The Mysteries In The Forest Floor
December 19, 2011 by Doug Kennedy
Ancient woodland has been continually wooded since at least 1600AD, and some may even link back to the original wildwood that covered the UK around 10,000 years ago, after the last Ice Age. There are ancient beech woods in the Chiltern Hills which I explore at all times of the year. They are particularly lovely in the spring and autumn when the colours are vibrant with the changing season.
Beech trees are very stately, their smooth grey trunks, like cathedral columns rising from the leafy forest floor, often only spreading into a canopy dozens of feet up in the air. The foliage glows warm green in the spring against a blue sky, and in the autumn turns golden before the leaves fall and add to the deep litter on the floor.
When men go into a forest to chop it down, they see trees, and powered by burning the carbon of trees that grew 200 million years ago, smash their way through to bring down the trees and gain the timber. In an ancient wood, beneath the vast wheels and metal tracks they are also destroying an amazing complexity of life that thrives under the surface of the forest floor, and this is one of the reasons why ancient woods are so precious. It is also where the mystery dwells.
I have a favourite beech wood atop the Chiltern ridge which is reached by a small path running steeply uphill from a nice country pub. This wood is not only very lovely, with it’s open, leafy forest floor and towering columns of trees, but very rich in fungi. At first glance, the floor seems rather devoid of life as not much grows beneath mature beech, but look closer, particularly in the Autumn, and you will find all manner of colourful and exotic fungal life among the leaf litter. In parts it is carpetted with delicious black Horns of Plenty, stumps covered with little bonnets and small common puffballs, innocuous looking greyish Death Caps and occasional cepes and chanterelles (as well as many small brown jobs).
(Chanterelle, left; Common Bonnet, middle; Magpie Ink Cap)
Southern England has had a very dry, warm autumn especially during the peak mushroom season of late September to early November which worried some farmers (a bit), made it a lot easier to walk along Chiltern forest paths as the usual slushy mud was absent, and caused a near absence of fungi. On a foray I joined in October in my area we found almost nothing – a few ‘small brown jobs’ if you looked hard, but all of the normal exotic fecundity was absent: it was a disappointing day, so I went for a run instead.
The dry weather continued until the middle of November, when some heavy showers moistened the soil. Leaves were still on many of the trees, and a foxglove was flowering in my garden – a flower which would normally be long gone by October.
I kept visiting these woods and on November 16th, things began to get interesting again, but the fungi were a quite different range from last year: if 12 species, only 2 matched! These were funnel caps (some very large) and common bonnets (picture above) and two edible species, the Wood Blewett (below left) which is purplish and oyster mushrooms, below right.
Mushroom do not just grow from a seed, like green plants, but are the fruiting bodies of the main plant, which is the ‘mycellium’. This is a network of fibres, or hyphae, that can be absolutely enormous, spreading over acres of forest floor, or very localised on a single tree stump, or anything in between. Therefore, underneath the leaf litter on this beech forest floor is an amazing complexity of intertwining fungus hyphae of many different species, the overall mass of which is much, much greater than that of the mushrooms and toadstools that we see on the surface from time to time. Also, whilst the fruiting bodies are ephemeral, the underground plant, or mycelium, may be as old as the forest itself.
In fact, fungi are critical to a forest’s health as the trees grow in symbiosis with them. The roots of many trees are ‘infected’ with the fungi around them, and this seems to benefit both organisms, helping the tree gain nutriants and possible water. So a healthy ancient forest is one in which many species depend upon each other for their survival, not only in predator-prey relationships, but as symbionts.
The colourful and varied fungi shown here are manifestations of the real forest mystery that lies unseen beneath our feet and is much too complex and mysterious for us to competely understand. Thus I will keep visiting the forest during the autumn to see what is fruiting at any time, possibly finding something delicious for supper (only taking what I can eat), and always enjoying the beauty of the forest.
If you want to find out more about fungi and experience the delight of finding these ephemeral beauties, locate the nearest fungus group on the internet. In this area, we have the Bucks Fungus Group which can be found at http://www.bucksfungusgroup.org.uk/
A Walk In The Countryside – Get Involved In Nature’s Resurgance
August 14, 2011 by Doug Kennedy
[SinglePic not found]It is an August Sunday in Cuddington, in rural South Buckinghamshire. The air is a mild 20 degrees centigrade and an occasional breeze wafts the ripe wheat, and the sun has a pleasant intensity when it moves out from behind the broken cloud.
However, a little further on in Spickett’s Lane there are several more plum trees festooned with fruit of different varieties. The first of these are small and crimson when ripe, and quite deliciously sweet with an intense flavour. Juice dribbles down my chin. There are damsons, small and black and too high to pick without a ladder, more small yellow fruit and one in-between. On the other side the lane, the blackberries are not ready yet, but will be black and luscious in a couple of weeks.
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I turned right, past the piggery where a few Oxford black-and-tan rare pigs remain, snoozing in the gentle morning, then round the edge of the bean field down towards the river. Waddesdon Estates farm this land and, as part of their Environmental Stewardship Scheme, all of their fields have a wildlife strip around the edge where wildflowers (weeds) prosper and bees and butterflies dart and settle in their search for nectar. A month ago, when the wildflowers were at their best, there were lots of butteflies: meadow brown in particular, common blues and small whites, green-veined whites, red admirals, peacocks. Now these are fewer, but they are still to be found along with a gatekeeper (small meadow brown) or two.
[Gallery not found]There are rustlings in the high, scrubby hedgerow and I hear some squirrels having a fight, squeaking and jumping about but see nothing. I cross the stile that penetrates it and step into a cow pasture with a wooded, watery drainage channel on my left. This is where newts, grass snakes and waterfoul skulk and a source of dragonflies and damselflies, and I see a large one zoom over my head, too fast to identify.
There is a brown bull with broad shoulders and a deep chest right ahead of me, on the footpath route over the field, and I approach with a little caution; but he is quiet and docile as I skirt around him. The air is fairly quiet now where it was alive with birdsong a month or two ago, but there are birds about. A buzzard circles up on a thermal, but doesn’t come close enough for me to see his colours. There are a lot of crows in the sheep meadow, and rooks in the wood at the top of the field, and an owl box in the tree near the cattle bridge where I saw a tawny owl last march. And there are the ubiquitous pigeons, flapping away noisily as I approach, and sparrows.
The cattle bridge crosses the River Thame, and a pause to see if I can see any fish in it’s fast flowing water. The reeds are varied and luxuriant and a shy moorhen pokes it’s head out of them but doesn’t emerge this time. A couple of cows gaze vacantly at me as they chew their cud.
I cross a gate and a stile, entering the Eythrope Estate, home of Lord Rothschild, who also owns the entire Waddesdon Estate.
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Again there are wide, wild field borders, and as I skirt the field through longish grass, I see more white butterflies, and a couple of brimstones that look like a leaf when they stop to feed.
Above, buzzards and red kites glided under the blue sky and seemed to be gathering over the hill to the north: perhaps there was some carrion there.
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As I walk, young pheasants suddenly burst up from the wheat and tall grass, flying further down the track or running into the scrub for cover. These are being bred for the shooting season that starts in October, but that is not the only doom that awaits these tasty game birds!
[SinglePic not found]From only a few feet away, a fox springs up from the wheat where it had been lying in wait to catch a pheasant dinner, and runs off disconsolately through the golden crop. It is amazing what a wheat field conceals: along with the fox, and the pheasants, various small birds would suddenly appear, wings flapping at great speed in their panic to reach the nearby trees.
I come to a wider area of wildflowers still in bloom: this area would have been planted with a rich variety of native species as part of the Waddesdon environmental work. The air hums with honey and bumble bees, many different flies and some small blue butterflies. This is a sound I hear too seldom these days where it used to be the norm on a summers day. It is the sound of nature at work in a healthy countryside and alien to blank squares of monoculture. This land is intensively farmed, but space is left for natural ecosystems to work and it’s health protected from chemicals and machines.
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I stop to enjoy this buzz of life, then as I turn, a hare bursts out from the undergrowth a few yards away, and disappears into the hedge. About half a dozen kites are still circling in the air high over the hill, and a sudden birdsong bursts from nearby trees.
I leave the Waddesdon land, and climb through a meadow, then over another stile onto a neat and tidy field of rye grass: green and even and silent. The field edge has been mown, and it is empty of flowers, insects or any interest and the contrast is staggering.
We have turned much of our countryside into an aseptic monoculture which has been profoundly destructive to the diversity of nature in the British countryside. We have cut down hedgerows, ancient forests (over 80 percent have dissappeared this century), poisoned waterways and tried to turn the land into a factory floor which, for sterility, this field resembles. The terrible thing to me is that we have forgotten what the countryside should be like, and was like until very recently. The land along the Thame Valley shows that we can have both efficiently produced food and healthy natural ecosystems.
Waddesdon manages to farm profitably and efficiently, and because the people running it leave some land for nature and take care how they use modern technologies, after only a few years there is a resurgance of a diverse and healthy countryside. This creates a balance that protects crops, a balance that is destroyed by over-use of expensive chemicals and over-intensive practices. The result is that many of our species of birds and mammals are on endangered lists, and the countyside is often silent and boring.
My walk took me less than two hours, and in that time I have come across dozens of species, and been inspired and amazed by seeing the web of life at work. We do need more of it throughout our country, and it is us, all of us who have to make it happen realising that it is our health and quality of life that is at stake, and doing what we can to understand and restore our countryside.
[SinglePic not found]Global Warming is not the problem….
January 7, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
We can’t go on like this!
August 11, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
Hilary Benn, (Dept of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or DEFRA) is now looking again for technology (eg GM crops) to provide answers to the problem of feeding a growing population. As I pointed out the other day, technology has a part to play in maximising yields from the land used WHILST NOT DAMAGING LOCAL ECOSYSTEMS FURTHER, but it cannot be the cornerstone for even the medium term.
The big argument that is wheeled out time and again is that we cannot feed 9 billion humans without GM crops and further advances in intensifying agriculture. But I believe that the Government has got it’s priorities very wrong on this one.
Crowding is not the biggest problem, but would you like to live in a World with 9 billion humans? 50% more than today: can you imagine how crowded that would be?
For example, we hear in the news today that an entire town in China was devastated by a huge mudslide and four entire apartment blocks of about 100 flats each collapsed. Why did the mud slide? Because there has been too much development in the area and the trees have been removed from the hillsides. The immediate cause is the huge storm battering the Pacific coast of China and Taiwan. Disasters involving flood, fire and famine are increasing all over the World as storms are getting worse because of global warming.
This is one example of the results of our current overpopulation which will be repeated countless times on a bigger and bigger scale if we let World population continue to grow.
So whilst technology has a part to play in producing suffiicient food to feed the human population, the more urgent and important factors are:
1. Reduce waste now – over a third of all the food we buy in the UK is wasted.
2. Share resources across the World better so that fewer children are born to slavery or starvation in ‘developing’ countries.
3. THE BIG ONE – Start focusing internationally on limiting population growth.
4. Use technology to help produce the right quantity of the right crop in the right location, whilst protecting surrounding ecosystems.
If we don’t limit the human population then the outcomes have to be:
* More CO2 so more global warming, which means
* Worse climate chaos resulting in fire, flood and famine (as in China today).
* More pressure on available land, which results in further damage to waterways, more forest removal and land degradation and so worse floods and land slips, and further loss of biodiversity. In other words, and ugly, dangerous planet.
* The lack of available good land will also result in bigger migratory pressure on the richer countries as well as wars and famine.
It is a vicious circle, and the key is human population.
The Optimum Population Trust is the leading UK think tank researching the impact of population growth on our environment. You can check them out at www.optimumpopulation.org.
Why Bother With Organic Food?
August 4, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
The Observer Science Editor, Robert McKie wrote an article in this week’s edition entitled “It’s wrong to believe that nature is always best”. You can read it all at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/02/organics-food. The gist is that a recent report again tells us that there is little if any taste difference or nutritional benefit to be gained from eating organicly produced food. He goes on to say that we should use all the technology at our disposal to feed the growing human population. Here is my answer:
Our landscape has changed with enormous speed over the past 100 years, the old woods have been removed and there is a sameness about agricultural land wherever you are: believe me, I’ve just walked its length. We read that the remaining woods are losing biodiversity and the length of the RSPB endangered list lengthens whilst agricultural run-off does odd things to our waterways. Buying organic food is not just about seeking better taste: retailers have learned that people do like their food to taste nice so the thrust of technology is focused more widely now than just looks and shelf-life.
It is about being concerned with looking after THE LAND (a term first used in this context by Aldo Leopold in 1949); that is, the landscape and biosphere which we love and upon which we depend. To take a purely utilitarian, scientific view of The Land is to ignore that dependence, which I believe we do at our peril: melting glaciers are not the only warning sign that we are placing too much load on our planet.
Mr McKie states that we need modern technological agriculture to feed a growing population, but I have two problems with this. Firstly, we waste a great proportion of what we are currently producing and could reduce the pressure on the land by using food more efficiently. Secondly, we should be taking steps to limit human population growth as we can’t have it all ways: we can feed some of 9 billion all the time (the rich), you can feed all of 9 billion people some of the time, but you can’t feed all 9 billion people all of the time. (With apologies to Lydgate). Technology offers a great deal, but we MUST also channel our ingenuity into ways of living more in harmony with the land through using less land, wasting less food and chemicals and controlling our population explosion. The last is, of course, the real biggy because the cure could be worse than the disease.