Walks With Elinor – Reydon Wood

Tags

bluebell, coppice, dog violet, Goldilocks Buttercup, great crested newt, Holly, Hornbeam, Hoverfly, lesser celandine, primrose, Reydon Wood, Suffolk, Suffolk Wildlife Trust, walk, water-violet, wild strawberry, Wood Anemone, woodland

Let me take you back in time to the end of April of this year.  In preparing this post it has been strange looking through my early spring photographs while the leaves outside are falling from the trees and most of the flowers have gone.

Elinor and I had enjoyed our two previous walks in Halesworth and Beccles but this time we wanted to get away from people and buildings and into the woods.  One of our favourite places is Reydon Wood which is cared for by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust.  I have written posts about family walks in this wood a few times before but the last time we visited was about three years ago; how could we have left it that long?!

Reydon Wood

The weather was perfect, chilly but sunny and there hadn’t been any rain for quite a while so the paths were free of mud.  Spring was cold and late this year so the first leaves were only just beginning to show on the trees. The wood was full of birdsong and we soon found any number of spring flowers in bloom.  The light was strong and bright which was not conducive to good photography, for which I apologise.

The path through the woods

I love these perfectly pleated Hornbeam leaves (Carpinus betulus )

Common Dog Violets (Viola riviniana ) and a small white Wild Strawberry flower (Fragaria vesca) in the centre of the picture

Reydon Wood is quite small and would only take twenty minutes or so to walk round if one wasn’t interested in stopping and looking at anything.  We heard a couple of women approaching from behind us and stood to one side as they walked past talking non-stop.  We waited while the noise of their voices faded and birdsong re-established itself.

We saw Wood Anemones (Anemone nemorosa ) in the wood for the first time

Primroses ( Primula vulgaris) were in flower

There are plenty of coppice stools like this in the wood

Reydon Wood is coppiced each year.  Some of these trees are hundreds of years old and have been supplying wood for generations.  Here is a link which explains what coppicing is.  A copse is a wood which is or has been coppiced.

A clearing was carpeted with Primroses and Lesser Celandines (Ficaria verna )

Great Crested Newt ( Triturus cristatus)

In this clearing is a large pond which is home to all sorts of interesting creatures and plants.  The Great Crested Newt is Britain’s largest newt and has suffered in recent years due to habitat loss, especially by the infilling of ponds.

Water Violet (Hottonia palustris )

The Water Violet isn’t a violet at all, it is a member of the primrose family but the petals are a very pale lilac-colour which may be the reason for its common name.  It is usually found in sheltered ditches and ponds with shallow clear water which is rich in calcium.  Another name for it is Featherfoil because of its fine feathery leaves.

Tangled branches and shadows

The Bluebells were just beginning to flower (Hyacinthoides non-scripta)

Spring leaves

Woodland in the springtime

I always like to greet this giant Holly tree with its weeping branches (Ilex aquifolium)

A Hoverfly of some sort sunning itself on the path. With their large ‘fly’ eyes they always look like they are wearing large sun-glasses.

Goldilocks Buttercup (Ranunculus auricomus )

A spring-flowering buttercup.  The whole plant, including the stems and the leaves, dies back by mid-summer.  The flowers are usually deformed with petals missing and the upper leaves deeply cut.

Deeply rutted path

We were extremely fortunate to have had such dry weather during the week before our walk.  The paths had set like concrete and though they were uneven they were easier to walk on than if they had been wet!

With any luck I will be able to add to this short series of walks before Christmas!

Bluebells

Tags

blackthorn, bluebells, Bugle, common backswimmer, Common Frog, coppice, early purple orchids, great crested newt, Herb-Robert, Lesser Celandines, primroses, Reydon Wood, Suffolk, Suffolk Wildlife Trust, sweet violets, walking, water-violet, wild strawberry, wildflowers

I love bluebells, as you no doubt have realised by now, and I don’t think I am alone in my love of these flowers.  There is a scene in the film ‘Howard’s End’ that has one of the main characters walking through a bluebell wood – I find it very moving.

We try to visit a bluebell wood each Spring and this year we re-visited Reydon Wood on a beautiful Thursday afternoon in early May.

Elinor walking down the path towards the wood.

Last year we mistimed our visits, with one visit a little too early and another a little too late.  This visit was ‘just right’.

The trees were just beginning to put on their beautiful spring clothes.

I peeped through the bars of a gate from the path and saw my first bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta).

Sweet Violets (Viola odorata) were growing at the side of the path, as were Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) and Greater Stitchwort (Stellaria holostea) but my photos of them were over-exposed.

There is a very deep ditch between the path and the wood (you can see the far bank of the ditch at the bottom of the photo)

The ditch was originally dug many centuries ago in an attempt to keep deer out of this coppiced wood.  The bottom of the ditch may have had heaps of brush-wood in it as well as water to make crossing it more difficult.

This is a Wild Strawberry flower (Fragaria vesca) – not a good photo I’m afraid.

Herb-Robert (Geranium robertianum)

A mossy tree-stump

More Sweet Violets

The path through the woods

Lesser Celandines (Ranunculus ficaria)

Primroses (Primula vulgaris)

Both Celandines and Primroses had already flowered and gone to seed in the lanes near to my home, but the woods are darker, cooler places and the plants flower later and last longer.

Bugle (Ajuga reptans) flower spikes

An open ride in the wood with stacks of the harvested timber.

The pond in the wood

A Common Backswimmer (Nononecta glauca)

This might be a female Great Crested Newt (Triturus cristatus)

A Common Frog (Rana temporaria)

Water-violet (Hottonia palustris)

There are a mass of these Water-violets round the pond

Early Purple Orchid (Orchis mascula)  Unfortunately not in focus, though you can clearly see its spotted leaves.

A large coppice stool

Another Early Purple Orchid

Large amounts of brushwood have been stacked around an area that has been newly coppiced in an effort to keep the deer (and people, I expect) away from the new shoots growing from the stools.

This is a typical view of a coppiced wood

Here is a gallery of photos of the bluebells in Reydon Wood.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I love to look up at the sky through the new leaves

Blackthorn blossom (Prunus spinosa)

Thanks for visiting!

 

 

A Visit to Captain’s Wood – 4th May 2015

Tags

Alexanders, bluebells, Captain's Wood, Climbing Corydalis, coppice, foxglove, Suffolk, Suffolk Wildlife Trust, veteran Oaks, wild cherry, wood sorrel, woods

Captain’s Wood is owned by Suffolk Wildlife Trust and is found next to the village of Sudbourne which lies south of where we live, about 40 minutes drive away.  The morning had been beautiful and bright but by early afternoon the skies were beginning to cloud over and by the time we got to the wood the sun wasn’t shining much at all.

This was the first time we had visited the wood.  We had heard that the bluebells there were wonderful and hoped that we would see some.  We parked the car in a small car-park a few hundred metres from the entrance to the wood and walked down the lane towards it.

Both sides of the lane were covered in Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) which had been in full sun all the morning and as a consequence were giving off a perfume redolent of rotting spinach!

Alexanders is a very attractive umbellifer and until recently has only been found within a few miles of the coast. I am not sure why, but in the last couple of years it has spread very quickly further inland and I have seen it in Norwich this spring for the first time.

I remember including it in one of my posts last year but can’t remember which so I’ll repeat what I said then.  The name Alexanders refers to its origins as a herb of Macedonia (Alexander the Great’s country of birth). Its black seeds were sold in the 17th century under the name of Macedonian Parsley and Nicholas Culpeper the herbalist noted that among other things, Alexanders could cure not only flatulence but snake bite!  The whole of the plant is edible and the generic name Smyrnium refers to its myrrh-like taste.

We walked along a short entrance path between gardens towards the wood.

Bee hives in someone’s garden

The first part of the wood we walked through didn’t really look like a wood.

This is newly acquired land consisting of 17 acres of small fields, scrub and a little area of woodland in-between the village and Captain’s Wood proper.  This land has not been farmed for many years and was largely left fallow.  Part of the land stays wet for most of the year and apparently has Marsh Orchids and other wetland plants growing there.

On entering the wood I saw this beautiful moss.

Most of the wood looks like this.

Captain’s Wood consists of mainly open woodland with Oak and Birch.  There is a large stand of Hazel, clumps of mature Scots Pine and lines of planted Sweet Chestnut.  Herds of deer roam at large through the wood and seven different types of bat live here.

There were a few Violets on the woodland floor. I didn’t check to see which violet this was but I think it may be Sweet Violet (Viola odorata)

New bracken.

Climbing Corydalis (Ceratocapnos claviculata)

Bartholomew of Glanville was an English friar living in the 13th century.  He wrote an encyclopaedia of natural history and in it he said that, despite its ‘horrible savour’, the roots of this plant could be made into a potion for dispelling melancholy.  Later on Climbing Corydalis became known as a cure for intestinal diseases.  This plant, along with fumitories, has flowers that resemble clovers and vetches though with fewer petals.  The flower’s peculiar shape has been likened to the head of a crested lark; hence the name ‘corydalis’.

Wild Cherry (Prunus avium)

The Foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) were growing well.

Woodland floor under the pine trees.

A ‘Witch’s Broom’ in a Birch tree.

These ‘Witch’s Brooms’ are caused by a type of parasitic fungus which induces galls in its host.

Bracket fungus

Bracket fungus

One of the veteran Oak trees in the wood.

A close-up of the lichen-covered trunk of the Oak tree. A lot of the bark has disappeared and it no longer looks like a tree trunk anymore.

These veteran trees support many different species of fungi and invertebrates that are dependent on the slowly rotting heartwood of the tree.  Most notable is the Oak Polypore fungus which is known from only six other sites in Britain.  The Oak Polypore fruits for only a very short time in the summer.

New Oak leaves and flowers

One of the several ponds in the wood

Wood Sorrel (Oxalis acetosella). A flower which indicates ancient, undisturbed woodland and hedges. The petals are white or pink with lilac veins.

Wood Sorrel

A Beech tree (Fagus sylvatica) coming into leaf

This bright green, running like a river through the woods is Dog’s Mercury(Mercurialis perennis)

A coppice stool. The wood from the coppice is harvested every few years. New shoots are protected from deer and then left to grow until they are ready to be cut again.

At last we reached the part of the wood where the bluebells were, but found we were just a little too early to see them at their best.

Bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta)

There were a number of white bluebells.

Bluebell potential was good….

….but if we had visited a week later it would have looked heavenly.   Unfortunately, a week later we were doing other things.

We got back to the car and discovered we had a puncture.  Richard tried to change the tyre himself but we were unable to get the tyre off.  We had to call a rescue company and after just under an hour’s wait the mechanic arrived.  He managed to remove the tyre by sitting on the ground and kicking it with his left then right boot alternately.

Captain’s Wood is somewhere we would visit again.  It has plenty of plants and a variety of trees.  The walk through the wood would be pleasurable at any time of the year.

Thank-you for visiting!