I’m itching for a botanical adventure this morning and set off for Bushy Park in far distant west London. My mission is simple; to soak up some sun and look for rushes and sedges. Like Richmond Park, Bushy Park is home to free-roaming deer, but as soon as I’m through the entrance I sense they […]

A pal of mine Jane wrote a great piece recently in which she talks about the smell of ivy flowers making her think about ivy bees. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad that I haven’t yet seen ivy bees in Sydenham Hill Wood. The nature jury’s out on what this fairly new arrival […]

I’m hiding behind an ancient oak tree. It’s all gone very quiet. Then I hear a low grunt and when I peek round, five metres away on the other side of the trunk a red deer stag is carefully lowering himself into the bracken. He sits gasping for breath in the October sun. A few […]

The leaves haven’t really changed yet but this avenue of poplars is lit gold in the midday sun. A tram flashes past on the park boundary head of me, which triggers a feeling that I’m truanting. Clutching onto summer, my current policy is to stop working whenever the sun comes out and to get outside […]

There are few plants in flower in the woods this morning apart from Ivy. I find some Wood Sedge alongside the rail bed which still have fruits so spend a bit of time getting some clearer photos than I’ve managed earlier in the year. I wander down the railway track to the old tunnel mouth […]

Each year it feels like the oaks are slow to get growing but then everything speeds up. Leaf growth, herbivores, predation all ramp up throughout the growing season until by the start of September the leaves are looking tired and in some cases well galled. These Cherry Galls, the work of a wasp Cynips quercusfolii, […]

I’m not sure what it is that makes me look up from the laptop and out the front window but when I do I see a blurry movement which immediately catches my attention. There’s something pinging around out there around the frothy Red Valerian flower spikes. A sprite like this one has visited us at […]

It’s the final day of the Big Butterfly Count. I haven’t been involved with citizen science projects before as they always sounded like hard work but it’s quite extraordinary how relaxing it has been contributing to this one.  The task is to simply notice and record butterflies and moths for 15 minutes, so much like […]

The wood is teeming with people again but the clearing is thankfully tranquil. I touch a Hops (or is it Hop?) leaf within a tangly clump of Brambles and Traveller’s Joy. The leaf is slightly tacky – is that how this plant fights its way through its competitors? A Large Skipper lands on a nearby […]