adaptation – Stories from Nowhere Wood

May 1, 2026May 1, 2026

The Queen of May

May Day is gathered together in Nowhere Wood. The guests are all assembled, having arrived in timely order, ready for the magical day.

First to arrive was the wild garlic, clean and green with the freshness of a memory of good times around the family table.

Wild garlic in Nowhere Wood [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Then the first bluebell opened up to the sky, followed by the others, forming a coloured haze beneath the trees, daring the sky to lose its heavy April clouds to show its true May colours.

A haze of bluebells in Nowhere Wood [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Then the big oaks open their leaves, delicate and shimmering in the sunshine, before they darken and spread a curtain over the wood.

Fresh unfolding oak leaves, translucent in the sunshine. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Oceans of cow parsley flow over the floor of the cleared wood, where tall, sickly, ash trees once stood. This is the First of May, celebrating new starts and the freedom to enjoy the light.

And, finally, the Queen of May, the Hawthorn, blooming proudly here and across the Park.

The hawthorn in May [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Hers is the glory, the scent and the crisp whiteness. Entwined together, the branches strengthen their appeal and magic.

Once in this place, the villagers would plait her blossoms into a crown and choose the fairest maid to be their Queen of the May. This is not a crown of thorns: today it is a crown of promise.

Then, the village children would dance and twist their maypole ribbons to form a perfect spiral of red and white. This was one day when they could leave the chalky gloom of their school rooms and breathe.

Maypole_dancing,_Ickwell_Green,_Bedfordshire_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3445844 — Maypole dancing in Bedfordshire, [Photograph: geograph.org.uk – 3445844.jpg, Creative Commons license]

In the engine room of wood, it is just another working day, the animals are busy with family business, since being and becoming is a lifetime’s quest: nests need to be built up, offspring fed and protected from danger. The real magic is that it all works: the dance of the DNA spiral that continues year after year, in a stately and predictable procession.

But perhaps, the wood also senses that today is a special day.

Happy May Day!

Why do you think it is an advantage for small plants living on the floor of the wood (like bluebells) to flower early, before the tall trees get their new leaves?
Why do you think celebrating May Day was important part of village life in Nowhere?

Notes on the story

Being and becoming in Nowhere Wood

January 26, 2026January 26, 2026

The wise birds of Nowhere Wood

After dark, we can hear the tawny owls that live in the old oak by the pond, calling to each other, “tu-wit, tu-woo”.

In the woods and hedges around the hamlet of Nowhere, where the ancient oaks keep their own counsel and the paths disappear at dusk into darkness, there is an old tree with a hollow space, worn smooth by centuries of weather. My great-grandmother used to say a wise old owl lived there, and some mothers still do, repeating the rhyme as if it were a charm:

The more he saw, the less he spoke; the less he spoke, the more he heard.

Tawny owls. [Photograph: https://www.pickpik.com/tawny-owl-owl-bird-birds-night-active-animal-3227] — Two tawny owls

Whether or not the owl is wise in any human sense, we do seem to take care around that tree. We believe that tawny owls protect our woods, and that harm done to any of them would haunt us as bad luck. So fallen branches are stepped around, not over, and axes ring elsewhere. The ancient oaks endure.

At night, the owl still emerges with a quiet knowing, the kind that can sense mice and voles in complete darkness. There she sits still for long minutes, head angled, as though the darkness were speaking and he were weighing its words. This is the stillness that unsettled my great-grandparents. Wisdom, yes—but wisdom tinged with shadow.

Not with the blaze of insight promised by the goddess Athena’s little owl, nor the reason of the law courts and the Bristol merchants, but the intelligence of strategy rather than force: patience over pursuit, timing over speed.

The Greek goddess Athena with her little owl symbol — The Greek goddess of wisdom, Athena with her little owl trophy.

When the cry comes, it comes suddenly, tearing the night. Once, a traveller heard it from the track and remembered a line he had learned in school—the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman, which gives the sternest good night—and he quickened his pace homewards. The sound seemed final, like a door being closed somewhere far off.

The traveller did not know that what he heard was not one voice at all, but two.

From the oak came a sharp twit, from the female, and from deeper in the wood a rounded tu-woo, from the male. Female and male, call and answer. Not a lament, but a confirmation. This wood is their place, and they are in it together.

For generations, the mistake had been made—one lonely owl calling to the dark—when in truth the sound marked pair-bond and boundary, a steadying signal stitched into the night.

A Tawny owl in flight — Florence’ the tawny owl; seen during a very wet flying display, at the British Wildlife Centre, Newchapel, Surrey. [Photograph: Peter Trimming, https://www.flickr.com/photos/peter-trimming/5487239086/]

They hunt while others sleep. Not because their eyes are more sensitive than ours—they are not—but because their ears tell them what their eyes can not see. Asymmetrical, finely tuned, they catch the smallest rustle from under the leaf litter.

From a branch they drop without warning, wings betraying no sound, and seize a vole or mouse, swallowing it whole. In leaner times, birds, too. The wood is not sentimental. Even owl chicks are sometimes taken by the buzzards if they can find them.

In Nowhere Wood, the owls continue as they always have, weaving their lives through dark and shadow, with crafts that are millions of years old . Keeping and holding a territory, a pair answering each other in the dark. In balance, with the oak, hollowed by time, listening—saying nothing, but hearing everything.

Why do people think that owls are wise?

Notes on the story

Being and becoming in Nowhere Wood

I bear their homes, too

December 28, 2025December 28, 2025

The mistletoe bough and New Year’s Eve

Some of the trees in Trendlewood Park play host to mistletoe, an ancient plant with mythological powers. Mistletoe is easiest to see in winter. when the trees have given up their leaves.

When older trees stand bare against the low sky, mistletoe hangs in their branches like dark thoughts. From the ground it looks an accident: round, self-contained worlds lodged high in the branches like lost balloons. Neither leafless nor quite at home.

Mistletoe growing on a tree in Trendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

In fact, evolution has shaped mistletoe into a highly effective machine for stealing space and water from mature trees. Firstly, there are separate male and female plants, each bearing flowers that produce pollen and fruits, respectively.

Female flowers of mistletoe. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

These are the female flowers, with their orange stigmas that catch pollen carried by late winter insects in February–March. These early insects are attracted by scent rather than colour. As a reward, the insects receive precious food, at a time when few other nectar foods are available. The seed is held inside a white translucent globe, that is the fruit.

White mistletoe berries. [Photograph: Schnobby, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mistletoe_with_berries.jpg]

The seed inside is wrapped in viscin, a gluey substance that stretches into threads when pulled apart. Mistle thrushes, blackcaps, and other winter birds gorge on the pearly berries when little else is available.

Birds wipe the sticky remains from their bills onto a branch, or pass the seed whole, leaving it stuck to the bark like a stain. There it waits, fixed fast against rain and frost, until spring warmth draws it into life. Germination begins not with invasion but with patience.

Mistletoe does not grow on a tree so much as into it. Its seeds, carried there by birds, germinate where they land and push a root-like structure—called a haustorium—through the bark and into the living wood.

Mistletoe growing into a rowan branch. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

From there it draws water and mineral salts from its host, tapping the tree’s transport system while still making its own sugars by photosynthesis. It is a hemiparasite: dependent, but not helpless; taking, but also growing greenly on its own account. The host tree bears the cost quietly, ring by ring, while the mistletoe thickens above, each year adding another fork to its slow, spherical architecture.

Gradually, over decades, the tree weakens and will eventually fail, as it plays host to more and more uninvited guests.

A protected Norway Maple tree, heavy with mistletoe. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Despite this quiet parasitism, mistletoe gives generously to the wood. Its evergreen leaves offer shelter in winter; its flowers feed early insects; its berries are a crucial cold-season resource for birds. In Trendlewood Park, the thrush that guards a mistletoe clump does so fiercely, chasing off rivals with sharp calls and sudden wingbeats. The plant becomes a defended territory, a winter larder, a node of life when the rest of the canopy is stripped to essentials.

Long before botanists described haustoria and hemiparasites, mistletoe had already rooted itself in British imagination. To the Druids, it was a plant apart, especially when found on oak, rare and therefore potent. Pliny the Elder described how it was cut with a golden sickle and caught in a white cloth so that it never touched the ground, as if earth itself might dilute its power. It was associated with fertility, protection, and the suspension of ordinary rules—a plant that belonged neither fully to sky nor soil, growing between worlds.

Druids cutting mistletoe with a golden scythe in the style of a medieval woodcut.

That sense of being between has never quite left it. Mistletoe grows easily upon apple trees, and in orchards it has a magical significance. Cut on New Year’s Eve and hung in houses, it provides protections against witches and goblins. The old branch, taken down on New Year’s Eve must be burnt.

Hung in gloomy houses at bleak midwinter, mistletoe became a licence for closeness, an excuse for kissing when the year is at its darkest. The custom is gentler than the old rituals but carries the same implication: that life persists, that green things endure, that intimacy and renewal are possible even now.

In Nowhere Wood, when the light is low and the paths are slick with fallen leaves, the mistletoe bough watches from above, evergreen and unapologetic. It lives by taking, but also by giving—food, shelter, stories. It reminds the trees, and those who walk beneath them, that survival is always a matter of connection, and that even the strangest relationships can bind a landscape together.

Happy New Year from Nowhere Wood.

Summarise how the mistletoe plant makes seeds and how these seeds are spread to new trees

Notes on the story

The Apple Tree Man of Nowhere

Apples and the New Year

November 12, 2025November 13, 2025

The tunnelling armies beneath carpets of gold

It is early November in the park, and carpets of fallen leaves are piling up across the earth in sodden heaps, driven by the autumn winds and rains. The browns of the oak, the sycamore ambers and the golds of the beeches.

A carpet of fallen leaves in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Beneath the old apple tree, the king of the orchard, fallen apples lie on top of the leaf-litter, wind-shaken and bruised. Their skins cracked, their flesh softening, their scent faintly sweet but sharp in the still air. To almost every walker, they are simply decaying fruit to be sidestepped or stepped on. But down below, for the mini beasts of the soil, these apples are the food for their futures.

Fallen apples in Trendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

These apples, built by the tree from sunlight and salts, now become a banquet for a micro-world. First slugs and woodlice nibble the breaking skins.

As leaves and apple flesh break down, bacteria and fungi colonise. Fungi thread through leaves, breaking tough lignin and cellulose into sugars. Bacteria feed on these sugars and their growth increases.

Then the springtails and mites gather. But the major transformation begins when the earthworms arrive.

In this video from @PlayEarth we can see how apples are consumed by earthworms: in our park, the same players are at work, but working at much slower rhythms.

As the earthworms burrow, they drag down leaves and fragments of apple into the soil, creating tunnels rich in oxygen and moisture. The earthworms grind the material in their guts, making it more digestible for microbial armies.

As they pass through, the earthworms consume the microbe-rich soil, expelling the soil as finely ground particles. Their work accelerates the breakdown of the leaves and apples.

The result? The fallen apples, once crisp and bright, become part of the soil. Nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium return to the ground. The soil structure improves. Tiny pores hold water. Seeds waiting in the seed-bank sense the difference. Saplings in spring find richer soil, more ready to grow.

In our small park, what seems like waste—leaves and fallen apples— are the lifeblood of food webs, cycles and renewal. Life depends on life. The work of the worms and other soil organisms is quiet, unseen, but foundational. Without it, the leaf carpet would build up, decomposition would slow, nutrients would be locked away. Instead, the earth beneath is alive and renewing, waiting for the spring.

Many people tidy up the fallen leaves from their garden lawns and flower beds. Why might it be better to leave them where they fell?

Notes on the story

Trampling acorns underfoot

Trick or treat?

Traveller's joy or OId man's beard. Growing on the edges of the meadow, Tendlewood Park — 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 has distinctive 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?

Notes on the story

Being and becoming in Nowhere Wood

November 5, 2024November 4, 2025

A different kind of woodpecker

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.

AI generated woodpecker — 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?

Notes on the story

The sustainable park

August 18, 2025November 4, 2025

A spot for parks and town centres

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.

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?

Notes on the story

The end of the summer

October 11, 2024November 4, 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: 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?

Notes on the story

Hard hats, safety specs and camouflage jackets

April 9, 2025November 13, 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

January 20, 2022November 4, 2025

Fruits of the autumn

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?

Notes on the stories

The secret of the winter flowers

July 20, 2025November 4, 2025

Days of gentle ripening

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]

Notes on the story

A spot for parks and town centres

March 14, 2021November 4, 2025

Time travellers to Nowhere (1)

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.

Notes on the story

Time travellers to Nowhere (2)

July 7, 2025November 4, 2025

A home for the summer

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?

Notes on the story

“I bear their homes, too”

October 11, 2024November 4, 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

January 19, 2025November 4, 2025

Climate change and the air

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.

girl breathing out carbon dioxide and breathing in oxygen — 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.

Oil on canvas of The Old Glass Works, Nailsea in about 1810 — 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.

a diagram of the greenhouse effect — 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.

What do you think?

Notes on the story

Climate change and the weather

June 24, 2025November 4, 2025

Echoes from Nowhere

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 bat hibernating in garage — 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.

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?

Notes on the story

Being and becoming in Nowhere Wood

June 5, 2025April 11, 2026

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.

Be careful: all parts of these plants are poisonous to people – especially the berries.

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 20, 2022November 4, 2025

The secret of the winter flowers

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 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?

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?

Notes on the story

The greening of Nowhere Wood

October 22, 2021November 4, 2025

Goodbye, for now

Hose Martin in flight. — House Martin in flight. [Photograph: PaulK, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:House_Martin_-_Delichon_urbicum_-_B%C3%A6jasvala.jpg]

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?

House Martin in nest. HTO, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]

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?

Notes on the stories

Fruits of the autumn

May 28, 2025November 4, 2025

A tale of two butterflies

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!

A male speckled wood butterfly was found in the same spot two days later. — 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?

Notes on the story

Being and becoming in Nowhere Wood