Traveller’s joy or OId man’s beard. Growing on the edges of the meadow, Tendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
A traveller on the pathways, weary after many miles of walking, looks up into the hedgerow and sees the silky feathery threads surrounding the dark fruits. The sight brings the traveller an uplifting joy, at least according to John Gerard in his 1597 herbal. He called it ‘travellers joy’.
It has other names. It is ‘old man’s beard’ in Hampshire and Wiltshire and called the delightful ‘Withywine’ in Somerset. Its formal name is Clematis vitalba and it hasdistinctive flowers and fruits.
Drawings of the flowers and seed heads of Clematis vitalba.
Vitalba means ‘vital’, full of energy. It certainly grows rapidly, especially in new habitats, where it can form dense thickets. This is the secret of its success as a coloniser of hedges and woodlands.
But, its rope-like branches can choke and strangle the trees over which it invades. Little wonder that frustrated woodsmen have given it a range of darker names, such as ‘devil’s twister and ‘devil’s guts’.
Trick or treat? It is halloween, and it is for you to decide.
Given the large number of local names for plant species, why was it important to create a recognised system of formal names?
The “fruit” of the London plane tree is actually a dense, ball-shaped cluster of individual fruits. These hang on long stalks, often in pairs, from the tree’s branches.
Fruit of the London plane tree [photograph https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Alvesgaspar]The individual fruits are called achenes. Each achene contains a single seed. Attached to the base of each achene is a tuft of many thin, stiff, yellow-brown fibres. These fibres help the wind disperse the achenes to new locations.
The individual fruits (achenes) of the London plane tree, showing the dense fibres. [Photograph: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User: Jebulon ]The achene cluster breaks up slowly over the winter, releasing the individual achenes (each containing a single seed) to be dispersed by wind.
When the conditions are right, the seed germinates, breaking through the achene, growing roots into the soil.
Fruits that are dispersed by animals (like the blackberry) are often brightly coloured, juicy and sweet tasting. Those fruits that are dispersed by the wind are often dry, small and lightweight. Why do you think this is?
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 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?
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 [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 [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, [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]
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 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?
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?
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.
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.
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 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?
The air is all round us and is a mixture of many different gases. 78% of the air is made of nitrogen, which is the most common gas. This story is about two other gases found in the air – oxygen and carbon dioxide.
The girl breathes out carbon dioxide and breathes in oxygen
We breathe in oxygen and use it to release energy from sugar. At the same time we make carbon dioxide – all living organisms do the same. We all do this to stay alive.
People also make carbon dioxide when we burn fuels, such as coal, oil, petrol and wood.
Nailsea was once a very small village. [Image from Nailsea Town.com]
If we go back over three hundred years to the 1700’s, Nailsea was a a tiny village surrounded by farms. Few people lived there, then. People burned wood or peat (from the moors) to stay warm. They walked everywhere or travelled horse and cart.
Carbon dioxide in the air is measured in units called ‘parts per million’. Scientists have estimated that in the early 1700’s the carbon dioxide in the air was about 280 parts per million.
An artist’s reconstruction of Middle Engine Pit, Nailsea. Artwork by Mark Hornby. From https://www.nailseatown.com/heritage-trail/middle-engine-pit/
However, things were beginning to change in Nailsea: the first coalmine was opened in 1700 and this would transform the village into a town in the next ninety years. The mines employed experienced miners who came to live in the town as well as local farmworkers.
This painting shows an appoach to Nailsea from the North. The cone of the glassworks is shown. Nailsea is changing from countryside into a town. [Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. Attributed to the British School.]
Plenty of cheap coal led to the opening of the glass factory and more migration of people into the town. The arrival of the railway in 1841 provided new opportunities to trade with Bristol and its ports. The steam trains were powerful and burned coal.
In Nailsea, new houses were built together with new roads and shops. Trendlewood quarry was opened in 1850 to provide sandstone tiles for the roofs of the new houses.
All of this activity added carbon dioxide to the air in increasing amounts. Trees can take carbon dioxide out of the air, but the local woods were gradually chopped down to make way for the new town and for farmland. The wood was burned as fuel.
This pattern of industrialisation has taken place everywhere, all over the world since then. It continues to do so, too. In 2024, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is estimated at 423 parts per million. This is a rise of 51% since the 1700s.
Does all of this matter? Most scientists think it matters a lot, but some politicians want to disagree.
The diagram shows the rays of the Sum being trapped in the atmosphere of the Earth by a layer of carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide in the air acts like a blanket, reflecting heat energy back towards the land and the sea. In this way, it acts like glass in a greenhouse. The warming caused by the increased carbon dioxide is sometimes called “the greenhouse effect”.
Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the air affects the climate and weather patterns across the world, as we shall see in the next story.
Do you think that the businessmen of the 1700s were aware that the burning of coal could affect the climate of the Earth?
If were are aware of this now, should this affect whether we choose to burn coal and oil.
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?
What is its big secret?
A rhizome. [Image: Neil Ingram]
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?
Cluster flies on a leaf in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
These animals look like cars parked in the autumn sunshine. They look harmless enough, but they have some gruesome secrets.
What are they and what are they doing? They are called cluster flies, and they are warming their bodies in the sun, before flying to feed on the fruits of the wood.
They are having adventures in time and space in Nowhere Wood. Life in the wood is dangerous and the animals are busy being alive: feeding, drinking and staying warm.
The animals certainly look like flies: with one pair of wings, a large head and huge compound eyes. Look closer and you might see their mouthparts, sucking water from the surface of the leaf.
More cluster flies gather on the leaf in Nowhere Wood, October 2021. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
The flies have lived their whole lives in Nowhere Wood. Their mothers laid their eggs in the soil last autumn. In the Spring, the eggs hatched to release larvae into the soil that burrowed into the bodies of earthworms.
They spent the early summer feeding on the worms before pupating. The adults emerged in the early summer, killing their earthworm hosts.
The flies are in a hurry to breed before it goes colder, later in the month. They are becoming mature enough to produce the next generation of flies.
Then the cycle of ‘being and becoming’ will begin again.
There is safety in numbers. The main predator of these flies is a type of wasp. There are twenty pairs of eyes looking out for danger and when one senses the wasps, they all fly away.
Life is so uncertain in Nowhere Wood. As well as wasps, the air contains the spores of dangerous fungi, that can infect and grow inside the adults, eating them up from the inside! In spite of the dangers, enough cluster flies survive to breed to be present in the wood next year.
Life is an uncertain adventure for the cluster flies, the earthworms, the wasps and the fungi. Everything is connected in Nowhere Wood.
Suggest why cluster flies need to warm their bodies in the morning, before they can fly.
![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)
![lords and ladies fruits, nowhere Wood, June. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]](https://blog.neilingram.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/IMG_3322-768x1024.jpeg)
