Bluebell Time and Retaining Water in Wilderness Wood

23rd April 2024

Bluebell Time
This must be the top week for bluebell spotting. This is most appropriate today since it is St Georges Day. In a poll carried out by Plantlife some years ago the Bluebell was voted as the quintessential English flower. Throw in the birth (alledged) and death of William Shakespear and we have lots to celebrate.

Pick your walk carefully. I decide to follow the A to Z trail as far as post I. Here you will see how effective the biennial ride widening has been. Every 2 years Jake cuts back anything above ankle height on one side of the path (ride) doing the same to the other side alternate years.

This means taller perennial shrubs are checked in their growth, particularly bramble. A few chestnut stools are also coppiced but still have 2 years of growth ahead of them before being coppiced afresh. This is a good source of chestnut poles for screening projects like the one hiding the gents urinals from children in the play area (please check the urinal is not in use before gathering to inspect this attractive, but perhaps rather mundane of structures).

One major beneficiary is the bluebell. The ride cutting is a winter activity so they are safely ensconced within their bulbs at this time of year. However when they eventually appear and flower at the end of April they have no taller trees or scrub to shade them. This is perfect since they really benefit from good illumination on their leaves to build up food reserves in their bulbs.

Biennial cutting of taller shrubs allows light to penetrate and encourages Bluebell

Further along the A to Z Trail at Steep Hill you will find a particularly good display of bluebells (posts K to L). Regular coppicing here seems to suit them too.

Bluebells adjacent to a woodland path. Please avoid stepping on the plants and never pick any.

It takes 5 or 6 years from seed for Bluebells to reach maturity and then produce seeds of their own. This probably explains why they are considered to be a good indicator of ancient woodland, which is a ‘no rush’ habitat. They do prefer a humid habitat, so are we'll suited to deciduous woodland, especially in the west of England and Ireland.

It seems to me that the ancient practice of coppicing particularly suits them, perhaps controlling the degree of shading cast from older trees. The 10 to 15 year coppice cycle employed at Wilderness Wood lets fresh light in after this period. Arguably removal of shade due to coppicing lets more invasive ground level plants such as bramble and bracken invade, but within two years the rapid new growth from young coppice poles quickly restores the status quo.

I do wonder if they actually benefit from this couple of years of increased sunlight to recharge their bulbs. After all in undisturbed ancient woodland they will get a much longer period of exposure to light when a 500 year old oak falls, to be eventually replaced by slow growing saplings.

Retaining Water in Wilderness Wood

From Steep Hill I'm headed for the new ponds in the lower wood. When I arrive I note that the water level has fallen a good 6 inches since 2 weeks ago. April showers are perhaps becoming a thing of the past these days, but certainly the Wilderness Stream is running a little low on the wet stuff. It may be time to divert some of its waters into the ponds to extend their life prior to the inevitable summer drought.

Pond water levels are down. The area of exposed mud is know as drawdown but has its place

At the lowest of the ponds a small dachshund greets me with a nervous bark, but once I get talking to the owners he seems more accepting of this new stranger. They have a copy of the A-Z map with them, which is all the invitation I need to explain the history and recent restoration of the ponds.

“Any newts in the pond?” I am asked.

“I've never seen any, but frogs aplenty,” I respond, “they are often mutually exclusive, predating on each other’s larval stages.

Happy to have sent them away with a few nuggets of wisdom I quickly melt into the wet woodland like some latter day Robin Hood. The woodland here has really benefited from the rerouted Wilderness Stream braiding it's way through it. I'm convinced that the bramble dislikes having it's roots saturated, with significant areas of bare soil indicating where it has disappeared. A perfect place to scatter Marsh Marigold seeds from my garden wetland area later in the year.

The redirected Wilderness Stream appears to be excluding Bramble from wetter areas

However, my main interest is an engineering one. Has the earth dam I threw across the old course of the Wilderness Stream survived? To my delight it has, with the bit of kitchen drain-pipe I fitted doing a cracking job of acting as an overflow. This exercise provides the blueprint for future dams here. During Working with Wood Week I hope to get a number of volunteers building further of these to complete the next stage of water retention at Wilderness Wood.

This earth dam with overflow pipe inserted retains water in the old channel (the pipe acts as an overflow to prevent erosion of the dam should it be overtopped by rising water)

My return journey to The Barn takes me back onto the A-Z Trail where I find one of our run-off channels has filled with fine yellow silt. Digging it out means rainwater can be diverted from the path and into the vegetation. This reduces footpath erosion, but also improves the objective of retaining water in the wood.

Runoff Channel maintenance

As I'm digging it becomes evident that it is possible to see where a rain event has carried silt into the runoff. Each event is followed by the deposition of a thin layer of dark organic matter - perhaps wind-bourne? This gives the appearance of the alternating bedding planes often seen in a cliff face or other geological exposure. The latter would have been spread over thousands or even millions of years whilst the former perhaps over 2 or 3 months.

Stratigraphy of a runoff channel - geology exhibited in a tiny chunk of accumulated silt

With that pleasing observation under my belt this would-be sedimentologist decides it's time for lunch. See you next week.

David Horne

A Year in the Wilderness 2023-2024 has now been published (through Kindle Direct Publishing). You can buy the softback version from Amazon, or shortly get an electronic version through Amazon too. You can even buy a copy from The Hatch at Wilderness Wood. Alternatively just read through the back pages of this blog - for free!