Sulphur tuft

Sulphur tuft helpfully eats up and recycles dead stumps

and so does this fungus (but I don't know its name)

Without decaying fungi we'd be knee deep in dead wood.

Puffballs

Common Puffballs (Lycoperdon perlatum) are fungi that grow on woodland soils amongst the leaf litter.

They spread their spores by shooting them out through a hole in the top when struck by raindrops.

They look a bit like something you might use in a pilates class.

Thinning and coppicing

When we cut hazel bushes down to ground level, they re-grow and in 5 to 7 years produce poles that we can use or sell.  This also creates an ever-varying habitat for different flowers, insects, mammals and birds.  This is conservation coppicing.  The photo below, taken a couple of months ago, shows an area that we coppiced last winter.  You can see that the hazel has re-grown about a metre.

And this section or 'coupe' was cut two years ago.  The hazel is now 2m tall.

We cut a section each winter, but as we get round to the last section or 'coupe' of our coppice woodland we have found that it is full of young trees that are a bit too large to coppice and there is hardly any hazel.  Most native trees re-grow if cut to ground level but anyway these are rather spindly because they are so close together.  We need to thin them out so that there will be fewer trees but they will be able to grow larger and better.

You can see that there is a lot of new growth on the woodland floor.  Much of it is young ash but there are also hazel, field maple, wayfaring tree, bird cherry and sycamore seedlings.  These are the trees of the future.

Speckled brambles

Nature as artist again.

A combination of autumn yellows and speckley brown leaf spot.

Mowing

As well as the woodland, our site contains about 20% grassland, important for wild flowers and invertebrates but also attractive for people.

Over the years some of the site has got overgrown with brambles so drastic action was required to return it to its flower-rich condition. A certain amount of bramble is fine; it is good for nectar, fruit and shelter for wildlife.  But it is a bit too successful and can take over.

The photo below shows an area that was cut partly by volunteers from local civil engineering company Hydrock, wielding slashers and pitchforks, and partly by the robocut machine.  Unfortunately robocut went over a wasps' nest in the ground and operator Dave was stung.

These are the nine beeches donated by Brett Harrison and Ruth Piolle several years ago.  Once again they have room to breathe and grow.

And here is the  area near post 10, neatly cut by our scythe-wielding volunteers.  This was first cleared by Steve Gilliard some years ago and is re-cut each year so that the primroses and bluebells that flourish here are not blotted out by bracken and nettles.  

Wild pears

Glorious autumn colours of our wild pears up near post 3

There is even some fruit, though too small and hard to eat.

Woodland edge trees

An oak tree in the wood near post 3.

This is what happens to a tree on the edge of a woodland.  All the growth is on the side nearer the light.

Our intrepid team, Eric, Alan W, Peter A and Derek, returning from planting some foxgloves, teazels and moon daisies in the brambly bit below the viewpoint.

Up past the beech corridor we took a load of woodchip, kindly donated by the community compost site.

and here are Derek and Alan R putting it on the path.

It soon gets trampled in but it's now better than the rest of this particular path.

(Andy was also there today but he was working too hard on tidying the hedge near the entrance to pose for a photo!)

Beech leaves

One of our two large beech trees, at number 18 on the trail round Filnore Woods.

If you enter the shady tunnel, you can appreciate the umbrella-like structure of this giant.

 

and the carpet of leaves on an underlay of fallen beech nut shells or 'beech mast'.