.
Somewhere deep in my subconscious I had assumed that bluebells were - well - English so I was quite startled to see from a friend's Instagram photos that they are doing well and are a common sight across the Channel in Brittany. A quick Google made it clear that although 50% of the world's hyacinthoides non scripta grow in Britain, they have a range that extends from the UK across western France, Netherlands and Belgium and down the Atlantic coast to northwestern Spain. They are all over the UK, apart from the far north - Hebrides and Orkney. With that Atlantic distribution it's clear they don't like their winters too cold, and prefer the milder Gulf Stream climate. This year's cold spring has apparently delayed bluebell flowering, although looking back at this blog, in Old Copse they are probably only a few days later than last year.
Bluebells mean a lot to us because they are a clear indicator of how the work we are doing to thin the plantation and clear the bracken makes a difference to the ground flora. We can track the changes by watching how the bluebells march across the newly created spaces from year to year, advancing through the wood from the ride towards the pond. Front runners appear in single figures, and are joined by new ones each Spring until there is a clump, and pretty soon the clumps join up to form a carpet that conquers all the empty brown space . This year, the first few bluebells managed to reach beyond the Pond side of the cabin. Hurrah! - and the deer don't eat them - Double Hurrah!
The most abundant bluebell displays can be seen in the northerly 15 acres (OC2) of the birch wood . The southern 15 acres (OC1) is less diverse , increasingly so the further south one walks, where there are no bluebells at all in the birch wood, or any deciduous trees apart from birch, except along the roadside edge. We don't know why this is so. In the northern 15 acres there are a fair number of other deciduous trees such as beech, oak, rowan, hazel crab apple, cherry, and hawthorn. There is only 1 large Scots pine present as this part of the plantation was destroyed in the 1987 storm, and birch quickly colonised the space. The absence of pine means there is no thick layer of pine needles to suffocate ground flora, and light levels have attained a good balance, resulting in very little bracken and hardly any bramble, except for around the edges. So the bluebells are thriving. This is what we are aiming for in the rest of Old Copse.
Somewhere deep in my subconscious I had assumed that bluebells were - well - English so I was quite startled to see from a friend's Instagram photos that they are doing well and are a common sight across the Channel in Brittany. A quick Google made it clear that although 50% of the world's hyacinthoides non scripta grow in Britain, they have a range that extends from the UK across western France, Netherlands and Belgium and down the Atlantic coast to northwestern Spain. They are all over the UK, apart from the far north - Hebrides and Orkney. With that Atlantic distribution it's clear they don't like their winters too cold, and prefer the milder Gulf Stream climate. This year's cold spring has apparently delayed bluebell flowering, although looking back at this blog, in Old Copse they are probably only a few days later than last year.
Bluebells mean a lot to us because they are a clear indicator of how the work we are doing to thin the plantation and clear the bracken makes a difference to the ground flora. We can track the changes by watching how the bluebells march across the newly created spaces from year to year, advancing through the wood from the ride towards the pond. Front runners appear in single figures, and are joined by new ones each Spring until there is a clump, and pretty soon the clumps join up to form a carpet that conquers all the empty brown space . This year, the first few bluebells managed to reach beyond the Pond side of the cabin. Hurrah! - and the deer don't eat them - Double Hurrah!
The most abundant bluebell displays can be seen in the northerly 15 acres (OC2) of the birch wood . The southern 15 acres (OC1) is less diverse , increasingly so the further south one walks, where there are no bluebells at all in the birch wood, or any deciduous trees apart from birch, except along the roadside edge. We don't know why this is so. In the northern 15 acres there are a fair number of other deciduous trees such as beech, oak, rowan, hazel crab apple, cherry, and hawthorn. There is only 1 large Scots pine present as this part of the plantation was destroyed in the 1987 storm, and birch quickly colonised the space. The absence of pine means there is no thick layer of pine needles to suffocate ground flora, and light levels have attained a good balance, resulting in very little bracken and hardly any bramble, except for around the edges. So the bluebells are thriving. This is what we are aiming for in the rest of Old Copse.
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| Herbie, full of the joys of a bluebell Spring, and the scent of fallow deer. |
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| Brimstone butterfly feeding on a bluebell |
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