Bristol has many beautiful woodlands in and around it. My local patch in BS9 contains Southside Wood which has its fair share of spring wonder. Today’s post concentrates on the ground level plants and flowers at this damp and slowly warming time…
(Don’t forget to scroll down for today’s star sighting).
As the trees yield to the call of summer and become ever greener, leafier, richer custodians of the woodland sky, the abundance of spring woodland flowers begins to diminish. However, a late spring walk in the damp Southside Wood still yields plenty of colour and interest.
Under the sodden lament of a song thrush, ground ivy glistening with spring rain, I take a walk with eyes down to the woodland floor, to catch the ending spring spectacle.
The last of the bluebells cling on, these ones Spanish hybrid, with their lilac overtones and bushy heads. Our native bluebells appear to have let go earlier, along with the anemones, violets and celandines that were abundant here not long ago. On the margins of the rides, green alkanet flashes it’s bright blue, and herb robert compliments with pink cheer. Deeper under the canopy, hart’s tongue ferns are unfurling in vast numbers and germander speedwell twinkles its delicate blooms everywhere.
As I emerge into the meadow, dandelion, clover and ribwort dot the flowering grasses; cow parsley and pignut dominate the edges and tiny lives dwell in the bowl of the buttercups. Lifting my face to the air, hawthorn blossom sends its scent to greet me and decorates the path back in to the woods, lined with nettles, and cleavers ready for sticking.
The base of the copper beech is striped with fungus; it is certainly still damp enough, and cow parsley now crowds the narrow path. From up above, various birds alert each other to my presence, so busy with their broods and with the ceaseless search for food. The wood is alive with the green, leafy promise of abundance, of so much more to come and a summer season waiting around the corner.
Recent Star Sighting
Yesterday’s super moon (the nearest and therefore biggest of 2021 – I hope you saw it) plus the recent copious rainfall made today’s spring tide pretty spectacular. At Sea Mills Station, the banks of the Trym were overflowing with the incoming tide, and nature’s flotsam and jetsam was bobbing inland, borne on the strong currents and weight of water. I watched the tide turn at the mouth of the Trym, mallards riding the flow, with martins busy house building in the station eaves. Watching the tide ebb and flow on our doorstep is an under-rated privilege.
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