Its been over a month now since there was any rain in Pop’s Wood. This is in stark contrast to the very wet winter and early spring where it seemed to rain every other day. The impact of this lack of water is becoming apparent and several of the fleshier plants are struggling.
Pop’s Wood has a varied floor covering but in many parts there is a very healthy growth of Dogs Mercury. This perennial plant is common in beech and oak woodland. The stem is hairy and unbranched, with more leaves present near the top than the base. The leaves are dark green in colour, hairy, have a toothed (serrated) edge and an overall ‘spear-like’ shape – i.e. much longer than they are wide and they come to a point at the tip. The leaves are arranged opposite to each other. Plants may reach a height of about 15 in / 40 cm.
For the early part of the year this plant has flourished and, as usual, staked out its claim to a large proportion of the shaded areas of the woodland’s hardwood sections. But a month without rain and it is beginning to struggle.
The ground is also showing signs of fatigue.
Weirdly even though there has been a prolonged dry period I found a mushroom seemingly quite happy with the conditions. I find it nearly impossible to follow the various identification charts for mushrooms but I think that this may be a Glistening Ink Cap. Not so glistening this weather but there you go.
The warm dry weather is ideal for seasoning firewood. The piles that I finished chopping and stacking early in the year are drying out nicely. It’s not a very scientific approach but simply picking up a log and noticing that it feels less dense or lighter is a very good indicator that the water is being driven off and the overall moisture content of the logs is dropping. Talking of dropping, I noticed that one of the piles was looking a bit ragged and had slumped a little. No problem, soon have that fixed. I attempted to gently straighten a few of the more obvious culprits. Whoops……
Not such a good idea it turns out as the whole of the front face of the pile simply collapsed as soon as I started. Still it gave me a chance to check the condition of some of the logs that have been buried at the centre of the pile. Happy to say that these are in very good condition with no signs of mould or growth which bodes well. Half an hour later and the pile is rebuilt and hopefully stable once more.
Very soon I will carry out a more scientific and reliable method for testing the moisture content of a sample of logs. The recommended approach is to gently dry them right out in a controlled way in an oven and weigh them before and after.
More next time…………………………
Tim Burr 