Category: adventures in time and in space

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It’s Flying Ant Day!

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.
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.
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.
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
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!

  1. Why is it an advantage for a new queen ant to fly away from the colony before laying her eggs?

 

 

Notes on the story

Being and becoming in Nowhere Wood

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Echoes from Nowhere

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 bat hibernating in garage
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
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, ttps://www.flickr.com/photos/wolf_359/ Dave]
Noctule bat. [Photograph: Dave on Flickr]
Brown long eared bat
Brown long eared bat. [Photograph by: Dave on Flickr]
A lesser horseshoe bat in flight.
A lesser horseshoe bat in flight. [Photograph by Thomas Winstone on Flickr]
A close up of a serotine bat
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.

  1. How can we ensure that these bats will continue to live and feed in and near Nowhere wood?

 

 

Notes on the story

Being and becoming in Nowhere Wood

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The Lords and Ladies of Nowhere Wood

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
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
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
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]
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 snd ladies in Nowhere wood, July.
ripe fruits of Lords snd 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
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
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.

  1. 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.
  2. What are the advantages to small insects of going inside a Lord and Ladies flower?

 

Notes on the story

Echoes from Nowhere

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The story of bluebells

Bluebells at Portishead headland.
Bluebells at Goblin Combe [Photograph: Pat Gilbert, Friends of Trendlewood Park]
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 above nearby Clevedon Court with his friend Arthur Hallam. Tennyson compared a carpet of bluebells to “the blue sky, breaking up through the earth”.

Bluebells are important plants in woods. About 50% of the world’s population of English bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) is found in the United Kingdom. This is largely due to the UK’s relatively mild climate and our widespread ancient woodlands, where bluebells thrive.

But all is not as it seems, because the English bluebell is threatened by a rival Spanish bluebell, (Hyacinthoides hispanica), which was introduced in the 17th and 18th Centuries into formal gardens in large country houses.

English bluebell in Nowhere Wood.
English bluebell in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
 The flowers of English bluebells are deep violet-blue,  bell-shaped tubes with petals that roll upwards.  They are found mostly on one side of a curving stem, so that the flowers droop downwards. Often they have a strong sweet scent.

Spanish bluebell in Nowhere Wood.
Spanish bluebell in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neill Ingram]
The rival Spanish bluebell has paler flowers that are found all round the stem, not just on one side. The petals are not as curved back as the English bluebell. The stems are thicker and more upright and the leaves are much broader than the English bluebell.

Spanish bluebells
Spanish bluebells. [photograph: Neil Ingram, Nowhere Wood]
These two species are closely related and can breed together to produce plants that can breed with each other and with both parents. These are the hybrids. So, what we find is that in  most English woods we get a range of bluebells, some of which resemble the English and Spanish types as well as many plants that have characteristics of both types.

Recent research suggests that most of the bluebells in UK woods are hybrids and the pure English forms are restricted to very old woodlands that have little human interference. Certainly the ones bought from garden centres are probably hybrids.

However, the good news is that the English bluebell is thriving in these remote woodlands and is likely to survive, as long  as we leave them alone!

  1. Does it matter if the traditional population of English bluebells is gradually replaced by a hybrid form of English-Spanish bluebell. What do you think?

 

Notes on the story

A tale of two butterflies

 

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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 to look like a set of jangling keys.

Cowslips on the edge of Nowhere Wood.
Cowslips on the edge of Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Primroses are a most loved flower of Springtime. Called the “early rose” in Somerset, they are the flowers of Easter displays, with bunnies and eggs.

Primroses on the edge of Nowhere Wood
Primroses on the edge of Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

But look at this:

A hybrid between primrose x cowslip on the edge of nowhere Wood
A hybrid between primrose x cowslip on the edge of nowhere Wood [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Growing between the cowslip and the primrose is a plant that is similar to both, but different, too. It looks as if it is half way between the two types of plant.

Cowslips and primroses are quite closely related plants. This new plant has both cowslip and primrose as parents. It is called the “false oxlip” and is a hybrid.

close up of the hybrid
close up of the hybrid [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
  1. The hybrid has formed naturally as a result of “cross-pollination” between cowslip and primrose parents. Hybrids can sometimes occur in animals, too. Find about how mules and ligers form.

 

Notes on the story

The story of bluebells

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If a tree falls….

A fallen ash tree in nowhere Wood
A fallen ash tree in Nowhere Wood

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.

 

 

 

Ash dieback disease
Leaves damaged by ash dieback disease

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.

Fungi feeding in a fallen tree in Nowhere Wood
The tree is a store of nutrients

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.

a fungus on a tree
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of some fungi

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.

 

 

 

 

  1. 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?

Notes on the story

What’s in a name?

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Climate change and new arrivals

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.

Rosel's bush cricket
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.

 

 

Downland Villa bee fly
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!

  1. 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?
  2. 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?
  3. 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
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.

 

 

Notes on the story

Climate change and the leavers

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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 beautiful apple orchards.

Among the trees, there was one particularly ancient apple tree that Henry’s great grandfather planted and around which all of his children had played. The tree stood tall and strong, even though it was very old.

Henry believed that this tree was extra special, and he called it the ‘Apple Tree Man’. Henry always took great care of this tree, speaking to it kindly and ensuring it had plenty of water and cider at the wassail.

One cold winter’s night, Henry was visited by a stranger who had walked from Bristol and wanted to find friends in Nowhere. His clothes were dirty and his shoes were worn out. Henry was as kind to people as he was to his goats, welcomed the stranger into his home and gave him food and cider.

The wanderer meets the young farmer
The wanderer meets the young farmer

His wife looked out some more shoes for him.  The stranger slept soundly in his clean bed that night.

The next day, the happy stranger revealed that he was, in fact, the spirit of the Apple Tree Man who had taken the form of a wanderer to test the farmer’s kindness.

The Apple Tree Man promised the farmer that as long as he continued to care for the apple trees, his orchards would make so many lovely apples every year, that he and his family would be wealthy and  joyful.

The apple trees produced many beautiful apples
The apple trees produced many beautiful apples

The Apple Tree Man was true to his word, the orchards flourished, and the farmer and his descendants enjoyed bountiful harvests for many generations. And the people of Nowhere enjoyed their cider for years to come.

 

 

Notes on the story

Climate change: new arrivals in Nowhere Wood

 

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A different kind of woodpecker

A green woodpecker in Nowhere Wood
A green woodpecker in Nowhere Wood [photograph: Andrew Town]

If you look carefully at this image, you can see another woodpecker, but one that is quite different to the great spotted woodpecker that starred in our last story. This is a green woodpecker. Can you see why?

 

 

 

These two kinds of woodpecker are able to live together all year round in the wood, without getting in each other’s way. This is because they have different lifestyles.

AI generated woodpecker
An AI generated render of a green woodpecker

This AI generated image of the green woodpecker shows its special characteristics: the green feathers on the back and wings and the paler feathers on the belly. The red head and the black ‘moustache’ around the beak. Males have a red centre to the moustache, so this image is of a young female.

 

 

She has a sharp beak , like the great spotted woodpecker. Male green woodpeckers also use their beaks to dig holes for nesting sites.

A green woodpecker digging a nest in Nowhere Wood.
A green woodpecker digging a nest in Nowhere Wood. [photograph: Andrew Town]

 However, male green woodpeckers sing a special call to attract females to their nests. The call sounds like the woodpecker is laughing, and the bird is sometimes called a ‘yaffle’ or ‘laughing Betsy’. You can the various calls of the green woodpecker, here.

 

 

Unlike, the great spotted, the green woodpecker does not feed on insects found on the tree. Rather, it hunts for the ants that live in the open spaces near the wood. You might see them in the meadow that runs alongside the wood.

It is these differences in appearance and lifestyle that mean that the two woodpeckers can life happily alongside each other in the wood all year round.

  1. Green and great spotted woodpeckers have different ways of feeding. How does this help them to live alongside each other in Nowhere Wood?
  2. What might happen if they shared the same food supply?

 

 

Notes on the story

The sustainable park

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Hard hats, safety specs and camouflage jackets

It is a January morning, misty and still. The air hangs silently in Nowhere Wood. Suddenly close,  but just out of sight, a loud and fast drumming shakes the stillness. Then a silent pause, followed by a quieter drumming coming from the other end of the wood.

Let’s find the first drummer. He’s hard to see, high up in the tree, but there he is, pressed against the tree trunk: a male great spotted woodpecker. The other drummer in the distance is a young female. The woodpeckers are having an adventure in Nowhere Wood.

A female great spotted woodpecker approaching her young in Nowhere Wood.
A female great spotted woodpecker approaching her young in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Andrew Town]

Our male is digging a hole in his tree, hoping to impress the female. If it works, she will lay their eggs in the hollow space in the tree. This photograph, taken a few weeks later in Nowhere Wood,  shows the new mother feeding her fledgling chick.

How can these woodpeckers drill such large holes in trees without injuring themselves? Well, it looks as if all parts of their bodies have special characteristics that enable the birds to do this. Scientists call these special characteristics, adaptations.

Look at this video of a great spotted woodpecker pecking at a tree. Look at his  feet. He has three toes on each foot, with two toes facing forwards to grip and hold onto the tree trunk. This prevents him falling off when he pecks the tree! The beak is made of a tough material that keeps growing and keeps the beak sharp.

The adaptations to the skull and tongue of the woodpecker
The adaptations to the skull and tongue of the woodpecker. [Illustration by Denise Takahashi, https://www.birdwatchingdaily.com/news/science/woodpeckers-hammer-without-headaches/]

His skull is especially strengthened, like a builder’s hard hat. The brain presses right up against it and cannot move around.

The tongue extends backwards into the head as a long thin tube of bone and cartilage that runs right round the inside of the skull of the woodpecker. This acts like a seat belt, holding the brain in place.

The tongue is especially long and sticky, so it can go right into the tree holes, searching for insects.

Close up of the woodpecker, showing the feathers that protect the eyes from wood chipping.
a close up of a woodpecker. [Photograph: https://www.core77.com/posts/81063/Why-Woodpeckers-Dont-Need-Safety-Goggles-and-Why-Their-Beaks-Never-Get-Stuck-in-the-Wood]

The eyes fit tightly inside the skull, and do not vibrate whilst the bird is pecking. Their eyes have a special transparent membrane that closes across the front of the eye to prevent splinters of wood scratching the eyes. The feathers around the eyes and beak also stop wood reaching the eyes. Together, they act as safety spectacles!

 

 

Finally, a woodpecker is quite vulnerable to attack by larger birds when it is drumming against the tree. The patterns of lines and stripes act  like a camouflage jacket, making the bird hard to see against the tree surface.

  1. Woodpeckers have a lot of adaptations to help them to survive in Nowhere Wood. This story contains a photograph that suggests that the woodpeckers are living successfully here. What does the photograph tells us about the future of woodpeckers in Nowhere Wood?
  2. Woodpeckers have developed these adaptations through evolution.  Charles Darwin is the scientist who first suggested a possible way evolution could happen. This is called natural selection. Find out what natural selection is.

Notes on the story

A different kind of woodpecker

 

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Time travellers to Nowhere (1)

A landscape of the Carboniferous era
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
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
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.
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
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.

Notes on the story

Time travellers to Nowhere (2)

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Goodbye, for now

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.

  1. How does the use of pesticides across Europe and Africa affect the survival of house martins?
  2. How could we conserve our populations of house martin?

Notes on the stories

Fruits of the autumn

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The secret of the winter flowers

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 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?

What is its big secret?

 

 

 

 

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?

 

Notes on the story

The greening of Nowhere Wood

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Safety in numbers

cluster fliesThese 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.

cluster flies
cluster flies on leaf in Nowhere Wood, October 2021

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.

  1. Suggest why cluster flies need to warm their bodies in the morning, before they can fly.
  2. Suggest why there is safety in numbers.

Notes on the story

Goodbye, for now

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Time travellers to Nowhere (2)

A forest of tree ferns.
A forest of tree ferns. [Image: ttps://www.laterredufutur.com/accueil/la-plus-vieille-foret-du-monde-a-ete-decouverte-dans-letat-de-new-york/foret-380millions-dannees/]
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.

 

Carboniferous trees
Carboniferous trees [Image: https://forces.si.edu/atmosphere/02_02_06.html]
 

 

 

The plants are silently photosynthesising, growing ever taller and adding oxygen to the air. Year after year, generation after generation.

 

Stages in the formation of coal.
Stages in the formation of coal. [Image: https://www.manalifelab.com/the-science]
The wood in the tree stems is a new invention of evolution: no other plants have wood and fungi have yet to discover a way to eat it. This means that when the trees die and fall into the swampy wet soil, they do not decay, but stayed for thousands of years, gradually becoming compressed together to form deposits of coal.

The formation of most of our coal brought Earth close to global glaciation.
The formation of most of our coal brought Earth close to global glaciation. [Image: George Feulner, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1712062114]
 

The tree ferns took carbon dioxide from the air and locked it away as wood and coal. They took so much and the amount of carbon dioxide in the air fell so much, that the  climate cooled, lead to the destruction of the tropical forests.

 

 

 

Today, humans have found the coal and burned it, putting the hidden carbon dioxide back into the air, re-warming the planet. No we face a global warming, not a global cooling. Perhaps, one day, Nowhere Wood will be destroyed for a second time.

  1. Think about how interconnected the rocks, the trees, the atmosphere and the climate are. How does a change to one thing affect everything else?
  2. Ferns are the first group of plants to develop proper roots. Think about why it would be an advantage for the early tree ferns to grow into sandstone.

Back then, the tree ferns grew through sandstone much as the smaller ferns in Nowhere Wood do today. Read more about this in another story: Climbing the walls.

Notes on the story

Time travellers to Nowhere (3)