Category: life depends on life
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Yellow flowers
Early spring in Nowhere Wood is the season of yellow flowers. Cowslips have an inelegant name: originally called ‘cow slops’, they were thought to grow where cows have trodden their poo into the ground. The old Somerset name of “bunch of keys” is much nicer – the arrangement of flowers on the head were thought…
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The singing trees
Winter has come to Nowhere Wood and ice has formed around the fallen trees in the pond. Everything shivers and wood is silent again. Squirrels search for food in the frozen mud, but everything else is waiting, biding its time. Silent, except for an ancient overgrown hedge formed from a row of old trees, bound together…
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Spring is coming!
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…
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Climbing the walls
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…
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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. Fungi feed on the wood of the dead oak trees, turning it into nutrients that provide energy and…
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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. The red squirrels have been replaced by grey squirrels that were introduced into the UK from the United States in the 1870s.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,…
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Being and becoming in Nowhere Wood
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…
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Trampling acorns underfoot
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.…