Disease resistant elms
The Covid-19 lockdown has interrupted our plans for the five disease resistant elms donated to the park by Butterfly Conservation as part of their rescue plan for the white letter hairstreak butterfly.
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A walk in the Park
by Ian Bushell
I took my permitted exercise at the park over lunchtime. There were just eight cars when I arrived at noon and only fifteen when I left an hour later. People were well spaced all around the park; everybody seems to be taking the new regulations seriously.
Continue readingA Stroll in the Park
Mail from Ian Bushell:
Continue reading “A Stroll in the Park”Trees
The Woodland Trust has given us 420 sapling trees: rowan, dogwood, silver birch, hawthorn, hazel and wild cherry.
Continue reading “Trees”What happened here?
Somebody has stripped bark from the whole length of the trunk of tree number 5477. Why would anybody do that?
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Blackthorn
Despite being battered by the weekend’s storm, the blackthorn is just beginning to flower; you’ll find it at the top of the hill as you leave Simpson’s Field.
Hazel
As always, the first flowers of the year are the hazel catkins: a familiar and friendly sign that spring is on its way.
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Good news about ash dieback
In the park, we have lost many of our ash saplings to ash dieback and the disease is spreading rapidly.
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Today is the autumnal equinox
Equinox means equal night, and today, the 23rd of September, there will be equal amounts of darkness and daylight all over the World.
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Hawthorn berries
Hawthorn is an important winter food source for birds; they’re the favourite berry of blackbirds, redwings and fieldfares and are enjoyed by many other of the park’s species, including chaffinches, starlings and greenfinches.
Haws are edible though they are said to taste like overripe apples. Traditionally they were used to make jellies, wines and ketchup. They are such a prolific crop, so pretty and nearly always within reach; sometimes it seems a shame that we don’t make better use of them.
Let’s leave them to the birds: an autumnal bonanza.
Another autumnal bonanza:
An artichoke gall on an oak tree photographed by DKG last week. The artichoke gall wasp (Andricus foecundatrix) lays its eggs in the leaf buds of an oak tree; the egg and the growing larva produce chemicals that force the tree’s extraordinary outgrowth.
Ash dieback
Ash dieback is a disease that is especially deadly to Britain’s native ash trees, Fraxinus excelsior.
Continue reading “Ash dieback”Growing trees
The climate scientists are finally persuaded that Southwick Country Park’s solution to global warming is the right way to go. They should have asked us sooner.
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