On the Woodland Floor

This morning I was up at Blackheath Common with the dogs and a brave South African lad who had signed up for a photo walk. Starting a group is always going to start slowly, more so when the weather has been so inclement.
Lack of interest in mid winter doesn't worry me. The leader of another photogroup told me that not a single person showed for the first 8 outings he set up but, nine months later he has to turn people away.

The frost this morning was soft and scraping from the windscreen it formed little piles of soft snow. Unfortunately it had all but disappeared, replaced by a nippy wind, up on the heath. There were plenty of other things to photograph and the sun streamed through the trees for us.

Last year was a mast year, one when all trees bear an abundance of fruit, and rarely do we see the quantity that it produced. The nuts from the trees have lain in thick carpets under the boughs. With the combination of mild weather and so much rain in the past month or so, I've watched them starting to germinate en mass. Under an ancient oak I saw the story of the mast in one picture . A hint of green as the first leaves start to form from the nuts that have already pushed up their first cotyledons , whilst other nuts are pushing root into the soil and those that have their first root exposed to the air have little chance of surviving much further. The excess of water has rotted others away whilst the husks are the leftovers from the meals of the wildlife.

Many of the trees that have been blown down in the storms were nearing the natural end of their lifespan. Left to nature, the gaps where they once stood are now an open canopy in the woodlands. The sunlight can now reach the soil so, some of the seedlings will grow, competing with each other until one will eventually succeed in replacing the one that has fallen.

How small is an acorn and how big is an oak. Truly amazing!