flow and recycle – Stories from Nowhere Wood

June 27, 2025June 29, 2025

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. [Photograph: Andrew Town]

To some, it’s a minor nuisance. They land in your lemonade, tangle in your hair, and make picnics suddenly less romantic. A swarm of tiny aviators with no regard for personal space.

Flying ants on the flowers of common ragwort. [Photograph: Andrew Town]

Is there really anything much to celebrate? Would we not be better off without ants?

But pause a moment—really look. This is the wedding flight, the briefest of honeymoons, when new queens and males take to the skies to mate and search for new grounds and new beginnings. It’s a natural marvel unfolding on our doorsteps, so what is going on below the surface?

It starts underground, beneath a cracked paving stone, under a patch of sun-warmed earth: this is the colony, the kingdom of the ants. The colony pulses with organised purpose.

Yellow meadow worker ants. — Yellow meadow worker ants in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Andrew Town]

Tunnels and chambers run through the soil, branching and looping. Here, everything has a rhythm. The queen lays eggs, which are tended and nurtured. The queen is guarded with reverence because she is the provider of life to the colony.

Their larvae are fed and thousands of identical worker ants are formed. These do not have wings.

The power of ants lie in their numbers.

Some ants are the pirates of the wood: ferocious and aggressive, they will attack those who cannot defend themselves or have not learned to work with the ants. Like pirates, ants will protect anything that gives them what they want – usually food.

Some species roam in teams, tracking down caterpillars, beetle larvae, or even spiders. They subdue them not with brute force, but with strategy: surround, immobilise, overwhelm. A single ant may be no match for a wasp larva, but a dozen? A hundred? That’s a different story. Their venom can paralyse, their mandibles shear, and their numbers do the rest.

These ants are farming blackflies. [Photograph: Andrew Town]

Other ants are the gentle manipulators of blackfly insects, tending huge herds of them.

Blackflies suck the juices of a plant, excreting sweet sticky “honey dew”, which feeds the ants in the colony. In exchange, the ants give the blackflies protection and time to reproduce. Some ants actively”farm” the blackflies, by stroking them gently with their antennae to encourage them to produce honeydew. Like milking a cow.

Biologists call ants ‘keystone’ species. In architecture, the keystone is the stone at the top of an arch that holds the whole structure together. Remove it, and everything collapses.

Ants play this role in the architecture of the wood. Their tunnelling aerates the soil, letting water and oxygen reach the roots of plants. They break down waste, dead insects, and fallen leaves—recycling the detritus of life into the ingredients for growth.

Some species plant seeds by accident, dropping them underground where they germinate safely. Others protect plants from pests or farm aphids like cattle. A colony is not just a nest: it’s an engine of fertility, a subterranean society that quietly underpins the world above.

Take them away, and you begin to see the gaps. Soils become compacted. Nutrients stop cycling. Other animals—birds, lizards, even mammals—that feed on ants start to vanish too. The threads of connection begin to unravel.

The world is a better place with ants – and the flying ants are crucial, for this is where new queens mate with males and go to form new colonies, so the cycle of life continues for one more year. As long as the old colonies have healthy queens, they will continue, so that Flying Ant Day is a way of mixing together different colonies, to make and spread new ones.

The ants benefit, and so does Nowhere Wood, so, let’s celebrate Flying Ant Day!

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

Notes on the story

Being and becoming in Nowhere Wood

June 5, 2025July 20, 2025

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. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Later, the leaves disappear and the plant lives underground for the winter.

Rhizome of Lords and Ladies plant. [Photograph: Neuchâtel Herbarium, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neuch%C3%A2tel_Herbarium_-_Arum_maculatum_-_NEU000100869.jpg]

It lives on as a secretive rhizome, sleeping through the summer heat and the turning year, until — just as the bluebells fade — it returns to play its part again.

Each ripe red fruit contains a seed of the Lords and Ladies plant. Birds, like thrushes and backbirds love to eat these fruits. Explain how this helps to disperse the seeds away from the parent plant.
What are the advantages to small insects of going inside a Lord and Ladies flower?

Notes on the story

Echoes from Nowhere

January 11, 2025April 19, 2025

Apples and the new year

Let’s travel back in time three hundred years or more, to the East End Farm, near the hamlet of Nowhere.

East End farm has a few sheep and goats, some vegetables and several apple orchards.

Children in Bridport, Dorset, wassailing in a community orchard. [Photograph, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/Bridport_Community_Orchard_Wassail_2022_%2851830797371%29.jpg/1024px-Bridport_Community_Orchard_Wassail_2022_%2851830797371%29.jpg]

Tonight the orchards are surrounded by farm workers and villagers from Nowhere, all singing and banging pots and pans. Children hang pieces of toast soaked in cider from the tree branches.

For tonight, January 5th, is the wassail, the twelfth night of Christmas.

Small orchards in Somerset — The orchards contain a number of apple trees. [Photograph: David Smith, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5606792

Apples grow all across the county of Somerset, and are especially important to Nowhere and its bigger neighbour, Nailsea. Every farm brews cider, which they give to the farm hands as part of their wages.

(Centuries later, cider would be brewed and sold in large factories. Nailsea hosted Coates factory for over 150 years. These days, the Thatcher family brews cider at Sandford, ten miles to the southwest.)

Wassailing at night. [Photograph: Steven Brace, https://www.flickr.com/photos/30399879@N03/3286351432]

Back in Nowhere, apple trees are a sign of a healthy farm. Wise famers celebrate the good health of their orchards with a wassail.

Their people visit the apple trees by the light of burning torches. Singing songs to them and making a lot of noise to ward off evil spirits. Hopefully, this should be enough to ensure a good harvest in the next year.

The oldest tree in the orchard is given the greatest respect, and he is called the ‘Apple Tree Man’. [Image: Neil Ingram]

The Apple Tree Man decides how many apples will grow in the next year. Farmers keep the Apple tree Man happy by pouring cider over his roots.

There are several old folk tales told in Somerset about the Apple Tree Man. The next story is a modern retelling of one of these old tales.

Notes on the story

The Apple Tree Man of Nowhere

April 9, 2025May 4, 2025

What can eat a tree like this?

This story is about how a pair of tiny insects about 6mm long and their very hungry caterpillars can eat a large tree.

Bark of a mature European Ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior). Photograph: Ash Bark – geograph.org.uk – 645097.jpg

Ash trees are beautiful: young trees have smooth grey bark, whilst older trees have bark that cracks to form diamond shapes, like the pattern we see on a chain-link fence.

No one likes to see these wonderful trees cut down in their prime. One of the problems with ash dieback disease is that there is often little to see on the outside. Yet the tree is damaged on the inside.

The trunk of an ash tree damaged by ash dieback disease. Photograph: Neil Ingram

Some beetles can bore into wood of infected trees, as the photograph shows. The beetles have made many round holes as well as carving the thin curved galleries in the wood of the tree.

The oak pinhole borer beetle — An adult oak pinhole borer beetle, which can attack ash trees. Image: John Curtis (1791–1862).

It is hard to say what type of beetle caused this damage, but one likely culprit is the oak pinhole borer, which (despite its name) can attack weakened ash trees. The infection probably occurred during the summer months, when a male digs a hole a few centimetres deep in the bark of the tree.. The female inspects the hole and then returns to the surface to mate with the male.

The female then re-enters the hole and the male follows her in. She digs deeper into the tunnel, working in a curve. The female eats the wood and excretes the fine wood fragments in her feces. This is called frass. The males help to keep the tunnels clear, by moving the grass out of the way.

The insects’ bodies are covered in spores of a group of fungi, called ambrosia fungi.

Ambrosia fungus, grown in a laboratory, seen under a microscope. Photograph: Kathie Hodge, https://www.flickr.com/photos/cornellfungi/6185749769

These fungi grow in the galleries made by the female. The eggs of the insects hatch to form larvae, which feed on the ambrosia fungi.

The round holes are part of the tunnels that reach the surface of the wood, allowing the new adult borers to leave the tree.

It is an interesting relationship between the insects and the fungi, because both depend on each other for their survival.

We talk in these stories about how energy flows through ecosy stems and how atoms are recycled by other organisms. The ash tree, the ash dieback fungus, the beetles and the ambrosia fungi are component parts of an ecosystem.

Explain how energy flows through the ecosystem and how atoms are reused.

Notes on the story

Yellow flowers

September 12, 2024April 19, 2025

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.

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.

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?

March 22, 2025April 21, 2025

The sustainable park (2)

An ash tree showing symptoms of ash dieback disease. [Photograph: M. J. Richardson, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5465604]

We did not want those trees in Nowhere Wood to be felled, but we accepted that the trees were infected with Ash die-back disease and had to go.

Growing and managing trees is something that people of done for tens of thousands of years. One secret is to use every part of the tree mindfully, to benefit the community.

And so it was that fifteen volunteers from the Friends of Trendlewood group came together to drag the fallen branches (“brash”) to the edge of the pond.

Dragging Ash branches to the pond. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

We worked alongside the council parks team, who piled wooden stakes in the ground across the edge of the pond. We then weaved layers of branches between the stakes to create a “dead hedge”, separating the pond from the children’s playground.

Laying a dead hedge, using ash branches. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

The pond is fed by streams and disappeared for many decades, only to return as a permanent feature in the last few years. Watercress plants grow in the water, as they would have done in the 1800’s, when people used to collect them to eat.

It took a morning to build the dead hedge, which will help to protect children and dogs from getting wet in the pond. It is a good use of waste wood that would otherwise be burned. Burning wood releases stored carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

The completed dead hedge. [Photograph: Simon Stannard]

It is another example of how the park is managed in sustainable ways.

Sustainability is an important idea. The United Nations has a sustainable development goal for life on land, (number 15). Find out what it says and why it is important.

Notes on the story

What can eat a tree like this?

March 15, 2025April 19, 2025

A tribute to fallen trees

The trees in Nowhere Wood are always there, going quietly through the motions of the seasons: noticed only when we stop to look and reflect. But we feel their presence strongly, just out of sight and mind.

Until today, when their absence feels like the loss of dear friends.

Fallen ash tree trunks at the quarry face of Nowhere Wood. [Picture: Neil Ingram] — Fallen ash tree trunks at the quarry face of Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

It only took a morning, and nearly 100 years of growth has ended. Yes, they had Ash dieback disease and were marked with a red spot. Yes, they were unstable on the quarry floor. Even so, we feel their loss keenly.

Trees with Ash dieback disease are marked with a red spot. [Picture: Neil Ingram] — Trees with Ash dieback disease are marked with a red spot. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

The wood will regenerate, but only if we can remove the trunks from the woodland floor. Else we shall see little re-development in our lifetimes. This problem is one that we have to own.

The robin is an optimistic opportunist. Making the best of new opportunities amongst the fallen branches of ash. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

In the mean time, life goes on amidst the debris of fallen trees.

Notes on the story

The sustainable park (2)

October 11, 2024April 19, 2025

The fairy ring

Fairy ring fungus [photograph: Andrew Town]

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 Brian Froud]

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?

Notes on the story

Hard hats, safety specs and camouflage jackets

October 11, 2024April 19, 2025

What’s in a name?

Dryads Saddle — Dryad’s saddle [photograph: Andrew Town]

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 dryads looks like? — 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.

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?

Notes on the story

The fairy ring

November 28, 2024April 21, 2025

The sustainable park (1)

The old willow tree in Trendlewood park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

This willow tree in the park is very old. Maybe a hundred years or so. Look how its bark is gnarled and twisted. It is a great friend of the park and is home to many different insects and birds. One year, a female mallard duck even made a nest on the flat top of the tree!

The willow keeps on growing because every few years, it’s friends cut off all of its branches!

This really does encourage the tree to grow strongly.

We call the removal of the branches ‘pollarding’.

This ancient willow tree has recently been pruned — Pollarding trees is a way of keeping them alive. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

This week, it was the old willow’s turn to be pollarded. You can see the cut stumps where the branches used to be.

Woods have always been important to people. In the 17th century, new forests were planted to provide enough timber for the boats for the Royal Navy.

People have pollarded woodland trees for thousands of years. It was their main source of wood for building, making furniture, for charcoal and for fuel to heat their homes.

Wood is a very useful sustainable resource, when managed in this way. It is sustainable because the tree carries on growing and making new wood.

Pollarded willow wood is special. It is used to make cricket bats and weave baskets. For generations, this provided income for poor families in Somerset.

It is also a good way of making new fences. This is because cut branches of willow will grow new roots when they are placed in water.

The cut stems will grow into new trees and can become a hedge when they are planted closely together.

Two volunteers from the Friends of Trendlewood Park soaking the branches of willow. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

The photograph shows two volunteers from the Friends of Trendlewood Park preparing willow branches to build into a new hedge in the area near the playing fields.

They place the cut ends of the branches into water.

A newly planted willow hedge in Tendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

In a few months’ time, when the weather is warmer, this hedge should be growing strongly and could grow for many years.

This species of willow is called the brittle willow, because branches break off easily. Suggest why it is an advantage to the willow for these branches to be able to grow into new trees.
This species of willow has two ways of reproducing. It flowers and makes seed and also can propagate through fallen branches. Find out why it is useful for the species to be able to reproduce in these two ways.

After the story:

Just after I finished writing this story, it was announced that young trees grown from seeds of the Sycamore Gap tree are to be given to charities, groups and individuals as “trees of hope“. This ancient sycamore tree, from Northumberland, was cut down in September 2023.

new growth from there Sycamore gap tree — Image from https://www.thesill.org.uk/sycamore-gap-tree-is-sprouting/

This is a lovely, kind idea. The tree lives on, not only through its seeds, but also in the new stems that are growing from its cut stem. This shows the power of nature to recover and re-grow. Life is resilient, it does not give up.

Notes on the story

Apples and the New Year

February 23, 2021July 2, 2025

What is a frog?

It is late February, the cold weather has moved away and the frogs have moved back in. It’s been a couple of years since they were last here, but here are their newly-laid eggs and the female is hiding beneath the leaf in the top left corner of the photograph. What is a frog and how is it having adventures in Nowhere Wood?

Frogs reproducing. [Photograph: JBdeHeer, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frogs_in_reproduction_time.jpg]

Frogs are amphibians, animals with backbones that live for most of the year on land, but which have to return to water to breed. A female with eggs is popular with males, which compete with each other to get close to her.

When she releases here eggs into the water, the males release their sperm onto the eggs. Fertilisation takes place in the water. The female lays about 2 000 eggs and many of them die. The brown eggs in the top photograph are probably a clutch of eggs that have died.

Inside the egg, the embryo is growing into a juvenile tadpole, feeding on the jelly that surrounds it. It will grow a tail and gills and become a free swimming tadpole.

Ten-day old tadpoles [Photograph: Tarquin, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tadpoles_10_days.jpg?uselang=fr]

Soon, the tadpole will break free and have to make its way as an independent animal, all of the while developing into the adult frog.

There are dangers in the water: tadpoles become carnivores and will eat each other and there are other predators, too. There is also a real chance that the water in the pond will disappear if we have a prolonged dry spell.

The frogs in Nowhere Wood are having adventures, moving forward into an unknown future, with no certainty of success. Most of these eggs will be eaten and will become food for other organisms; one or two might survive. Most years, frogs return to the water to breed, as frogs everywhere have done for the last 265 million years.

1. The survival of the frogs is not just due to chance. There is competition between male frogs to get close to the females eggs. How does this help to increase the success of the mating?

2. There is also competition between tadpoles for food. How does this help ensure that some frogs will survive to become adults that can reproduce for themselves?

3. What, do you think, is a frog?

Frog news update:

Frog spawn in Nowhere Wood [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

One week on, and the spawn has floated to the edge of the pond and the adds are swollen because they have taken up water. They still look healthy. Fingers crossed for the next stage!

Notes on the story

Early risers!

February 1, 2021July 2, 2025

Spring is coming!

The shortest day. [Image adapted from https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice#/media/File:Earth-lighting-winter-solstice_EN.png]

Nowhere Wood on December 23rd was silent and still. The wood was in midwinter, at its furthest point from the Sun on its journey through the seasons. At only 7 hours and 49 minutes, this was the shortest day and darkness ruled the wood. From now onwards the days will get longer by about two minutes each day until midsummer’s day in July.

new born squirrels — New born squirrels in Nowhere Wood, [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

The air was was misty and damp. No birds sang. The only movements were from ten or more baby squirrels running up and down trees, looking for food. The plentiful acorns in the autumn gave their parents the nutrients the needed to produce a special autumn litter.

Robin, in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Even by January, the wood had moved onwards and the days were drawing out. Robins sang from high branches of trees, marking out the wood into their territories, preparing for the coming spring.

Jay versus magpie. [Photograph: Alex Appleby, https://www.ephotozine.com/photo/magpie-vs-jackdaw-59874975]

Jackdaws and magpies fought for the right to control the high airspaces and the food that the neighbouring houses throw away. The wood was bustling with movement and sound.

Snowdrops in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Today is February 1st, the day that the Celtic peoples call Imbolc, the first day of spring. The flowers are opening and the frogs will soon return to our ponds to breed. Look upwards to the sky.

Spring is coming!

Think about the acorns that filled the floor of Nowhere Wood in September. How have they led to the birth of the new squirrels?
What changes have you seen in your neighbourhood in the last few weeks since January?

Notes on the story

What is a frog?

December 4, 2020July 2, 2025

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.”

In what ways do you think that soil is alive?
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!

November 27, 2020July 2, 2025

A year in the life of a sugar factory

The leaves of plants are everywhere in Nowhere Wood, helping to keep the wood alive. Leaves are organs: collections of living tissues and cells, having adventures in time and space. This is the story of a year in the life of an oak leaf.

Leaves are factories for making sugar from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide from the air. No human factory can do this, which is why we, and all other organisms, are so dependent on plants. Leaves are the producers of food.

Buds of the English oak. [Photograph: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:English_Oak_(Quercus_robur)_buds_(8535459373).jpg]

In is late November and the cells that will divide to make the new leaf are protected safely inside the scales of the bud. Early in March, when the days warm and get longer, stem cells within the bud start to divide many times, producing all of the cells of the new leaf. To start with, the cells are very small and all look the same.

Emerging leaves. [Photograph: shutterstock_244078297, licensed by NI]

Soon, the cells take up water and get much larger. They escape the protection of the bud and the new leaf emerges. The new cells no longer look the same: they are on different journeys of development, becoming all of the different cells and tissues that make up the leaf.

New leaves. [Photograph: Stutterstock 671376856, licensed by NI]

The leaf is a factory for making sugar. Like any factory, it has a source of energy and transport systems to get the raw materials into the factory. It also moves the manufactured sugar out to the places in the plant where it is needed. The heart of the factory is the production line where sugar is made. These are called chloroplasts and the leaf has millions of them, all making sugar whenever the sun shines. The Spring and Summer are sugar making seasons.

Oak leaves in autumn. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Gradually, in the autumn, when the days get cooler and shorter, the sugar factories are shut down and abandoned. The chloroplasts lie in ruins as everything useful is recycled back into the branches of the tree. All that remain are the frameworks of cell walls, turning brown as they dry in the autumn air.

Finally, the oak tree makes a special layer of cells that separates the old leaf from the stem, and the leaf is ready to fall when the wind blows strongly. The fallen leaves are not wasted, becoming energy stores for the organisms that feed on them. Next year’s buds are forming and wait for spring and the production of new leaves.

If leaves are factories form making sugar, then trees are factories for making leaves.

Everything has its own season in Nowhere Wood.

Think about how the leaf is a factory for making sugar. Where does its energy store come from? How do the raw materials get to the production line?
The production of leaves is sustainable in Nowhere Wood. What do you think this sentence means?

Notes on the story

Subterranean superheroes

November 11, 2020April 21, 2025

All change!

[Image: https://www.clipartof.com/portfolio/sajem/illustration/happy-moodie-character-looking-at-his-reflection-in-a-mirror-227335.html]

When you next look into a mirror ask yourself if you are the same person as you were yesterday. Well, of course you are.

Even people who last met you ten years ago can still recognise you and call you by your name. Although they might add, “My, how you have grown!”

And yet, if we could see under your skin, we would find that you are not the same. One of the biggest mysteries in biology is how we can change all of the time, whilst still staying the same.

Your skin cells live for about two weeks, so every month they are completely replaced. Red blood cells live for about 100 days and about two million are made in your body in every second.

Some of the chemicals in your cells exist for only minutes or seconds.

There is an energy store called ATP, which is needed for muscle contraction. ATP is made and broken down within 15 seconds. Cells need glucose to make ATP and this explains why muscle cells need a continuous supply of glucose to stay alive. This comes from our food.

[Image: https://www.clipartmax.com/middle/m2i8d3m2Z5d3G6d3_hm00260-%5B1%5D-digestive-system-close-up/]

Even large organs, like the liver, are replaced regularly. You grow a new liver every year. The cells in the alveoli of your lungs are renewed every eight days. Even the bone cells in our skeleton are replaced every three months. Your entire skeleton is remade every ten years.

[Image: http://halloween.phillipmartin.info/halloween_skeleton.htm]

So, when your friend sees you after ten years and calls out your name, there is not a single part of your body that was the same as when you last met. You have been completely remade and remodelled. And the same is true of your friend.

So, how can this be? New cells are made when one cell divides to make two cells. The information in the genome is copied before cells divide, so the new cells always receive the same information as the old cells.

The new cells use this information to grow bigger and to develop. So, you stay the same because of how your new cells use the information in their genomes.

Living organisms are alive because they actively remake themselves. No man-made machine can do this. Which is, perhaps, just as well.

In what ways have you changed in the last ten years?
In what ways have you stayed the same?
Why do need to eat food everyday?

Notes on the story

A year in the life of a sugar factory

October 25, 2020April 19, 2025

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.

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

October 22, 2020July 2, 2025

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.

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.
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