It seems a long time since I updated this blog, but something has moved me to start again. We have had a peruiod of cold and snow unusual for early December, but the snow has melted and now on Christmas Day, the garden and the Green Sanctuary just look dank and asleep, the only variation being the oranget red leaves of the bird sown Cotoneaster franchetii.
I made a visit to the area mainly to do a little winter pruning - essential to ensure the many trees that flourish in the Square Metre and its penumbra don't get unmanageably large. I attended to the oak, the hornbeam, the sallow and the two hazels and the smaller of the two birches. During my visit I noticed an oak and a holly seedling on the outer fringes of the area, though it is unusual to see new seedlings after a particular sspecies has been established (do they have some way of blocking newcomers).
One of the most striking features was that the 'trunk' of the first ash tree which died around 2018, but has remained upright, was adorned with drifts of some small, white fungus. Mycologist Nick Aplin suggests it is the common crust fungus, Cylindrobasidium laeve. The National Biodiversity Network give tear dropper as the English name for this, so presumably liquid oozes out of mature examples..
