Tag: cycles
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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. Then the first bluebell opened up to the sky,…
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Cuckoo flowers in the spring
Spring has arrived—but the world is not yet settled. In an uncertain climate, people choose uncertainty and so does the weather. Sun, rain, frost and wind – the persistent wind blowing through the meadows. Spring marches onwards, regardless. The cuckoo flower with its dainty lilac flowers hides in the unmown grass, shielded from the biting…
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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…
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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. Beneath the old apple tree, the king of the orchard, fallen apples lie…
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Trick or treat?
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…
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Celebrating mushroom season!
Everyone agrees, it is an outstanding mushroom season. The dry summer and the warm wet autumn have created the perfect conditions for these mysterious forms which spend most of their lives living underground. Quietly, but with ruthless effectiveness, they influence and shape the growth of the trees in the wood. But, what is a mushroom?…
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A different kind of woodpecker
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…
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Hard hats, safety specs and camouflage jackets
It is a January morning, misty and still. The air hangs silently in Nowhere Wood. Suddenly close, but just out of sight, a loud and fast drumming shakes the stillness. Then a silent pause, followed by a quieter drumming coming from the other end of the wood. Let’s find the first drummer. He’s hard to…
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The fairy ring
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…
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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…
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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. 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…
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If a tree falls….
It was a stormy August night in Nowhere Wood. The wind was tearing through the leaves and branches and was strong enough to pull the whole tree down. And so, a tree that had been growing in the Wood for fifty years or more was felled to the floor of the wood. …
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Fruits of the autumn
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…
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It’s Flying Ant Day!
Today is Flying Ant Day: the day that ants take to the air and fly at the same time. The ants are from different colonies that can be several hundred metres apart. Let’s celebrate Flying Ant Day! To some, it’s a minor nuisance. They land in your lemonade, tangle in your hair, and make picnics…
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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. We breathe in oxygen and use it to release…
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The greening of Nowhere Wood
It is a cold and wet April in Nowhere Wood, which is full of birdsong and flowers. The trees are becoming green with new leaves. Leaves grow silently that we can miss their unfolding, noticing only when they are fully opened. If you look carefully, you can see new leaves opening today. It raises our…
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Climate change and the weather
Most scientists think that the Earth is getting warmer and that human activities are making it worse. This story looks at some of the evidence they use. Weather experts collect millions of temperature measurements from all around the world every day. They put these results into powerful computers that build a picture of the climate…
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The secret of the winter flowers
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…
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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. On the woodland floor, hidden beneath the shade of hazel and hawthorn, something strange is happening. By April, it is fully revealed. It’s not flashy, no pretty flower show. Just a…
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Goodbye, for now
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?…