Category: autumn stories

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The tunnelling armies beneath carpets of gold

It is early November in the park, and carpets of fallen leaves are piling up across the earth in sodden heaps, driven by the autumn winds and rains. The browns of the oak, the sycamore ambers and the golds of the beeches.

A carpet of fallen leaves in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Beneath the old apple tree, the king of the orchard, fallen apples lie on top of the leaf-litter, wind-shaken and bruised. Their skins cracked, their flesh softening, their scent faintly sweet but sharp in the still air. To almost every walker, they are simply decaying fruit to be sidestepped or stepped on. But down below, for the mini beasts of the soil, these apples are the food for their futures.

Fallen apples in Trendlewood Park
Fallen apples in Trendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

These apples, built by the tree from sunlight and salts, now become a banquet for a micro-world. First slugs and woodlice nibble the breaking skins.

As leaves and apple flesh break down, bacteria and fungi colonise. Fungi thread through leaves, breaking tough lignin and cellulose into sugars. Bacteria feed on these sugars and their growth increases.

Then the springtails and mites gather. But the major transformation begins when the earthworms arrive.

In this video from @PlayEarth we can see how apples are consumed by earthworms: in our park, the same players are at work, but working at much slower rhythms.

As the earthworms burrow, they drag down leaves and fragments of apple into the soil, creating tunnels rich in oxygen and moisture. The earthworms grind the material in their guts, making it more digestible for microbial armies.

As they pass through, the earthworms consume the microbe-rich soil, expelling the soil as finely ground particles. Their work accelerates the breakdown of the leaves and apples.

The result? The fallen apples, once crisp and bright, become part of the soil. Nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium return to the ground. The soil structure improves. Tiny pores hold water. Seeds waiting in the seed-bank sense the difference. Saplings in spring find richer soil, more ready to grow.

In our small park, what seems like waste—leaves and fallen apples— are the lifeblood of food webs, cycles and renewal. Life depends on life. The work of the worms and other soil organisms is quiet, unseen, but foundational. Without it, the leaf carpet would build up, decomposition would slow, nutrients would be locked away.  Instead, the earth beneath is alive and renewing, waiting for the spring.

  1. Many people tidy up the fallen leaves from their garden lawns and flower beds. Why might it be better to leave them where they fell? 

 

Notes on the story

Trampling acorns underfoot 

 

 

You might also like to read: 

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Trick or treat?

Traveller's joy or OId man's beard. Growing on the edges of the meadow, Tendlewood Park
Traveller’s joy or OId man’s beard. Growing on the edges of the meadow, Tendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

A traveller on the pathways, weary after many miles of walking, looks up into the hedgerow and sees the silky feathery threads surrounding the dark fruits. The sight brings the traveller an uplifting joy, at least according to John Gerard in his 1597 herbal. He called it ‘travellers joy’.

It has other names. It is ‘old man’s beard’ in Hampshire and Wiltshire and called the delightful ‘Withywine’ in Somerset. Its formal name is Clematis vitalba and it has distinctive flowers and fruits.

Drawings of the flowers and seed heads of Clematis vitalba.

Vitalba means ‘vital’, full of energy. It certainly grows rapidly, especially in new habitats, where it can form dense thickets. This is the secret of its success as a coloniser of hedges and woodlands.

But, its rope-like branches can choke and strangle the trees over which it invades. Little wonder that frustrated woodsmen have given it a range of darker names, such as ‘devil’s twister and ‘devil’s guts’.

Trick or treat? It is halloween, and it is for you to decide.

  1. Given the large number of local names for plant species, why was it important to create a recognised system of formal names?

 

Notes on the story

Being and becoming in Nowhere Wood

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Celebrating mushroom season!

A close up of a honey fungus, showing its gills and stem,
A close up of a honey fungus in Nowhere Wood, showing its gills and stem. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Everyone agrees, it is an outstanding mushroom season. The dry summer and the warm wet autumn have created the perfect conditions for these mysterious forms which spend most of their lives living underground. Quietly, but with ruthless effectiveness, they influence and shape the growth of the trees in the wood.

But, what is a mushroom? The people living in Nowhere a century and a half ago would distinguish between mushrooms (which they could eat) and toadstools (which they could not). Learning how to tell them apart was (and is) very important for mushroom foragers. Their children would have been taught that if they were not certain, they should leave well alone. Still good advice, today.

To a mycologist (a biologist of fungi) the term toadstool is not used, and the term ‘mushroom’ is used to describe the fruiting bodies of all these fungi.

Bracket fungus on the old beech tree in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Pat Gilbert]
This bracket fungus is growing on the old beech tree. It is probably a Giant Polyphore. [Photograph; Pat Gilbert]

So, this wonderful bracket fungus is still called a mushroom by biologists.

Honey fungus growing in Nowhere Wood.
These mushrooms may be of the honey fungus in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Which fungi do not produce mushrooms? Well, yeasts are single-celled fungi that do not produce mushrooms. They often grow on the surface of fruit and help to turn apples into cider. Moulds and rusts are also fungi that do not produce mushrooms. They form fuzzy or powdery growths that spread quickly.

Yeasts and other fungi on fallen apples in Tendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Mould fungi on fallen apples in Trendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Moulds play an important role in helping to break down fruits in the orchard, releasing nutrients back into the soil.

What are mushrooms for? The photograph at the top of the page shows the gills of the mushroom, under its surface. The gills make and store spores, which blow away in the wind. Spores can settle and grow into new fungi.

  1. Imagine what would the world be like without fungi.

Notes on the story

Trick or treat?

Also see: 

The fairy ring

Moving things on

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The end of the summer

Nowhere Wood has a weary silence, as the heat stifles its life. It is ready with its autumn plans, which cannot start until it rains. 

Rain, the life-giver. Yet in flood, rain is the also the destroyer. It is a question of balance. Is the balance changing in the wood? Is the balance changing in the world? This has been the hottest summer the wood has ever known. People across the world are saying the same things. 

Fern leaves wilting in the summer heat in Nowhere Wood
Fern leaves wilting in the summer heat in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Even the fern leaves are wilting for want of water. Holly trees have deeper roots, but they are suffering, too. The soil in the wood is very thin, because it used to be a stone quarry, and the roots cannot grow deep enough to find water.

Holly leaves wilting in the summer heat in Nowhere Wood.
Holly leaves wilting in the summer heat in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Then, the remains of a hurricane in the Caribbean barrels westwards, bringing with it strong westerly winds, which blow the summer away in a moment.

The first autumn rain falls in Trendlewood Park.
The first autumn rain falls in Trendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

The rain falls, gently at first, then much stronger. The smell of the wood changes as the plants take up the water and everything seems to relax.

Droplets of rain on a leaf of a snowberry plant
Droplets of rain on a leaf of a snowberry plant in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Nowhere Wood is lucky. Somalia in East Africa it has not had any significant rain for two years and a quarter of the population faces “crisis-level food insecurity” (near-starvation). Yet, in 2023, October floods killed hundreds of people and washed away thousands of homes. The harvest was ruined, leading towards more famine.

It is the unpredictability of the weather that causes most concern. Farmers sow their seeds not knowing whether it will produce enough food. And that is now the same everywhere across the world, including Great Britain. Time will tell what will happen in the future. 

Meanwhile Nowhere Wood celebrates the arrival of the rain in autumn as the fruit ripens and the wood moves forward into the next stage of its adventure.

Apples ripening in the rain in the orchard in Trendlewood Park.
Apples ripening in the rain in the orchard in Trendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

1. Imagine that the autumn rains did not come. What would happen to Nowhere Wood?

 

Notes on the story

Climate Change and the Weather

 

 

Update: 

A few days alter, after real rain, the fern has recovered and perked up. 

After a few days rain, the fern recovers.
After a few days rain, the fern recovers. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
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A spot for parks and town centres

The “fruit” of the London plane tree is actually a dense, ball-shaped cluster of individual fruits. These hang on long stalks, often in pairs, from the tree’s branches.

Fruit of the London plane tree
Fruit of the London plane tree [photograph https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Alvesgaspar]
The individual fruits are called achenes. Each achene contains a single seed. Attached to the base of each achene is a tuft of many thin, stiff, yellow-brown fibres. These fibres help the wind disperse the achenes to new locations.

The individual fruits (achenes) of the London plane tree, showing the dense fibres.
The individual fruits (achenes) of the London plane tree, showing the dense fibres. [Photograph: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User: Jebulon ]
The achene cluster breaks up slowly over the winter, releasing the individual achenes (each containing a single seed) to be dispersed by wind.

When the conditions are right, the seed germinates, breaking through the achene, growing roots into the soil.

  1. Fruits that are dispersed by animals (like the blackberry) are often brightly coloured, juicy and sweet tasting. Those fruits that are dispersed by the wind are often dry, small and lightweight. Why do you think this is?

Notes on the story

The end of the summer

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If a tree falls….

A fallen ash tree in nowhere 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.

 

 

 

Ash dieback disease
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.

Fungi feeding in a fallen tree in Nowhere Wood
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.

a fungus on a tree
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.

  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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Fruits of the autumn

Autumn fruits in Nowhere Wood
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
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.

  1. Think about what happens to the seed when the fruit is eaten by a blackbird.
  2. How does the blackbird help the blackberry plant to spread its seeds away from the wood?

Notes on the stories

 

The secret of the winter flowers

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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 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
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.

Be careful: all parts of these plants are poisonous to people – especially the berries.

  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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Goodbye, for now

Hose Martin in flight.
House Martin in flight. [Photograph: PaulK, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:House_Martin_-_Delichon_urbicum_-_B%C3%A6jasvala.jpg]

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?

House Martin in nest. HTO, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]

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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Safety in numbers

cluster flies on a leaf 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
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.

  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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Subterranean superheroes

Leaf fall in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
The leaves covering the floor of Nowhere Wood are slowly disappearing in the mild December nights. Fog hangs in the air. The wood is preparing for winter and everywhere is quiet and still. Most of the real action is taking place below the ground, but what is making the leaves disappear?

 

Earthworm [Photograph: Shutterstock 1596740926, licensed to NI]
The culprits are earthworms, the little subterranean superheroes that do most of the heavy lifting in Nowhere Wood. There is about 45 million earthworms underground in the wood, with a total biomass equal to about twenty elephants. They are easily the most abundant animal in the wood, but they are so rarely seen.

 

Earthworm. [Photograph: Shutterstock 171009224, licensed to NI]
Earthworms tunnel into the soil making the burrows that are their homes. At night, they come to the surface to drag fallen leaves back down into their burrows. The burrows are also perfect homes for bacteria and fungi.

 

 

Fungi mycelia. [Photograph: 159740926, licensed to NI]
The bacteria and fungi  feed on the leaves, turning them into nutrients that they use as food. This is humus. Earthworms eat the fungi and the humus-rich soil. As they do so, they glue the soil particles together into small clumps. This improves the quality of the soil, making it a perfect environment for plant roots.

 

Plant roots in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Plant roots need plenty water, air and nutrients, all of which are given to the soil by the fungi and earthworms. We can think of earthworms as the soil’s farmers, ploughing the soil for the plants. Without their work, no life could exist in Nowhere Wood.

 

Charles Darwin. [Shutterstock 252138244, licensed to NI]
The famous scientist Charles Darwin studied how plants, earthworms and fungi work together to keep woods alive, and he wrote a famous book about it in 1881. He wrote about earthworms: “It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organised creatures.”

  1. In what ways do you think that soil is alive?
  2. Think about how the trees, fungi and earthworms work together to keep the wood alive.

Today, Friday 4th December 2020, is World Soil Day 2020. Here is a video celebrating our dependence on soil:

Notes on the story

Spring is coming!

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Climbing the walls

Hart’s tongue fern growing on the sandstone walls of Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
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 can climb walls.


Ferns are an ancient group of plants, first appearing on Earth about 390 million years ago. That’s about 260 million years before the emergence of flowering plants.

Spores on the under surface of a fern leaf. Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Like fungi, another ancient group, ferns produce spores. They are the brown dots on the underside of this fern leaf. Spores are light and float in the air like particles of dust.

One spore floats up to a small crack in the rock face. Rainwater and the decaying remains of a leaf have formed a sticky, jam-like, humus inside the crack.  The spore sticks to the humus and germinates, developing into a tiny little plant, about 10 mm long.

Drawing of a gametophyte of a fern. [Image: https://picryl.com/media/prothallus-gametophyte-0bab1a ]
This is a fern, but it is not the mature adult form. It has tiny roots that grow into the humus, drawing nutrients from it.
This small plant is called a gametophyte because it makes gametes for sexual reproduction. Gametes are sperm and egg cells. 


These gametes will come together to make the adult fern on the surface of the tiny gametophyte.

Sperm from ferns. [Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Fern_sperm.jpg]
The gametophyte makes many small sperm that swim in the water on the surface of the plant. They swim towards eggs, which are much larger. This photograph shows a fern sperm fertilising a fern egg.

The sperm and the egg join together. A single cell is produced that will grow into the adult fern. Eventually this fern will make spores of its own.

This may sound like a long-winded and complicated adventure, but it seems to work well, because there are so many ferns in Nowhere Wood.

The fern exists in several different forms during its adventure: spores, eggs, sperm, gametophyte and adult plants. What do they have in common?

Each of these forms is made of one or many cells. Each cell contains a nucleus, and inside each nucleus is a genome. Genomes contain information. The information in the genome is the same in all of the different forms of the fern.

The genome contains the secrets of how to be a fern and how to move forward in the next step of the adventure.

  1. The fern exist in several different forms during its adventure: spores, eggs, sperm, gametophyte and adult plants. Think why is important that the genome in every form is the same? 

Notes on the story

Life is a relay race

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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.

Mycelia of fungi. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Fungi feed on the wood of the dead oak trees, turning it into nutrients that provide energy and chemicals needed  to grow new fungal cells.  (These cells form long threads called hyphae). Some fungi can spread out over really large areas, several kilometres wide.

At this time of the year, the fungi are busy ‘ being’.

Fungi in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Then one night, silently and without warning, the fungi do something else.

They produce structures that we call “mushrooms” **.

Mushrooms are  fruiting bodies. They produce thousands of tiny spores.

Spores are small and light. They are carried on air currents to new places in Nowhere Wood, where they will germinate and grow into new hyphae.

Fungus in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Spores have often been found in the filters of jet aircraft flying at the edge of the atmosphere, so some spores can travel right round the world. When fungi produce spores they are ‘becoming’ something new: small, light and mobile versions of themselves.

Decaying fungus in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil ingram]
Then, almost as soon as they arrive, it is all over. The fruiting bodies die and become food for other fungi and bacteria in Nowhere Wood.

This is how it is. The precious molecules are used, recycled and become part of the growth of new organisms. Nothing is ever wasted.

  1. Nearly all of the atoms present on Earth when life began to evolve about 3.7 billion years ago are still found on Earth today. Many of them are found locked inside living organisms. Sooner or later, all of these organisms will die. Imagine what life would be like without Nature’s recyclers.
  2. You are a collection of recycled atoms. Think about how carbon atoms enter and leave your body. [Hint, carbon atoms are found in carbohydrates and in carbon dioxide.]

You can read more about ‘being and becoming’ here.

 

**Some mushrooms are good to eat, others are really poisonous and can kill us. It is hard to tell them apart unless you are an expert, so it is sensible not to touch or eat any mushrooms you find in a wood.

Notes on the story

Climbing the walls

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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.

A red squirrel. [Photograph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Red_Squirrel_-_Lazienki.JPG]
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, replacing the red squirrels wherever they went. Now red squirrels are only found in a few places, where they are protected.

Grey squirrels are 60% better at digesting oak acorns than red squirrels, which seem to prefer hazel nuts. Oak acorns are much more common in Nowhere Wood than hazel nuts, and this favours the grey squirrel.

Grey Squirrel. [Photograph: Gary Helm, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ghelm/8645487905]
The success of grey squirrels at surviving and breeding in Nowhere Wood is due to the production of acorns, which varies from year to year.

Survival is a risky journey for any squirrel: the arrival of new competitors or interruptions to the food supply can pose real challenges.

 

Their lives are  adventures.

The word ‘adventure’ has two parts:

Ad means moving towards something.

Venture means attempting something dangerous or difficult, that is risky, with no guarantee of success.

Put the two together and you get the idea that the lives of all living organisms are risky journeys into the future, with no guarantee of success or survival.

If you like, you can think of life as:

organisms having adventures in time and space

  1. Think about the squirrels and the oak trees. In what ways are their lives adventures?  [Hint: think about what the word adventure means.]

 

Notes on the story

Moving things on

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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 of all of the parts of the watch.

The ability to tell the time emerges from the watch, only when all of the parts move together smoothly. If anything goes wrong, the watch “stops” and the ability to tell the time disappears.

Living organisms are alive because they are organised. Everything depends upon the way that the different parts of their bodies work together.

For an organism, life emerges and exists for only as long as its parts work together smoothly.

If anything goes wrong, the organism becomes ill. If it is very serious, then the organism dies and its life disappears. This is difficult to think about, but it is a fact of life.

  1. One of the important features of human society is that we have learned how to care for the sick and the elderly. Hows does this help the survival of humanity?

Notes on the story

Squirrel wars

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Being and becoming in Nowhere Wood

 

life cycle of a butterfly. [Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Butterfly_life_cycle_diagram_in_English.svg/1154px.Butterfly_life_cycle_diagram_in_English.svg.png]
All living organisms are doing two things at the same time. They are:

Being (they are keeping themselves alive) and

Becoming (they are moving towards the next stage of their lives).

The butterfly is being and becoming at each stage of its life.

All of the animals and plants in Nowhere Wood are also “being” and “becoming”.

  1. How are the oak trees in nowhere Wood being and becoming?
  2. How are you being and becoming? 

 

Notes on the story

Organise and stay alive

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Counting the ways to stay alive

Forest fire in Canada. [Photograph: https://imaggeo.egu.eu/view/12490/]
No one knows how many different kinds of animals and plants are alive today, and, sadly, we never will.

A survey in 2011 suggested that there are nearly 8 million species of animals and nearly 300, 000 species of plants.  Astonishingly, nearly 90% of these species have yet to be discovered, described or named. Many are found in hard-to-reach places, such as tropical rain forests or the deep oceans. Given the rate of man-made habitat destruction, it is possible that many of these species will become extinct before they can be named by scientists.  

These 8.1 million species are, for now, the success stories of evolution. Each is a unique way of solving the problems of surviving and reproducing in an unforgiving and changing environment.

Humpback whale breaching in the ocean. [photograph: https://news.scubatravel.co.uk/restoring-whale-numbers-combat-climate-change.html]
All species, like this humpback whale, have special characteristics that allow them to survive in their chosen habitats.

But if the habitats change too much, such as when when the oceans become acidified, rainforests are cut down or burned, then species may no longer be able to survive and they become extinct. Forever. 

  1. Why does it matter that species of organisms become extinct before scientists can discover them?

Notes on the story

Being and becoming in Nowhere Wood

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Trampling acorns underfoot

Acorns in Nowhere Wood


I have never seen so many acorns in Nowhere Wood. Everywhere I step, I am treading on acorns. Acorns are the fruits of oak trees and this year it certainly has been a bumper harvest.  Biologists call this a “mast year”.

The air in Nowhere Wood in April and May was very hot and still. This allowed the oak pollen to hang in the air near the feathery stigmas of the oak flowers. Perfect conditions for pollination and making acorns.

July and August were warm and wet, ideal conditions for growing a record crop of acorns.

A jay with an acorn. [Photograph: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2007-11-21_Jaybird,_Eichelh%C3%A4her,_Garrulus_glandarius.JPG]

This is good news for the birds of the wood, like pigeons, jays and woodpeckers, which eat acorns. And for the squirrels and mice, too. Deer eat acorns, and I did once see one near the woods very early in the morning. The oak trees are producers and this is one way that they make food for the woodland herbivores.

The oak trees in the wood are perhaps seventy or eighty years old now and tower above the other trees. They are successful, but for how much longer? The oldest trees are falling down, some by lightning strikes during thunderstorms.

It is difficult for young acorns to grow into oak trees, because the floor of the wood is covered by thick ivy and brambles. There is a battle going on here for light, space and water that makes an episode of Eastenders look tame!

Young oak seedling in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Some young shoots make it through to the light, but they are few and far between. The future of acorns in Nowhere Wood will depend on them.

Everything is connected together, and a change to one organism affects everything else. The squirrels and the jays will be needing the oaks to remain successful. This is the way of life in Nowhere.



 

  1. Walk round an open space or a park near where you live. How are the living organisms depending on each other to survive?



Notes on the story

Counting the ways to stay alive