I had bought a full day ticket for the literary festival at Dartington last week and am so pleased I had booked to hear Richard Fortey talking about his book The Wood for the Trees - The Long View of Nature from a Small Wood. I had planned to read it straight through but am now opting for the month by month approach in which the book is written.
I just knew I was going to love this one.
Richard Fortey, heading into retirement from his role as senior palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, used his earnings from a TV series to buy Grim's Dyke Wood, four acres of beech woodland near his home in the Chiltern Hills. He then started to observe the wood in great detail, often forensic in depth, calling on his own expertise and that of contacts in the natural history world. The result is a treasure of a book that I had started to read the day before the event and now want to read very slowly, interspersed with walks up to 'our' beech wood which is currently in full summer raiment. I have been taking you all up there for ten years now on here, so I think you all know Berry Wood very well too...
and of course Nell loves it...
I was very excited to hear and read about solitary white bluebells because 'our' wood has them too...
As rare 'as a sober Irishman on St Patrick's Day,' suggests Richard Fortey, the white bluebell the result of a natural mutation, 'one tiny change on the DNA code and blue becomes white.' I know the places to find them and look out every year.
Berry Wood doesn't have many if any grey squirrels, in fact we were a bit upset when Rusty pegged a solitary one last year, Richard Fortey on the other hand has far too many and would probably be very happy to let Rusty (or the Gamekeeper...youngest son) take a walk through Grim's Dyke Wood. I think my own affinity with greys goes back to the age of about five when I won Greykin a Squirrel as my very first school prize, but sadly, as well we know, the greys are a scourge carrying a virus that has decimated the red squirrels. Nor had I realised that the greys were introduced from North America to a few estates in the nineteenth century for 'aesthetic reasons.' In fact I'm not sure I have ever seen a red squirrel in the wild so I don't feel quite so bad about finding all those grey squirrel tails in the washing machine when the Gamekeeper lived at home...he used the fur for tying into fishing flies.
Inviting all his friends and colleagues to visit I realise Richard Fortey must have an enviable Christmas card list; drawing in entomologists, archaeologists, botanists, moth experts, bat supremos and doubtless many more as I proceed through the book, all offering enthusiastic and interesting analyses of their findings in the wood. His own expertise also allowing him to delve deeply and accurately where the rest of us might just walk and wonder.
To our knowledge Berry Wood hasn't been 'managed' in any way for the twenty-two years that we have lived here and walked there, benign decay seems to be the watchword and I certainly walk 'our' woods (maybe about two acres) with an air of familiarity rather than knowledge, but I'm going to look more closely, month by month with Richard Fortey as my guide, and see if I can notice more. No matter how often we visit (probably daily, one or other or both of us with dogs) there is always a feeling of anticipation when we reach the entrance...
I'm going to cover the perimeters too, rather than stick to our well-worn pathways, and am already on the fungus trail over the other side where I rarely walk. Imagine my excitement when I spied this new and exciting growth...
Until I realised it was a bio-degradable plastic bag in an advanced state of decay.
Never mind, if I find Britain's rarest plant the Ghost Orchid (Epipogium) I shall be well pleased, likewise Dutchman's pipe (Monotropa) and I will be dancing, meanwhile I am settling for some pennywort (I think, someone will tell me)...
And so I have moved through April, May and June reaching the chapter on July and must now slow down.
If you are fortunate enough to have access to woodland The Wood For the Trees will engage and enhance your visits. If not the book will inform and entertain as if you were walking through a woodland of your own. Richard Fortey shares Grim's Dyke Wood with an easy style that combines thorough scientific investigation and exploration with understandable explanation for the layman and enjoyable reading. His premise that 'curiosity is the enemy of certainty' suggests that despite his wealth of knowledge he has approached this venture with an open mind, making his enthusiasm and love for his little corner of England highly contagious.
This is definitely one that deserves a permanent place on the Nature Shelf.
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