Christmas Tree Field: plant survey and pond news

Foxglove - recorded in Christmas Tree Field plant survey

27th June 2023

Summer is here with a vengeance when I arrive this morning. Dan and Emily are back from their holiday and there appear to be lots of projects on the go. Jake and Dan are sorting out the pottery kiln, Kate is dealing with visitors at The Hatch and Emily is busy answering her mobile phone as she flits around organising people.

Will and Daryl have reappeared at the wood to do some framing for a new verandah scheduled for the back of the house. In search of a fellow human to commune with I seek out Kent, who spares me 2 minutes before the first of his students turns up. Looks like I'll have to settle for communing with Nature today.

Jake has asked me to run my botanist's eye over the Christmas Tree Field, where he and Kate have ticked-off 27 plant species. So I make that my first stop. After 30 minutes of wandering between small and large Christmas trees I figure there are at least 41 different vascular plant species (I've left out any tree species and non-vascular plants such as mosses and liverworts). I'm a bit of a dud at dandelion and thistle look-alikes, so there are potentially actually over 50 species. Pretty impressive in such a small area.

St. John’s Wort - Christmas Tree Field

Centaury - Christmas Tree Field

I follow my usual route through the wood, checking on the leaky dam trail boards. At Greater Waterboatman board I pause to inspect that it is surviving the depredations of weather and human-kind. The board looks fine, as does the leaky dam, but sadly the wetland behind the dam has dried out. A passing deer has left a line of hoof-prints in the dried mud (termed a deer 'slot'), but this is the only sign of life at present. However, I'm delighted to discover a long thin pond about 5 metres further upstream in which a small diving beetle is gadding about quite happily. Nettles, brambles and water figwort block access, which is great for the wildlife in it.

A deer ‘slot’ in the mud

My optimism is short-lived by the time I reach the new ponds in the lower wood. Eight further days without rain are leaving it looking just a few inches deep. This comes as no surprise since the Wilderness Stream is no longer running. On Thursday Jake and I are due to host a meeting on-site with representative from The High Weald AONB to discuss potential funding from the Lund Fund. I'm hoping that the Lund might help us pay for installation of a board walk across the new ponds, giving visitors a close-up view of any wildlife there. It is quite likely that these will be seasonal ponds, but they can be good for amphibians as long as they can complete their life cycles before the pond dries out. Some of the predators on newt and frog tadpoles need water all year round, so drying out is not a bad thing.

Inspection of the ponds suggests that there are no tadpoles left and I assume all have successfully metamorphosed into adult frogs. That's good news for frog predators such as snakes, herons and even foxes, so I think we can call the ponds a success for wildlife at least. One reason for there being no tadpoles left could well be the number of Great Diving Beetle larvae I can see hanging from the pond surface – they eat smaller tadpoles, but perhaps not full grown ones.

I spot a pair of white-legged damselflies moving around in tandem and a male broad-bodied chaser dragonfly (unlikely to be the one spotted last week since they only survive as adults for 5-8 days). A few aptly named whirligig beetles are skidding over the surface like dodgem cars at a fairground, except they never collide – somehow.

Female White-legged Damselfly (the male is pale blue)

An alder log that has fallen into the water has started to sprout leafy shoots. Alders love a wetland habitat and like willows can sprout into new trees from a relatively small piece of wood if kept suitably damp. Their wood is great for submerged structures like piles, so they could be useful for boardwalk supports, although I suspect we will go composite plastic ones made from recycled plastic drinks bottles.

Alder logs sprout leafy stems when left in the water

Returning back uphill I make my customary visit to Bat Park, where I find a couple of sections of deer fence which look as though some pretty chunky deer were unaware of the increased height of the fence and jumped into it. The damage is minimal, lets hope the deer are unhurt too and learn from their mistake. At least the hedge saplings should be free of these damaging, if attractive, mammals.

David Horne - follow my blog as I discover the coast of Britain on www.leggingroundbritain.com