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?
A close up of a honey fungus in Nowhere Wood, showing its gills and stem. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
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? The people living in Nowhere a century and a half ago would distinguish between mushrooms (which they could eat) and toadstools (which they could not). Learning how to tell them apart was (and is) very important for mushroom foragers. Their children would have been taught that if they were not certain, they should leave well alone. Still good advice, today.
To a mycologist (a biologist of fungi) the term toadstool is not used, and the term ‘mushroom’ is used to describe the fruiting bodies of all these fungi.
This bracket fungus is growing on the old beech tree. It is probably a Giant Polyphore. [Photograph; Pat Gilbert]
So, this wonderful bracket fungus is still called a mushroom by biologists.
These mushrooms may be of the honey fungus in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Which fungi do not produce mushrooms? Well, yeasts are single-celled fungi that do not produce mushrooms. They often grow on the surface of fruit and help to turn apples into cider. Moulds and rusts are also fungi that do not produce mushrooms. They form fuzzy or powdery growths that spread quickly.
Mould fungi on fallen apples in Trendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Moulds play an important role in helping to break down fruits in the orchard, releasing nutrients back into the soil.
What are mushrooms for? The photograph at the top of the page shows the gills of the mushroom, under its surface. The gills make and store spores, which blow away in the wind. Spores can settle and grow into new fungi.
Imagine what would the world be like without fungi.
The old oak tree said to the traveller passing by:
“You know me, you see me everyday. I am that oak tree that has stood here longer than any of can you remember.”
The oak tree in Trendlewood Park, viewed from the author’s study. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
“I am on the 1840 Ordnance Survey map and I was a sturdy tree, even back then. Let’s say, I’m two hundred years old? I am still in my prime, though. I won’t be celebrated as old for another two or three hundred years. Don’t wait up for me.”
A leaf of an English oak. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
“I am a patriot, a true blue English oak: look at the ear-shaped lobes at the bottom of my leaves and the very short leaf stalks. Pedigree characteristics, those.”
Long stalks on the growing acorns of an English oak tree. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
“And look at the length of the stalks that hold up my acorns – the longer the better. Need I say more, I am as English as St George, cricket and cider.”
“I have never been a wildwood oak: a farmer’s tree, that’s me. My roots are deep in the clay, fed by a spring that kept the animals safe and watered. I had space: my limbs lifted upwards to touch the sky. I’ve seen the storms lash the fields and the brambles come and go. I wear the years in my bark and the seasons in my leaves.”
The oak tree is about 200 years old. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
“I am a good neighbour – well after all of this time, why not? In the summer I play host to lots of welcome visitors.”
Spangle gall on an oak leaf. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
“The gall wasp comes to lay her eggs on my new leaves and I make spangle cradles to help to keep them safe.”
oak galls. [Photograph” Neil Ingram]
“It happens again and again. Not just the spangles. Look beneath my leaves and you might find round, knobbly balls, like hard brown marbles. These are oak apples, swollen with the same curious purpose. A different gall wasp requests a grander chamber, and I oblige. Within each one lives a single larva, safe and fed by the very cells I’ve grown to protect my own buds.
Why do I do it? I don’t know. Perhaps I am too old to care. Or perhaps I understand that these wasps—these minute engineers—are part of the pattern. They do no great harm. My crown still grows. My acorns still drop. My fungi and birds and lichens still cling and sing and creep through me.
So I let them stay.
When my leaves fall, the spangles fall with them. Some young mothers emerge come spring, and they begin again—quietly weaving their lives into mine, asking nothing more than a shelter made of leaf or bark.
I am not hollowed by this. I am enriched. Insects, wind, rain, rot, and sunlight—they all shape me. I am a home, not a fortress. I bear their homes, too.
And you, traveller —if you lie on your back and look up through my summer canopy, you might see more than green. You might see a world.”
Jules Acton’s book, Oaklore, Greystone books, 2024, is an essential companion piece to this story. Jules helps us to think about all of the things that the English oak tree has given us as society and individuals.
Update, 20/07/25:
A new gall has appeared on our favourite oak tree. This is a Knopper gall, caused by the gall wasp Andricus quercuscalicis. The wasp secretes chemicals that distort the growth of an acorn. This is a rather more serious pest to the tree than the two show above, because it can reduce fertility of the tree.
Protected inside the gall is a developing larva, which will develop into a pupa and will emerge as an adult wasp in the next spring.
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?
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?
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?
Once upon a time, there lived a young man called Henry Summers, who lived at the Farmhouse over at the East End, just below the quarry. He was a wise man, strong in the arm and of calm manner. He never beat his animals or his wife. The family farmed ten fields and had several beautiful apple orchards.
Among the trees, there was one particularly ancient apple tree that Henry’s great grandfather planted and around which all of his children had played. The tree stood tall and strong, even though it was very old.
Henry believed that this tree was extra special, and he called it the ‘Apple Tree Man’. Henry always took great care of this tree, speaking to it kindly and ensuring it had plenty of water and cider at the wassail.
One cold winter’s night, Henry was visited by a stranger who had walked from Bristol and wanted to find friends in Nowhere. His clothes were dirty and his shoes were worn out. Henry was as kind to people as he was to his goats, welcomed the stranger into his home and gave him food and cider.
His wife looked out some more shoes for him.The stranger slept soundly in his clean bed that night.
The next day, the happy stranger revealed that he was, in fact, the spirit of the Apple Tree Man who had taken the form of a wanderer to test the farmer’s kindness.
The Apple Tree Man promised the farmer that as long as he continued to care for the apple trees, his orchards would make so many lovely apples every year, that he and his family would be wealthy andjoyful.
The apple trees produced many beautiful apples
The Apple Tree Man was true to his word, the orchards flourished, and the farmer and his descendants enjoyed bountiful harvests for many generations. And the people of Nowhere enjoyed their cider for years to come.
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?
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 see, high up in the tree, but there he is, pressed against the tree trunk: a male great spotted woodpecker. The other drummer in the distance is a young female. The woodpeckers are having an adventure in Nowhere Wood.
A female great spotted woodpecker approaching her young in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Andrew Town]
Our male is digging a hole in his tree, hoping to impress the female. If it works, she will lay their eggs in the hollow space in the tree. This photograph, taken a few weeks later in Nowhere Wood, shows the new mother feeding her fledgling chick.
How can these woodpeckers drill such large holes in trees without injuring themselves? Well, it looks as if all parts of their bodies have special characteristics that enable the birds to do this. Scientists call these special characteristics, adaptations.
Look at this video of a great spotted woodpecker pecking at a tree. Look at his feet. He has three toes on each foot, with two toes facing forwards to grip and hold onto the tree trunk. This prevents him falling off when he pecks the tree! The beak is made of a tough material that keeps growing and keeps the beak sharp.
The adaptations to the skull and tongue of the woodpecker. [Illustration by Denise Takahashi, https://www.birdwatchingdaily.com/news/science/woodpeckers-hammer-without-headaches/]
His skull is especially strengthened, like a builder’s hard hat. The brain presses right up against it and cannot move around.
The tongue extends backwards into the head as a long thin tube of bone and cartilage that runs right round the inside of the skull of the woodpecker. This acts like a seat belt, holding the brain in place.
The tongue is especially long and sticky, so it can go right into the tree holes, searching for insects.
a close up of a woodpecker. [Photograph: https://www.core77.com/posts/81063/Why-Woodpeckers-Dont-Need-Safety-Goggles-and-Why-Their-Beaks-Never-Get-Stuck-in-the-Wood]
The eyes fit tightly inside the skull, and do not vibrate whilst the bird is pecking. Their eyes have a special transparent membrane that closes across the front of the eye to prevent splinters of wood scratching the eyes. The feathers around the eyes and beak also stop wood reaching the eyes. Together, they act as safety spectacles!
Finally, a woodpecker is quite vulnerable to attack by larger birds when it is drumming against the tree. The patterns of lines and stripes act like a camouflage jacket, making the bird hard to see against the tree surface.
Woodpeckers have a lot of adaptations to help them to survive in Nowhere Wood. This story contains a photograph that suggests that the woodpeckers are living successfully here. What does the photograph tells us about the future of woodpeckers in Nowhere Wood?
Woodpeckers have developed these adaptations through evolution. Charles Darwin is the scientist who first suggested a possible way evolution could happen. This is called natural selection. Find out what natural selection is.
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?
A fallen ash tree in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
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.
Leaves damaged by ash dieback disease. [Photograph: https://www.rhs.org.uk/disease/ash-dieback]
In the tangled wreckage of leaves, twigs and branches, we can see the tell-tale signs of Ash-dieback disease. This probably weakened the tree, so the wind could blow it over more easily.
Most of the ash trees in this region have the disease, which is caused by a fungus that produces sores that blow away in the air, spreading easily through the wood. One day they will be cut down.
The tree is a store of nutrients. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]
Although this tree has died, its adventure through time continues. It is becoming useful because it is a large store of nutrients that other organisms in the wood will use to survive and grow.
Over time, insects and fungi will break down the tree wood releasing nutrients that to the organisms in the wood.
Left undisturbed, nothing will go to waste.
New trees will grow up to replace those that have fallen, using the nutrients that are in the soil. Fallen trees are an opportunity for the wood to re-grow itself.
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of some fungi. [Photograph; Neil Ingram]
There are lots of fallen trees in Nowhere Wood. The autumn is a good time to see fungi feeding on the wood, because this is the season when they produce their fruiting bodies that make spores. Mushrooms are examples of these fruiting bodies.
It is sad when we lose trees that we have known for years. Yet there is hope for the future. How does the wood recover from the loss of trees?
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?
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.
Winter has come to Nowhere Wood and ice has formed around the fallen trees in the pond. Everything shivers and wood is silent again. Squirrels search for food in the frozen mud, but everything else is waiting, biding its time.
Silent, except for an ancient overgrown hedge formed from a row of old trees, bound together into a thicket by generations of bramble stems. These trees are singing, for this is the home of the tree sparrows. The trees are just outside the wood, next to a path much used by dogs taking their owners for a daily walk.
The tree sparrows are warm, protected from the icy wind by the layers of dead branches that surround them. Impenetrable, they are hidden amongst the branches, out of harm’s way. In this forgotten place, they thrive and they sing.
Well not quite forgotten. In the garden of a house, less than 10 metres from the singing trees, is a garden with a bird feeder, filled daily by its residents. The sparrows dart from the hedge to the feeder and then back again, hour after hour, making sure they do not go hungry.
Small acts of kindness can make a big difference to the birds in Nowhere Wood. These ancient hedges are important, too, as wildlife corridors, joining ancient woodlands together, giving animals a chance to move safely across the landscape.
Why are the ancient hedges such a good place for the tree sparrows to live?
Why are bird feeders so important in the winter months?
Leaf fall in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]The leaves covering the floor of Nowhere Wood are slowly disappearing in the mild December nights. Fog hangs in the air. The wood is preparing for winter and everywhere is quiet and still. Most of the real action is taking place below the ground, but what is making the leaves disappear?
Earthworm [Photograph: Shutterstock 1596740926, licensed to NI]The culprits are earthworms, the little subterranean superheroes that do most of the heavy lifting in Nowhere Wood. There is about 45 million earthworms underground in the wood, with a total biomass equal to about twenty elephants. They are easily the most abundant animal in the wood, but they are so rarely seen.
Earthworm. [Photograph: Shutterstock 171009224, licensed to NI]Earthworms tunnel into the soil making the burrows that are their homes. At night, they come to the surface to drag fallen leaves back down into their burrows. The burrows are also perfect homes for bacteria and fungi.
Fungi mycelia. [Photograph: 159740926, licensed to NI]The bacteria and fungi feed on the leaves, turning them into nutrients that they use as food. This is humus. Earthworms eat the fungi and the humus-rich soil. As they do so, they glue the soil particles together into small clumps. This improves the quality of the soil, making it a perfect environment for plant roots.
Plant roots in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]Plant roots need plenty water, air and nutrients, all of which are given to the soil by the fungi and earthworms. We can think of earthworms as the soil’s farmers, ploughing the soil for the plants. Without their work, no life could exist in Nowhere Wood.
Charles Darwin. [Shutterstock 252138244, licensed to NI]The famous scientist Charles Darwin studied how plants, earthworms and fungi work together to keep woods alive, and he wrote a famous book about it in 1881. He wrote about earthworms: “It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organised creatures.”
In what ways do you think that soil is alive?
Think about how the trees, fungi and earthworms work together to keep the wood alive.
Today, Friday 4th December 2020, is World Soil Day 2020. Here is a video celebrating our dependence on soil:
This story continues the adventures of the ferns in Nowhere Wood. The first part of the story is Climbing the walls.
The genome of the fern contains essential information that the fern needs to grow and make new cells. At different times the fern produces spores, sperm and eggs and the two forms of the plant. The genome contains information on the growth of each of these stages.
The information in the genome is the same in every cell of the fern because an identical copy of the genome is found inside the nuclei of all the cells of this fern at every stage of its life.
The genome is found in the nucleus of each cell.
Fern chromosomes
The genome is divided between a number of chromosomes. The diagram shows the genome of the Adder’s tongue fern. It has about 1440 chromosomes. This is the largest number of chromosomes of any organism in the world!
Fern genomes are larger than the genomes of other organisms, because they contain the information the fern needs to grow spores, sperms and eggs as well as the two forms of plant.
The genome contains the secrets of how to be a fern and how to move forward in the adventure. This information has been copied and passed on to each generation of ferns, ever since the first ferns evolved about 390 million years ago.
Life is like a relay race: genetic information is passed on from one generation to the next in the genomes of sperms, eggs and other gametes.
These ferns are having risky and uncertain adventures in time as well as space. If the secret information is not passed on correctly, then the species may become extinct. History shows us that most species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct.
1. Why do you think it is essential that the genetic information from parents to offspring is copied accurately?2. Why do you think the fern genome is so large, compared with other types of plant?
These are perfect conditions for growing the fungi that spread everywhere throughout the soil of Nowhere Wood. Fungi are Nature’s recyclers, feeding on the fallen leaves, fruits and wood.
Mycelia of fungi. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]Fungi feed on the wood of the dead oak trees, turning it into nutrients that provide energy and chemicals needed to grow new fungal cells. (These cells form long threads called hyphae). Some fungi can spread out over really large areas, several kilometres wide.
At this time of the year, the fungi are busy ‘ being’.
Fungi in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]Then one night, silently and without warning, the fungi do something else.
They produce structures that we call “mushrooms” **.
Mushrooms are fruiting bodies. They produce thousands of tiny spores.
Spores are small and light. They are carried on air currents to new places in Nowhere Wood, where they will germinate and grow into new hyphae.
Fungus in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]Spores have often been found in the filters of jet aircraft flying at the edge of the atmosphere, so some spores can travel right round the world. When fungi produce spores they are ‘becoming’ something new: small, light and mobile versions of themselves.
Decaying fungus in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil ingram]Then, almost as soon as they arrive, it is all over. The fruiting bodies die and become food for other fungi and bacteria in Nowhere Wood.
This is how it is. The precious molecules are used, recycled and become part of the growth of new organisms. Nothing is ever wasted.
Nearly all of the atoms present on Earth when life began to evolve about 3.7 billion years ago are still found on Earth today. Many of them are found locked inside living organisms. Sooner or later, all of these organisms will die. Imagine what life would be like without Nature’s recyclers.
You are a collection of recycled atoms. Think about how carbon atoms enter and leave your body. [Hint, carbon atoms are found in carbohydrates and in carbon dioxide.]
You can read more about ‘being and becoming’ here.
**Some mushrooms are good to eat, others are really poisonous and can kill us. It is hard to tell them apart unless you are an expert, so it is sensible not to touch or eat any mushrooms you find in a wood.
One hundred and fifty years ago, the oak woods near Nowhere would have been home to red squirrels. Now they have all disappeared.
A red squirrel. [Photograph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Red_Squirrel_-_Lazienki.JPG]The red squirrels have been replaced by grey squirrels that were introduced into the UK from the United States in the 1870s.
Grey squirrels spread to nearly all parts of the UK, replacing the red squirrels wherever they went. Now red squirrels are only found in a few places, where they are protected.
Grey squirrels are 60% better at digesting oak acorns than red squirrels, which seem to prefer hazel nuts. Oak acorns are much more common in Nowhere Wood than hazel nuts, and this favours the grey squirrel.
Grey Squirrel. [Photograph: Gary Helm, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ghelm/8645487905]The success of grey squirrels at surviving and breeding in Nowhere Wood is due to the production of acorns, which varies from year to year.
Survival is a risky journey for any squirrel: the arrival of new competitors or interruptions to the food supply can pose real challenges.
Their lives are adventures.
The word ‘adventure’ has two parts:
Ad means moving towards something.
Venture means attempting something dangerous or difficult, that is risky, with no guarantee of success.
Put the two together and you get the idea that the lives of all living organisms are risky journeys into the future, with no guarantee of success or survival.
If you like, you can think of life as:
organisms having adventures in time and space
Think about the squirrels and the oak trees. In what ways are their lives adventures? [Hint: think about what the word adventure means.]
Forest fire in Canada. [Photograph: https://imaggeo.egu.eu/view/12490/]No one knows how many different kinds of animals and plants are alive today, and, sadly, we never will.
A survey in 2011 suggested that there are nearly 8 million species of animals and nearly 300, 000 species of plants. Astonishingly, nearly 90% of these species have yet to be discovered, described or named. Many are found in hard-to-reach places, such as tropical rain forests or the deep oceans. Given the rate of man-made habitat destruction, it is possible that many of these species will become extinct before they can be named by scientists.
These 8.1 million species are, for now, the success stories of evolution. Each is a unique way of solving the problems of surviving and reproducing in an unforgiving and changing environment.
Humpback whale breaching in the ocean. [photograph: https://news.scubatravel.co.uk/restoring-whale-numbers-combat-climate-change.html]All species, like this humpback whale, have special characteristics that allow them to survive in their chosen habitats.
But if the habitats change too much, such as when when the oceans become acidified, rainforests are cut down or burned, then species may no longer be able to survive and they become extinct. Forever.
Why does it matter that species of organisms become extinct before scientists can discover them?
![Bracket fungus on the old beech tree in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Pat Gilbert]](https://blog.neilingram.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/c1ab4241-025b-4d19-bc0d-1c0166ed0e24-1024x461.jpg)
![Yeasts and other fungi on fallen apples in Tendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]](https://blog.neilingram.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_4147-2-1024x768.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)
Winter has come to Nowhere Wood and ice has formed around the fallen trees in the pond. Everything shivers and wood is silent again. Squirrels search for food in the frozen mud, but everything else is waiting, biding its time.
The tree sparrows are warm, protected from the icy wind by the layers of dead branches that surround them. Impenetrable, they are hidden amongst the branches, out of harm’s way. In this forgotten place, they thrive and they sing.
Mushrooms are fruiting bodies. They produce thousands of tiny spores.
