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]In the mean time, life goes on amidst the debris of fallen trees.
The old willow tree in Trendlewood park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]This willow tree in the park is very old. Maybe a hundred years or so. Look how its bark is gnarled and twisted. It is a great friend of the park and is home to many different insects and birds. One year, a female mallard duck even made a nest on the flat top of the tree!
The willow keeps on growing because every few years, it’s friends cut off all of its branches!
This really does encourage the tree to grow strongly.
Pollarding trees is a way of keeping them alive. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]This week, it was the old willow’s turn to be pollarded. You can see the cut stumps where the branches used to be.
Woods have always been important to people. In the 17th century, new forests were planted to provide enough timber for the boats for the Royal Navy.
People have pollarded woodland trees for thousands of years. It was their main source of wood for building, making furniture, for charcoal and for fuel to heat their homes.
Wood is a very useful sustainable resource, when managed in this way. It is sustainable because the tree carries on growing and making new wood.
Pollarded willow wood is special. It is used to make cricket bats and weave baskets. For generations, this provided income for poor families in Somerset.
It is also a good way of making new fences. This is because cut branches of willow will grow new roots when they are placed in water.
The cut stems will grow into new trees and can become a hedge when they are planted closely together.
Two volunteers from the Friends of Trendlewood Park soaking the branches of willow. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]The photograph shows two volunteers from the Friends of Trendlewood Park preparing willow branches to build into a new hedge in the area near the playing fields.
They place the cut ends of the branches into water.
A newly planted willow hedge in Tendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]In a few months’ time, when the weather is warmer, this hedge should be growing strongly and could grow for many years.
This species of willow is called the brittle willow, because branches break off easily. Suggest why it is an advantage to the willow for these branches to be able to grow into new trees.
This species of willow has two ways of reproducing. It flowers and makes seed and also can propagate through fallen branches. Find out why it is useful for the species to be able to reproduce in these two ways.
After the story:
Just after I finished writing this story, it was announced that young trees grown from seeds of the Sycamore Gap tree are to be given to charities, groups and individuals as “trees of hope“. This ancient sycamore tree, from Northumberland, was cut down in September 2023.
Image from https://www.thesill.org.uk/sycamore-gap-tree-is-sprouting/
This is a lovely, kind idea. The tree lives on, not only through its seeds, but also in the new stems that are growing from its cut stem. This shows the power of nature to recover and re-grow. Life is resilient, it does not give up.
The air is all round us and is a mixture of many different gases. 78% of the air is made of nitrogen, which is the most common gas. This story is about two other gases found in the air – oxygen and carbon dioxide.
The girl breathes out carbon dioxide and breathes in oxygen
We breathe in oxygen and use it to release energy from sugar. At the same time we make carbon dioxide – all living organisms do the same. We all do this to stay alive.
People also make carbon dioxide when we burn fuels, such as coal, oil, petrol and wood.
Nailsea was once a very small village. [Image from Nailsea Town.com]
If we go back over three hundred years to the 1700’s, Nailsea was a a tiny village surrounded by farms. Few people lived there, then. People burned wood or peat (from the moors) to stay warm. They walked everywhere or travelled horse and cart.
Carbon dioxide in the air is measured in units called ‘parts per million’. Scientists have estimated that in the early 1700’s the carbon dioxide in the air was about 280 parts per million.
An artist’s reconstruction of Middle Engine Pit, Nailsea. Artwork by Mark Hornby. From https://www.nailseatown.com/heritage-trail/middle-engine-pit/
However, things were beginning to change in Nailsea: the first coalmine was opened in 1700 and this would transform the village into a town in the next ninety years. The mines employed experienced miners who came to live in the town as well as local farmworkers.
This painting shows an appoach to Nailsea from the North. The cone of the glassworks is shown. Nailsea is changing from countryside into a town. [Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. Attributed to the British School.]
Plenty of cheap coal led to the opening of the glass factory and more migration of people into the town. The arrival of the railway in 1841 provided new opportunities to trade with Bristol and its ports. The steam trains were powerful and burned coal.
In Nailsea, new houses were built together with new roads and shops. Trendlewood quarry was opened in 1850 to provide sandstone tiles for the roofs of the new houses.
All of this activity added carbon dioxide to the air in increasing amounts. Trees can take carbon dioxide out of the air, but the local woods were gradually chopped down to make way for the new town and for farmland. The wood was burned as fuel.
This pattern of industrialisation has taken place everywhere, all over the world since then. It continues to do so, too. In 2024, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is estimated at 423 parts per million. This is a rise of 51% since the 1700s.
Does all of this matter? Most scientists think it matters a lot, but some politicians want to disagree.
The diagram shows the rays of the Sum being trapped in the atmosphere of the Earth by a layer of carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide in the air acts like a blanket, reflecting heat energy back towards the land and the sea. In this way, it acts like glass in a greenhouse. The warming caused by the increased carbon dioxide is sometimes called “the greenhouse effect”.
Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the air affects the climate and weather patterns across the world, as we shall see in the next story.
Do you think that the businessmen of the 1700s were aware that the burning of coal could affect the climate of the Earth?
If were are aware of this now, should this affect whether we choose to burn coal and oil.
Today is Flying Ant Day: the day that ants take to the air and fly at the same time. The ants are from different colonies that can be several hundred metres apart.
Let’s celebrate Flying Ant Day!
Swarm of flying yellow ants in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Andrew Town]To some, it’s a minor nuisance. They land in your lemonade, tangle in your hair, and make picnics suddenly less romantic. A swarm of tiny aviators with no regard for personal space.
Flying ants on the flowers of common ragwort. [Photograph: Andrew Town]Is there really anything much to celebrate? Would we not be better off without ants?
But pause a moment—really look. This is the wedding flight, the briefest of honeymoons, when new queens and males take to the skies to mate and search for new grounds and new beginnings. It’s a natural marvel unfolding on our doorsteps, so what is going on below the surface?
It starts underground, beneath a cracked paving stone, under a patch of sun-warmed earth: this is the colony, the kingdom of the ants. The colony pulses with organised purpose.
Yellow meadow worker ants in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Andrew Town]Tunnels and chambers run through the soil, branching and looping. Here, everything has a rhythm. The queen lays eggs, which are tended and nurtured. The queen is guarded with reverence because she is the provider of life to the colony.
Their larvae are fed and thousands of identical worker ants are formed. These do not have wings.
The power of ants lie in their numbers.
Some ants are the pirates of the wood: ferocious and aggressive, they will attack those who cannot defend themselves or have not learned to work with the ants. Like pirates, ants will protect anything that gives them what they want – usually food.
Some species roam in teams, tracking down caterpillars, beetle larvae, or even spiders. They subdue them not with brute force, but with strategy: surround, immobilise, overwhelm. A single ant may be no match for a wasp larva, but a dozen? A hundred? That’s a different story. Their venom can paralyse, their mandibles shear, and their numbers do the rest.
These ants are farming blackflies. [Photograph: Andrew Town]Other ants are the gentle manipulators of blackfly insects, tending huge herds of them.
Blackflies suck the juices of a plant, excreting sweet sticky “honey dew”, which feeds the ants in the colony. In exchange, the ants give the blackflies protection and time to reproduce. Some ants actively”farm” the blackflies, by stroking them gently with their antennae to encourage them to produce honeydew. Like milking a cow.
Biologists call ants ‘keystone’ species. In architecture, the keystone is the stone at the top of an arch that holds the whole structure together. Remove it, and everything collapses.
Ants play this role in the architecture of the wood. Their tunnelling aerates the soil, letting water and oxygen reach the roots of plants. They break down waste, dead insects, and fallen leaves—recycling the detritus of life into the ingredients for growth.
Some species plant seeds by accident, dropping them underground where they germinate safely. Others protect plants from pests or farm aphids like cattle. A colony is not just a nest: it’s an engine of fertility, a subterranean society that quietly underpins the world above.
Take them away, and you begin to see the gaps. Soils become compacted. Nutrients stop cycling. Other animals—birds, lizards, even mammals—that feed on ants start to vanish too. The threads of connection begin to unravel.
The world is a better place with ants – and the flying ants are crucial, for this is where new queens mate with males and go to form new colonies, so the cycle of life continues for one more year. As long as the old colonies have healthy queens, they will continue, so that Flying Ant Day is a way of mixing together different colonies, to make and spread new ones.
The ants benefit, and so does Nowhere Wood, so, let’s celebrate Flying Ant Day!
Why is it an advantage for a new queen ant to fly away from the colony before laying her eggs?
It is a cold and wet April in Nowhere Wood, which is full of birdsong and flowers.
The trees are becoming green with new leaves. Leaves grow silently that we can miss their unfolding, noticing only when they are fully opened. If you look carefully, you can see new leaves opening today.
It raises our spirits, and makes us look forward to warmer days.
New leaves grow from buds. Buds are covers that protect the developing leaves from damage during the frosty winter days.
Emerging chestnut leaves in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
New leaves are a special shade of green called Kelly Green. Later in the year the leaves become a darker shade of green.
The greening of Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Emerging oak leaves in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
What happens to these new leaves in the autumn?
Why do plants make new leaves during the summer, ready for the next spring?
It is twilight on the first warm evening after midsummer: a black shape flickers like a dream above our heads. The bat moves quickly, all in a blur, and it is hard to make out its form. We can see the zig-zag patterns it makes in the air.
Behind her, in the rafters of an old house on Station Road, other bats stir. One by one, they slip into the darkening air, part of an invisible night orchestra tuning up for the hunt. In Nowhere Wood, when the bats fly, night begins not with darkness — but with a single common purpose.
Six months later, the scene is different. A single bat hangs motionless in a quiet, cool corner of a garage, undisturbed and dim. Tucked away, wrapped in its own wings, it waits out the winter by hibernating.
Pipistrelle hibernating in a garage on the Trendlewood estate. [Photograph: Andrew Town]These are pipistrelle bats — the most common bats in Britain. But there is nothing ordinary about them. In summer, they dance in the dusk. In winter, they vanish into the stillness. And in both seasons, they remind us that nature has rhythms of its own, hidden just out of sight.
Some people are scared of bats, with their ugly faces and their associations with vampires and terror.
Pipistrelle bat, [Photograph by: Dave on Flickr, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/wolf_359/123404678/in/datetaken/ ]In fact, they are harmless to us and they help to keep the insect populations at bay in the height of the summer. A bat hunts insects using echolocation, producing clicking sounds that bounce off the insect back into the bat’s ears. The bat then flies towards the insects to catch its prey. Different species of bat produce different frequencies of sound.
In 2017, a survey of the area around Nowhere Wood showed that there were at least five and possibly as many as 13 species of bat in the lands around the wood. This makes it one of the most important sites for bats in the county.
Here are some of the bats that the survey found:
Noctule bat. [Photograph: Dave on Flickr]
Brown long eared bat. [Photograph by: Dave on Flickr]
A lesser horseshoe bat in flight. [Photograph by Thomas Winstone on Flickr]
A close up of a serotine bat. [Photograph by YACWAG on Flickr ]
We should feel proud of our local bats. They are a special feature of our parkland and wood, that survive because they are able to find food and safe places to hibernate.
How can we ensure that these bats will continue to live and feed in and near Nowhere wood?
Most scientists think that the Earth is getting warmer and that human activities are making it worse. This story looks at some of the evidence they use.
A weather super computer at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [Image credit: General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT)]
Weather experts collect millions of temperature measurements from all around the world every day. They put these results into powerful computers that build a picture of the climate across the world every day. Their results suggest that 2024 was the hottest year ever recorded.
The average October temperatures for the surface of the Earth from 1940 to 2020. The warmest temperatures have been in the last ten years.
The temperature of the Earth in 2024 is about 1.5°C higher than it was in 1880, before large factories, cars, and airplanes existed. The yearly temperatures since 2020 include three of the hottest years since we started recording temperatures.
A 1.5°C rise in temperature does not sound like much, but it is having a big effect on the weather around the world.
There has been an increase in the number and severity of tropical storms in recent years. [Photograph from: https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/world/2024/07/03/7-dead-as-hurricane-beryl-barrels-towards-jamaica/]
The temperature of the water in the seas in 2024 was the hottest ever. This causes the wind speeds to increase in tropical storms, causing huge damage when they hit coastal towns.
Warm air can hold more water than colder air, so rainstorms can be more powerful and last longer. Flooding in low-lying areas becomes more common.
Flooding in Monmouth town centre, 1990. The number and severity of such weather events is increasing. [Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/imagined_horizons/9637969736]
The level of the sea in 2024 is about 111 mm higher than it was in 1993. This increases the risk of flooding in coastal areas.
Rising sea levels are affecting the survival of many islands. [Photograph credit: Envato Elements pic, https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/leisure/2022/02/24/present-day-rise-in-sea-levels-may-have-begun-in-1863/]
Some small islands in the ocean are at risk of disappearing due to the rising sea waters. Nyangai Island off the coast of Sierra Leone has almost been lost to the waves.
Polar bears are finding it harder to hunt because of melting summer ice in the Arctic. [Photograph: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/29664357826]
The rising sea levels are being made worse by the melting of the ice in the Arctic and Antarctic. Summer ice in the Arctic is disappearing by about 12% every ten years. It is affecting the survival of polar bears.
A group of winter heliotrope plants. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
It’s January 1st and the floor of the wood is covered with fresh new leaves, growing in dense patches. The first flowers are starting to open. Within a week, the air is scented with a sweet fragrance. This is the winter heliotrope, which is just as much at home in Nowhere as it is in its native North Africa.
The winter heliotrope was probably brought to Britain by Victorian gardeners.
We have a large Victorian estate called Tyntesfield down the road, so originally it could easily have come from there. The plant has a big secret: its flowers are just for show!
The winter heliotrope. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
The winter heliotrope is unusual because it has separate male and female plants. As far as we know, the Victorian gardeners only imported male plants into Britain, because they liked the showy flowers and its rich scent. So, although the flowers make good pollen, there are no female flowers available to receive it. These plants cannot make seeds.
How do the plants reproduce, if they cannot make seeds?
Below the soil the plant has a special underground stem, called a rhizome. During the year the rhizome stores food ready for the wintertime. Then, early in the new year, it grows new leaves and flowers.
During the summer the rhizomes grow so large, that they eventually break off and become new plants. This is a different way of reproducing, called vegetative reproduction. The plants are all clones, they have the same genetic information, which means that they all flower at more or less the same time.
So good is the winter heliotrope at growing in this way, that the plant is seen by some gardeners as an uwanted pest. It seems to grow well in Nowhere Wood, where it grows undisturbed.
1. What do you think are the advantages of being able to reproduce vegetatively, without making seeds?
2. Are there any disadvantages to having plants that all have the same genetic information. Is variation needed for the survival of plants?
Nowhere Wood in late winter is a place of bare branches, weak shadowy light and unspoken secrets, waiting for new leaves start to emerge.
Lords and Ladies in January [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
On the woodland floor, hidden beneath the shade of hazel and hawthorn, something strange is happening. By April, it is fully revealed.
Lords and Ladies, in Nowhere Wood, April [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
It’s not flashy, no pretty flower show. Just a apple-green leaf, twisted like a bishop’s cowl. A greenish-purple hood half-hiding something inside. You’d walk past it if you didn’t know better.
The plant is Arum maculatum, but no one calls it that around here. It has lots of ancient names, some of which are so rude that they would make Geoffrey Chaucer blush! In Somerset, it was called ‘Adam and Eve’, but most places call it Lords and Ladies, and there’s a good reason for that. With a little imagination, we can see the tall upright lord dancing with his lady in the flowing green gown.
This is a flower and it is a seed making factory. It does this by subterfuge, luring insects and holding them hostage until it gets what it wants.
Lords and Ladies flower exposed, [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
One glance inside the sheath and you’ll see the machinery of the deception: “the Lord” is called a spadix, sitting on top of a ring of yellow hairs that point downwards. Below them are the orange ovaries, that will become fruits containing the new seeds. These are the “Ladies”.
Beneath the ladies are the yellow pollen-making anthers, that ripen after the ovaries have received pollen from insects.
Down in the gloom of the woodland floor, the spadix heats up, becoming warmer than the air around it, which attracts small insects. It also gives off a smell of rotting meat and dung — irresistible, if you’re a midge or a small fly looking for a good meal.
They blunder in, hunting decay. Down they fall, past a ring of slippery hairs that trap them in the chamber below. There’s no nectar. No reward. But while they wander round, they give up their pollen to the ovaries. The pollen grows tubes that towards the egg cells, fertilising them, and making new seeds.
The stamens burst open with fresh pollen, which give the insects a quick meal, whilst covering their bodies in pollen.
The yellow hairs of the jail bars have withered overnight, allowing the insects to escape with their pollen load. No harm done, the insects immediately carry the pollen away to the next ripe lords and ladies flower in the wood.
Lords and Ladies fruits, Nowhere Wood, June. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
By June. the sheath is long gone. But what remains is a spike of fruits, ready to ripen in the late summer sun. As bright as traffic lights, the fruits rise like a warning from the shade. Poisonous, yes. But beautiful.
ripe fruits of Lords and Ladies in Nowhere Wood, July. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
The autumn is a time for making food, using its large leaves that are designed to capture the dim light of the woodland floor. The food is stored underground in a rhizome.
young leaves of lords and ladies, in Nowhere Wood, January. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Later, the leaves disappear and the plant lives underground for the winter.
Rhizome of Lords and Ladies plant. [Photograph: Neuchâtel Herbarium, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neuch%C3%A2tel_Herbarium_-_Arum_maculatum_-_NEU000100869.jpg]
It lives on as a secretive rhizome, sleeping through the summer heat and the turning year, until — just as the bluebells fade — it returns to play its part again.
Be careful: all parts of these plants are poisonous to people – especially the berries.
Each ripe red fruit contains a seed of the Lords and Ladies plant. Birds, like thrushes and backbirds love to eat these fruits. Explain how this helps to disperse the seeds away from the parent plant.
What are the advantages to small insects of going inside a Lord and Ladies flower?
By late October, the last of the visitors are leaving Nowhere Wood. House martins are birds that build nests in the eaves of the surrounding houses. They fly by swooping up and down in the summer skies, feeding on flying insects.
Then, suddenly, as the season changes, they leave. But where do they go?
Amazingly, for such confident, visible, birds, they have been able to keep this a secret from us. And, even today, we really do not know for sure. We think they fly to Africa, over the Sahara Desert, to countries like Cameroon, Congo and the Ivory Coast. That’s a journey of over 5 000 km.
There they spend the winter, feeding and resting, before making the return journey in early Spring, arriving back to Nowhere Wood by April.
If all goes well, they return to the wood, and even to the same nests. It is a dangerous adventure and not all make it back. The birds can be eaten by birds of prey, or trapped by hunters.
Above all, the declining number of insects is killing the house martins. Loss of habitats, use of pesticides and climate change are all linked to human activity, so indirectly, we are to blame. So, perhaps, in the future, it will not be goodbye for now, but goodbye forever.
How does the use of pesticides across Europe and Africa affect the survival of house martins?
How could we conserve our populations of house martin?
Some animals and plants can’t live in Nowhere Wood because it’s too cold or too wet for them. But the climate has warmed by about 1°C since the 1970s. This small change has allowed new species to come and live in the wood because the climate now suits them better.
A pair of Rosel’s bush crickets were found on Golden Vallety field in 2019. [Photograph: Andrew Town]In 2019, a pair of Roesel’s bush crickets were found in Golden Valley field. They seem to have bred successfully. The warmer climate has helped them find more places to live. They are moving northwards from the South of England and have migrated more than 50 miles over the past 20 years.
This Downland Villa bee fly looks like a bee, but it is actually a fly. [Photograph: Andrew Town]The Downland Villa bee fly was first seen in Sussex in 2016 and has been moving northwards, probably because of the warmer climate. These flies look like solitary bees, which are bees that do not live in hives or colonies. The bee fly feeds on solitary bees by dropping their eggs into the bees’ nest, where they hatch and eat the bee larvae.
Scientists think there may be over fifty species of animals arriving in the UK because of climate change, although most of them have not yet arrived in Nowhere Wood!
Crickets eat grass. Do you think the arrival of the Roesel’s bush crickets will harm or help the wild life that live on Golden Valley fields?
Roesel’s bush crickets seem to have bred successfully on Golden Valley. What does this mean? How will this help the survival of the crickets in the area?
How might the arrival of the Downland Villa bee fly affect the solitary bees in Nowhere Wood?
Update, 7/5/25: New bee arrival!
Orchard bee. [Photograph: USGS Bee watch]The orchard bee is a solitary bee that is spreading rapidly in the south of England, which was once too cold for it. It won’t be long before it reaches Nowhere Wood! Read more here.
It is a sunny afternoon in May and two butterflies are flying round each other in a shaft of sunlight. The smaller one chases the larger one away.
I first thought they were a courting pair, but then realised they are different types. Where do they come from and what are they doing in the sunshine?
Specked wood butterfly in Nowhere Wood, May 2025. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]The chasing butterfly is a specked wood, seen resting on an ivy leaf, keen to be photographed. It is a true native of Nowhere. It started life as an egg laid during the previous autumn, perhaps on some of the long grass that skirts the wood. It probably emerged a few days ago, and has taken to flying in the same shaft of sunlight.
It is warm and bright in the sunlight and both males and females are attracted to the same spot. No wonder our male wants to chase rivals and other butterflies away!
The unfortunate butterfly to be caught up in this tussle was a red admiral. It was harder to photograph against the floor of the woodland.
Red admiral butterfly, Nowhere Wood, May 2025. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]This butterfly was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The red admiral butterfly is a summer visitor to the wood, with large numbers arriving in the UK from southern Europe and North Africa each year. They love to feed on flowers that produce a lot of nectar, so are often found in the gardens that surround the wood.
They will breed whilst they are living in the wood, and some of these new butterflies will try to fly back to Europe in the autumn. It is not clear how many of them will survive the long journey.
Others will try to survive the winter in the UK. In the past, most of these have died because of the cold, but warmer winters mean that more of them are surviving to breed in the spring.
We could be seeing a shift in their behaviour because of climate change, that could lead them to being permanent residents in the wood.
Update:
Two days later, the speckled wood was still patrolling the same patch of sunlight. Let’s hope he gets lucky soon!
The male speckled wood butterfly was found in the same spot two days later. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
In Southern Europe and North Africa, red admiral butterflies can breed continuously throughout the year. Why is important in the survival of the red admiral species?
Why is it an advantage for the specked wood to defend a territory in Nowhere Wood?
Cluster flies on a leaf in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
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 adventures in time and space in Nowhere Wood. Life in the wood is dangerous and the animals are busy being alive: feeding, drinking and staying warm.
The animals certainly look like flies: with one pair of wings, a large head and huge compound eyes. Look closer and you might see their mouthparts, sucking water from the surface of the leaf.
More cluster flies gather on the leaf in Nowhere Wood, October 2021. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
The flies have lived their whole lives in Nowhere Wood. Their mothers laid their eggs in the soil last autumn. In the Spring, the eggs hatched to release larvae into the soil that burrowed into the bodies of earthworms.
They spent the early summer feeding on the worms before pupating. The adults emerged in the early summer, killing their earthworm hosts.
The flies are in a hurry to breed before it goes colder, later in the month. They are becoming mature enough to produce the next generation of flies.
Then the cycle of ‘being and becoming’ will begin again.
There is safety in numbers. The main predator of these flies is a type of wasp. There are twenty pairs of eyes looking out for danger and when one senses the wasps, they all fly away.
Life is so uncertain in Nowhere Wood. As well as wasps, the air contains the spores of dangerous fungi, that can infect and grow inside the adults, eating them up from the inside! In spite of the dangers, enough cluster flies survive to breed to be present in the wood next year.
Life is an uncertain adventure for the cluster flies, the earthworms, the wasps and the fungi. Everything is connected in Nowhere Wood.
Suggest why cluster flies need to warm their bodies in the morning, before they can fly.
![Fallen ash tree trunks at the quarry face of Nowhere Wood. [Picture: Neil Ingram]](https://blog.neilingram.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/7748b521-4f7b-4085-9e74-d5971937b62a-1024x768.jpg)
![Trees with Ash dieback disease are marked with a red spot. [Picture: Neil Ingram]](https://blog.neilingram.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_2857-1024x768.jpeg)
![Noctule bat. [Photograph: Dave on Flickr, ttps://www.flickr.com/photos/wolf_359/ Dave]](https://blog.neilingram.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/noctule-300x190.jpg)
![lords and ladies fruits, nowhere Wood, June. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]](https://blog.neilingram.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/IMG_3322-768x1024.jpeg)
