Plastic mulch - white (though sometimes black) polyethylene strips, each about a meter wide, can occasionally be seen stretching across fields.  Crops grow through the slits or holes in the thin plastic sheeting. The sheets are used because they help to conserve water,  suppress weeds,  reduce soil compaction boost soil temperatures reduce waste - by keeping ripening fruit off the soil Read more...

In 1880, Darwin wrote a book entitled “The power of movement in Plants” in which he described many examples of the “sleep movement’ of plants.  He noted that some flowers closed up at night (e.g. crocuses, tulips, poppies), whilst other plants had leaves that moved or closed up at night time.  He recorded that the pea and bean family (legumes / fabaceae) had a number of species that exhibited these ‘sleep movements”. Movement in plants is achieved either through growth or through changes in the water content of cells (the turgidity of cells).  Phototropism is an example of an irreversible growth response Read more...

Last year, the Woodland’s blog reported on the moorland fires around the U.K. and this Easter weekend yet another fire has been reported at Ilkley  These fires have a devastating effect on local wildlife.  Sadly,  extensive peat wildfires have occurred in places as diverse as Indonesia (in 2015) and Greenland.   The fire (in Indonesia) and its associated smoke was responsible for the deaths of people and animals,  and caused billions of pounds of damage through the destruction of homes and businesses.  Also,  the fires released truly massive amounts of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere. Read more...

Recently, I met up with Nicola Spence, the UK's Chief Plant Health Officer: her observations took me on a hair-raising tour of the battlements that keep British trees safe from foreign invaders. To give an idea of the importance of plant health she pointed out that in the 1960s and 1970s Dutch Elm Disease from Europe killed between 10 and 20 million trees; the recent Ash Dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus), which also came from continental Europe, is in the process of wiping out about 80% of the UK's ash trees. Consequently her department is very vigilant to stop any further invasions of pathogens or insects that could attack our trees. For example Defra and the Forestry Commission have successfully dealt with localised outbreaks of Sweet chestnut blight and in Kent there was a recent infestation of trees by the Asian Longhorn Beetle which meant cutting down and incinerating all trees within a 100 metre radius. Read more...

The science journal Nature has published the results of another insect survey, specifically of pollinating insects.   The UK pollinator monitoring scheme looked at some 353 species of bees, bumblebees and hoverflies.  The survey analysed 700,000+ sightings of pollinating insects over thirty years or more (1980 to 2013).  The survey yielded information about the changes in the range of these different pollinators - that is the different parts of the countryside that these insects were found in.  The survey did not attempt to determine actual numbers of bees etc in an area.   There were “winners and losers’ in the survey but the overall picture was somewhat depressing. Read more...

Dan Watson has been making hurdles for 30 years and reckons there are over 200 hurdle-makers in the UK.  The process is physically demanding but also very skillful.  Dan now uses his own small woodland and in a single day he can make three hurdles - by contrast it took me a whole day and lots of help to get mine half finished - hurdle-making gets much quicker, and neater, with experience. There are several skilled operations in creating a hurdle.  You start by selecting the hazel rods from hazel coppice and cut them at the base.  Next, you take these branches to your working area and trim off the side twigs being careful to cut upwards to avoid creating tears in the bark.  A base plate is needed with holes and ours had nine so that none uprights could be put into the base making a hurdle six feet wide and eventually about 4 foot high. Read more...

These monthly posts have endeavoured, as much as possible, to focus on a particular mushroom, toadstool or other fungal organism of interest that might be in season around the time they appear online. This means we have now reached a potentially tricky time of year. “March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb”, as the saying goes. A few weeks ago, when it was still cold and wet, I had considered looking at a number of jelly fungi that I was still finding oozing from damp stumps and fallen trunks, or maybe one of the brackets still hanging on from Winter. Then after the incongruously meekly-named Storm Kevin brought a hail of dead twigs and branches down to ground level for closer inspection, I thought about zooming in to meditate more fully on some of the resupinate crust fungi that I found attached to them. Read more...