h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This Sunday's woodpile was mixed brown and white logs, white from the birch, brown from the alder and hazel I think. The clearing is now double in size, it really ought to be half as big again but it looks as though the grant which covers the coppicing is going through and that will take priority.

That wood was managed to provide all sizes of timber, everything from fuel and fencing hurdles through pit props to great oak beams for several hundred years. It needs a long cycle of growing, thinning, felling and growing again in a patchwork through the wood - the kind of cycle much of England's woodland wildlife has evolved around.

It's a bit of a disgrace on Shropshire that it lost its last Wood White butterflies recently. All they needed were some sunny rides in the forest kept open for them. It's not realistic to expect any of the rarer woodland butterflies in this wood but I can't help hoping that maybe, one day, there might be a Silver-washed Fritillary. And it's not unrealistic at all to hope that there's a colony of Purple Hairstreaks up in the oak canopy.

Shropshire hasn’t lost its Wood Whites.

That was wrong, picked up the wrong end of a stick there. Monk Wood in Worcestershire has lost its Wood Whites.

Shropshire is in fact one of only four English regions with colonies strong enough to expand, given the chance, given a few sunny, flowery clearings. Wood White’s are beautifully gentle, dainty butterflies. Their short, shallow curvy flight with a fluttery wing-beat is appealing and quite different from the strong flying, robust Large, Small and Green-veined Whites. The softly curved point of its top wing and the lop-sided oval bottom wing adds to the self-effacing, maybe slightly dopey, look. Or maybe I’m influenced by the very dopey one I rescued from a spider web which minced its way up a grass blade with sticky feet. I got it out the web, I couldn’t wash its feet for it.

Woodlands without these bouncy, fluttery white butterflies feel a bit empty. It’ll be a very, very long time before there’s a chance of them in our wood. But a Silver-washed Fritillary was seen this summer only a mile away. A Silver-washed Fritillary is very capable of travelling a couple of miles. Our wood will have flowers next year if one flies over, maybe even violets for its caterpillars.

There were quite a few Peacocks sunning themselves in the clearings this summer, and two hibernating in the log piles.

Wonder if there are any Wood White working parties to go on this autumn. We got venison burgers at the last one …

Any problems there with Ash trees LLWaz? Sounds like too little too late, and if it travels on the wind there is not much that can be done.

Haven't been out and about much this year, what with it being a rotten summer and stuff to do in the house. Better luck next year I hope.

Take care,

Websailor

Hi Websailor, hoping for a better summer here too!

No diseased Ash trees that I've heard of in Shropshire yet. We've a couple of big mature Ash in the wood, and a few younger ones. Can't see any signs on them, but most have completely lost their leaves already. It would be sad to lose them.

It's frustrating not to hear from the experts from Europe who are already experiencing this rather than all the guessing we're getting. I've heard the spores are short lived and the danger is more them spreading from transported leaves, for instance.

It is sad, but maybe it won't be as bad as expected.

Websailor

Just want to say hello Waz and welcome back, sounds like you're doing good work, here's to those wood whites getting back to abundance over there!

A wave to Willem . Good to see you. I'm updating each of last November's journals after rereading last year's and finding details I'd forgotten.

Don't know if you've seen this Websailor, from the BBC News website 'The latest data showed that infection did not occur directly from tree to tree, only via leaf litter.'

Which underlines the commonsense view that monocultures are not good. Scattered trees in mixed woodlands may well avoid natural infection. In the same way some isolated elms have never been found by the beetle. We have a mature elm down a very narrow, little used lane nearby.

I wonder how long the spores last on the leaves and whether they infect seedlings coming up under an infected tree.

Yes, I did see that, and monocultures are never a good thing. i would think the spores would survive at least until we get some good frosts, and of course if buried deep could survive even longer. I wonder if it goes underground too?

It seems they are thinking some trees will survive or be immune and that we shan't lose the whole species.

It is nature and I think it will right itself if we don't meddle too much, as you have seen with Elms.

Websailor

I've been wondering if there's a relationship between trees and these fungi like butterflies and parasitic wasps. The mirroring of the two population cycles with those is so marked. It could be the same with trees but on a timescale humans don't take in.

The more time I spend in the wood the more I respect the people 100 years ago that cared for trees they'd never benefit from or appreciate but which are so glorious now.