Every year, sometime in May, somewhere in the reserve, there is pink hawthorn blossom; not uniformly pink and not always in the same hedge as was pink last year but definitely pink in places. It’s very pretty but we don’t know what causes it.
Continue reading
These are the flowers of an oak tree. Oaks are monoecious; they have male flowers and female flowers on the same tree.
Continue reading “Oak flowers”
We have been making what might seem to our followers like a great fuss about the planting of just a very few disease resistant elm trees. Here are parts of a post from March 2020, which explain what disease our precious saplings are resistant to, and why we are so eager to get them established in the hedge between Cornfield and Sleepers.
Continue reading “Tree planting”
by Ian Bushell
On April 10th we checked the fifteen Dutch Elm Disease Resistant trees, donated by Peter Shallcross and Frank Crosier, that we had planted in April 2021.
Continue reading
At this time of year, the reserve is full of pollinators carrying pollen from tree to tree in a kind of reproductive frenzy.
Continue reading “Arboreal sex”
by Ian Bushell
It was a bit of a miserable drippy morning but eventually we sorted things out. The Trefoil Guild and the two metre English oak tree [Quercus robur] they have gifted to the reserve to commemorate Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee arrived at the top of Simpsons Field at 10:30am, as planned.
Continue reading “The Trefoil Oak”
There are forty six species of trees in the reserve.
Continue reading “Tree numbers”
by Ian Bushell
Our Tree Officer, Rich Murphy, has been running chainsaw monitoring sessions with Clive, Phil and myself to check our competence to fell trees in the reserve. The reserve belongs to the county and they are the people who pay to insure us.
Continue reading
The reserve provides habitat for all kinds of wasps. This year, despite the drought, must have been a good year for gall wasps because our oak trees are showing a goodish crop of the various round galls we call oak apples.
Continue reading “More about our oaks”
This is fly agaric, a mycorrhizal fungus, Amanita muscaria, which is found in the reserve every year despite our lack of its preferred partners: birch and pine trees. In classic pictures of this red and white fungus, those that don’t have an elf sitting on top are usually growing picturesquely in the moss under a birch tree.
Read on:
There are three kinds of pigment in a usually green leaf: carotenes which are yellow, red and pink anthocyanins, and chlorophyll, which is the green that masks the other colours until autumn.
Salix is the genus name of willow, trees known and cultivated for millennia for their medicinal properties.
Continue reading “Salix”
Oak trees produce thousands of acorns every year. Somebody has worked out that an oak tree can produce ten million acorns over its lifetime. In a good year, they carpet the ground under the tree and crunch underfoot.
Read on:
It’s not, as many believe, an instruction to keep your coat on until June; it’s telling you to take your cardigan off as soon as the may is in blossom, which has been known to happen as early as April.
Continue reading
At this time of year, the reserve is full of pollinators carrying pollen from tree to tree in a kind of reproductive frenzy.
Continue reading “Arboreal sex”
Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) is the earliest of our native flowering trees.
Continue reading “Blackthorn”
Always among the year’s first flowers in the reserve are the hazel catkins in the copse near the picnic place. They are a familiar and friendly sign that spring is on its way.
Continue reading
by David Feather
We, the Friends of Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve think we are doing well with our tree planting etc, but just read this article about an environmentalist in India. It is inspiring.
Continue reading “Inspiration”
Sometimes, healthy and mature trees shed large branches during the summer for no apparent reason. This is what is known as Summer Branch Drop Syndrome and it is what happened to Oak 5552 in August of this year.
Continue reading
Ian Bushell writes:
Unfortunately, in late August oak 5552 suffered from Summer Branch Drop when at least two limbs fractured and fell.
Continue reading “Correction”
This is tree number 5552: an old pollarded oak standing in the eastern-most corner of Sleeper Field.
There are European hornets (Vespa crabro) still hunting in the Lone Oak.
Continue reading “European hornets”
by David Feather
I think that we accept that a walk in the park is very good for our mental health. What is not so clear is that it is also good for our physical health.
Continue reading “A walk in the woods”
There are three kinds of pigment in a usually green leaf: carotenes which are yellow, red and pink anthocyanins, and chlorophyll, which is the green that masks the other colours until autumn.
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 