It is mid-July and it has rained for the first time in several weeks. Gentle warm rain, interspersed with strong sunshine. These are the days of gentle ripening, to complete the work that started in in the blossom season of the early spring.
The orchard in Trendlewood Park has a collection of ripening fruit trees and we hope that the Apple Tree Man of Nowhere will bless the harvest of apples, pears and plums.
Apple fruits ripening in the orchard on Trendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]Pear fruits ripening in the orchard on Trendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]Plum fruits ripening in the orchard on Trendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
In the autumn, these fruits will be ripe enough for animals to eat. What happens as fruit ripen?
Update: 22/7/25
I could not resist the ripening of the Guelder Rose, Viburnum opals, but do not eat it them, else you may fall ill.
Guelder rose on Trendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
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.
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?
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?
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?
The ram’s horn gall oak wasp was first found in Berkshire in 1997. It is now quite common in the Park [Photograph – Andrew Town].
We can spot new arrivals in Nowhere Wood, if we have time and patience. Anyone can do this if they walk through the wood often, thinking about what they see. It is much harder to notice species that disappear because the changing climate does not suit them. Species come and go from the wood all of the time.
So how do we know which species have left permanently because of climate change?
This news article from the Natural History Museum is about declining number of insects. From: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/
One way is to combine our observations of Nowhere Wood with observations from other woods across the country. This helps us to see the ‘bigger picture’.
When we do this, we can see that we do have a problem: London’s Natural History Museum reports that “UK’s flying insects have declined by 60% in 20 years”.
Three reasons are given for this fall in numbers, rising temperatures caused by climate change, loss of suitable habitats and the use of harmful chemicals as pesticides.
The hairy-footed flower bee, pollinating a lungwort flower [Photograph – Andrew Town].
Losing insects could have serious effects on Nowhere Wood and the surrounding farmlands. Bees are insects that are suffering this fall in numbers. They help to pollinate many crops, including the apple trees in the orchards.
Many insects are food for birds and other animals. A loss of insects could lead to a reduction in the number of these animal, too.
Bee hotels are sometimes used as a way to help encourage solitary bees to breed and survive. Learn how to do this here.
Imagine what a world would look like without insects. Does it matter if we lose our insects?
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. [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. [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. [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!
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?
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. [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. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
But look at this:
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 [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
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.
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.
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. [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.
Green and great spotted woodpeckers have different ways of feeding. How does this help them to live alongside each other in Nowhere Wood?
What might happen if they shared the same food supply?
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. [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. [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.
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.
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?
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.
Just outside of Nowhere Wood, next to the school playing fields, you can, on a summer evening, sometimes see a fairy ring. The photograph shows parts of this fairy ring: sometimes you can find rings that form a perfect circle.
How many fungi can you see here? There are about 15 mushrooms – the fruiting bodies, but only one fungus. In the soil, the fungus exists as a tangle of small thin threads called hyphae. The hyphae, which make up bodies of all fungi, are called mycelia.
Fungal mycelia can grow to enormous sizes. There is a fungus in a forest in Oregon, USA, which is 3.5 miles across and covers over 2000 acres. It could be up to 8.5 thousand years old!
The grass growing around a fairy ring fungus [Photograph: Andrew Town]
The fungus is good at feeding on dead organisms, and returning the nutrients to the soil. This helps the grass growing around the circle to grow taller than the grass growing further away from the fungus.
Fairies dancing in a fairy ring [image: Walter Jenks, The fairy ring. https://britishfairies.wordpress.com/tag/down-tor/]
People love fairy rings and make up stories about them. In English folklore, fairy rings are caused by fairies dancing in a circle. Be careful if you see one though. The stories say that if people join in the dance they would be punished by the fairies, and made to dance in the ring until they fall asleep.
Why do you think that fungi are useful in our woods and fields?
William Shakespeare is thought to have written these lines:
“If you see a fairy ring
In a field of grass,
Very lightly step around,
Tiptoe as you pass;
Last night fairies frolicked there,
And they’re sleeping somewhere near.
If you see a tiny fay
Lying fast asleep,
Shut your eyes”
William Shakespeare wrote “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream” in about 1596. In the play a group of powerful fairies cast spells on people, making their lives very difficult. Many people believed in such ideas in Elizabethan times.
Why do you think many people no longer think like this?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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 [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. [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. [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.
Think about how interconnected the rocks, the trees, the atmosphere and the climate are. How does a change to one thing affect everything else?
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.
Carboniferous dragonfly, with 1.5m wingspan. [image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Meganeura.png/1280px-Meganeura.png]
We are in Nowhere Wood, about 300 million years ago, staring at a forest of tree ferns, watching them make oxygen. Over the years, these tree ferns have made so much oxygen that its concentration in the air has risen to about 35%, (compare that with the 21% found in the 21st century).
Wildfires in Chile. [Photograph: https://globalclimatecare.in/climate-asia/f/man-made-or-nature-made-chile%E2%80%99s-forest-fire-creates-global-threat]There is so much oxygen that the lightning strikes produce frequent explosions in the air, causing forest fires. Nowhere Wood is a dangerous place to be, sometimes.
Arthropleura, a giant millipede. [Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthropleura#/media/File:ArthropleuraSide.jpg]The animals are using the oxygen to grown large: some millipedes are 1.5 metres in length and 0.5 metres wide. Some dragonflies have 70 cm wingspans.
Hylonomous lizard [Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hylonomus_BW.jpg] With all of this food available, there are opportunities for new carnivorous lizards to appear, including Hylonomus. This is one of the first creatures to have a new eggs with membranes inside, a characteristic later shown by all birds.
[Image: https://www.darwinsdoor.co.uk/feed/the-giant-arthropods-of-the-carboniferous.html] Also the flesh-eating Anthracosaurs first appeared at this time. These are the direct ancestors of the dinosaurs, that appeared millions of years later.
In Nowhere Wood, everything is connected together, in space and in time.
So many adventures in space and time, so much opportunity for the evolution of new forms. All of which depends on the formation of sandstone in Nowhere Wood.
Imagine what it was like to live in Nowhere Wood 300 million years ago. What would be the same and what would be different.
How do you think the world will change in the future?
The first snowdrops of spring. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]Every year, the snowdrop is the first plant to flower in Nowhere Wood. It is a symbol of the birth of Spring, bringing good cheer and hope at the end of a long winter. This is one reason why people plant snowdrops in their gardens.
Snowdrops in snow. [Photograph: ERS images, https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/12736811423122699/]Snowdrops are tougher than they look: they can grow through ice and snow. Their leaves have hardened edges that act as snowploughs and their cells contain a snowdrop antifreeze that stops ice crystals forming. The real secret of the snowdrop’s success is found below the ground, in the frozen soil. There, in the darkness, is a bulb, full of food made in last Spring’s photosynthesis. Like a battery, it is an energy store, so that the plant can start to grow in the weak winter sunshine.
This means that the plant can make leaves to grow in the warming Sun. The leaves make food to store in its bulbs ready for next year. Snowdrops do all of this before the leaves of the big trees open to steal the light, so that the floor of the wood becomes shaded. By then, the work of the snowdrop is over and it can wait for the next winter.
1. How have people helped the snowdrop to survive for so many years?
2. What advantages do snowdrops have by storing their food in underground bulbs. Can you think of any possible disadvantages?
Snowdrops have many more secrets that help them in their adventures in time and in space. We may tell more stories about snowdrops in the coming days! Come back to read them.
![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)
This means that the plant can make leaves to grow in the warming Sun. The leaves make food to store in its bulbs ready for next year. Snowdrops do all of this before the leaves of the big trees open to steal the light, so that the floor of the wood becomes shaded. By then, the work of the snowdrop is over and it can wait for the next winter.