An update from Michael Walter:
For the next few months I shall doubtless be writing about fungi, cold weather and wildlife battening down for winter, so it is heartening to be able to start this article with mention of a flower – marjoram. In Kent it is almost exclusively a plant of chalk on the North Downs; in Blean Woods, which is on moderately acidic soil, I knew of it from just one tiny glade until this month, when I found a larger clump at the edge of the main heath near the A2. A few yards away heather grew in profusion, so the juxtaposition of a calcicole (chalk-lover) and calcifuge (chalk-hater) was very striking, but not without precedent, for the same stretch of track also hosts two flowers of yellow wort, another plant that is virtually confined to the rolling downs. How has this come about? The precise location of each species, beside a track near the A2, is probably significant. In the past chalky soil may have been brought in to build up the tracks, or else dumped beside them. Additionally, the chalk stratum that underlies much of this part of Kent, surfaces just the other side of the A2, so there may well be little outliers of calcareous material in the area where the marjoram and yellow wort were found,
We are all familiar with the wood pigeon – none more so than the gardener struggling to grow brassicas – but few of us have heard of the stock dove. This bird resembles a wood pigeon that has been dieting heavily – considerably more streamlined and elegant, and lacking the wood pigeon’s white neckband and wing bar. Another distinction is that it nests in tree cavities rather than out in the open. A few pairs of stock doves breed in the wood each summer, spending much of the rest of the year in arable fields, and this year has seen the highest number of territories on an area that I have been monitoring for 14 years. As the graph above indicates, the population has been fairly stable, hovering around the 8-10 mark most years, so this spring’s total of 19 represents a marked improvement.
The 12ha (30 acre) heath towards the south end of the reserve has been managed partly by grazing for the past twelve years, but the konik ponies had to be taken away this summer as there wasn’t sufficient food to sustain them, and our flock of sheep has been whittled away by the grim reaper to a mere three animals, so an injection of new herbivores was called for, and last week I was delighted to introduce myself to five small, endearingly tame and attractive goats. Goats are browsers, rather than grazers, subsisting largely on scrub foliage rather than on grass, so we are hopeful that they will do a better job of controlling birch invasion than the rather ineffectual ponies. Time will tell.
Fungi come in all shapes, sizes and consistencies, and one of my favourites for weirdness is the black bulgar fungus –a rubbery, rather shapeless mass currently protruding from the trunks of some oaks that have been lying beside the track for over a year. Devoid of gills or any other meaningful structure, they are just like black jelly babies without the E-numbers!
Michael Walter
michaelwalter434@gmail.com
01227 462491
Black blugar
Stock dove
The charming goats
Marjoram