reflections on the world of Nowhere Wood, Nailsea
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]](https://blog.neilingram.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/7748b521-4f7b-4085-9e74-d5971937b62a-1024x768.jpg)
![Trees with Ash dieback disease are marked with a red spot. [Picture: Neil Ingram]](https://blog.neilingram.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_2857-1024x768.jpeg)
The sustainable park (2)
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.
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.
Some animals and plants can’t live in Nowhere Wood because it’s too cold or too wet for them. But the climate has warmed by about 1°C since the 1970s. This small change has allowed new species to come and live in the wood because the climate now suits them better.
Scientists think there may be over fifty species of animals arriving in the UK because of climate change, although most of them have not yet arrived in Nowhere Wood!
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.
For tonight, January 5th, is the wassail, the twelfth night of Christmas.
(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.)
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.
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.
Today it is hot, humid and very quiet: with no birdsong or animal noise, apart from the distant croaking of frogs.
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.
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.
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.
The plants are silently photosynthesising, growing ever taller and adding oxygen to the air. Year after year, generation after generation.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
At this time of the year, the fungi are busy ‘ being’.
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.
This is how it is. The precious molecules are used, recycled and become part of the growth of new organisms. Nothing is ever wasted.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.