The Wood for the Trees

by Richard Fortey

  Elm Story

  One of our cherry trees is sickly, its crown thinner than the others, and its leaves have tumbled off prematurely. Nearby, I discover a log from a tree that has fallen some while ago, and under its peeling bark are stout black threads, resembling thin electric cables or bootlaces. I know them well. Black rhizomorphs of honey fungus (Armillaria mellea) are a sign that a tree is doomed.8 They extend from one tree to another, exporting death to the neighbours, and my cherry is the next victim. Once the roots have been killed, the honey fungus lives happily on the dead tree, eventually producing dense clusters of pleasant-looking yellow mushrooms as autumn progresses. That sick cherry will have to come down. Honey fungus has left behind the benign habits of its fellows to become a parasite. Instead of breaking down dead tissue, it attacks living plants. Perhaps such malign fungi provide the real reason some people find them scary; and it is not an uncommon habit. Its extreme expression is when one fungus parasitises another fungus. By the path I find an elegant little bonnet (Mycena) that has turned into a fuzz-ball on a stick. The original small pointy cap is covered with a ball of stiff threads sticking out like an Afro hairdo: a pin mould, Spinellus fusiger.

  Further along the same path, fungal damage gets more serious. Several dead tree trunks are slowly decaying; one or two still stand, but others lie awkwardly on holly bushes they flattened as they fell. These wych elms (Ulmus glabra) have died as a result of another pathological fungus, Dutch elm disease (Ophiostoma novo-ulmi). The name is not a slur on the people of Holland: it acknowledges that Dutch scientists identified the organism responsible for the disease in 1921, since when it has devastated elms all over Europe. The fungus is spread from tree to tree by a small bark beetle (Scolytus) which is not interested in saplings; only more mature trees are vulnerable. Once infected with the fungus, the whole water-conducting system of the tree clogs up with fungal mycelium, and the inevitable death of the crown is horrible to behold. Trees are reduced to bleached skeletons. The New Sylva tells us that twenty-five million trees died in Britain after 1967, and thereby diminished irrevocably the rural landscapes once painted by John Constable.

  The loss of the material for the seats of Windsor chairs might seem a small thing in comparison, and it is some time since elm has been employed in the manufacture of water wheels and buckets, but we can grieve for a thousand panoramas that will never return. I do not have any evidence for English elm (Ulmus minor/procera) in Lambridge Wood, as it is a species that prefers hedgerows and copses to thick woods, as John Evelyn noticed in the original Sylva. However, in our wood the wych elms are not all dead.9 One rather substantial tall tree survives, and there are a good number of small trees around the Dell in the middle of the wood. They are subtle trees that do not blatantly announce themselves; it was a while before I even noticed them. Their elongate, oval-shaped but pointed leaves are coarsely jagged-edged, and have a curiously lopsided base, resembling two ears slightly out of kilter. I have noticed that elm leaves differ from those of every other tree in the wood: they have variable sizes. A beech leaf is always a beech leaf and always about the same size, whereas wych elm leaves from a young tree in understory are much smaller than the yellowing examples that are now fluttering down from the canopy of my biggest tree. These must be four times as large—the size of lime leaves. It is as if wych elms are able to trim their photosynthetic spread to match the light available.

  Wych elm is more resistant than English elm to Dutch elm disease. English elm reproduces almost entirely by suckers; its “offspring” are genetically identical to the parent. Indeed, there is little genetic variation in the whole British population, which makes the species particularly vulnerable to disease. Wych elm reproduces by seed, which allows for enough cross-breeding for natural genetic variation to build up resistance to the fungus. Elm flowers are tiny, little more than pink stamens, but they make a brief show in early spring before the leaves have unfurled, as if the elm branches were putting out tiny streamers. Bunches of small papery wings clothe the twigs later, producing fussy ruffs behind the leaves; each wing encloses a single small seed. Even when a larger tree succumbs to Dutch elm disease—as several of mine must have done—new trees can readily regenerate from seeds. I fervently hope that my big tree is one of those that have cheated the fungus from its damaging livelihood, and that my many young trees are the first of a new, stronger generation.

  Mind you, even dead elms can bring forth bounty: an extraordinary pink mushroom—the wrinkled peach, Rhodotus palmatus—is a prize that has arisen from my dead elm trunks; and it is a harmless saprobe. Nothing in nature is without compensation. But are any of my trees safe? Even the ash trees are threatened by “die back,” another fungal disease (Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus), that was only identified in 2006.10 I have been nervously inspecting the ash trees in Grim’s Dyke Wood for signs of this new pathogen, and there are none that I can identify. But a certain dread is abroad. Could this uneasiness lie behind the trampling of innocent mushrooms by aggressive boots?

  Bee and Spider

  Lawrence Bee has made his last visit to Grim’s Dyke Wood in search of the spiders he loves. He must be inured to jests about his surname slightly missing the entomological mark. Spider-collecting is like fly-collecting in reverse. Instead of chasing after the quarry with nets, collectors encourage spiders living in trees and shrubs to drop out of their hiding places by beating the branches and then collect the spiders as they fall into an inverted contraption, a kind of mesh umbrella. It makes for a curious spectacle, as if invisible fruit were being harvested from inappropriate trees. Spiders are arachnids, not insects, so they cannot fly away, although some of them run quite fast. Different kinds of spiders lurk in the darkness of the woodpile or under logs. Others again spin their webs in the bramble patches. All of them are predators. They have been playing the arthropod version of cat-and-mouse with insects for four hundred million years, and evolution has shaped them with exquisite precision.

  Suspended between the blackberry vines are archetypal spiders’ webs, each orb as regular as if dictated by a geometer, yet every one as individual as if spun by an artist. Sitting motionless under the web is the common garden spider, Aranaeus diadematus, now at her maximum size and full of eggs. It is easy to spot a white cross on her abdomen that identifies this species. She has woven her web during the night. Low autumn light catches microscopic beads on the web, the stickiness that traps any unwary flying insect. All bundled up in silken thread in the corner of the web is a previous catch—maybe even a bee. The spider injected venom into the insect that served to pre-digest her meal as well as kill it. Earlier in the year I had watched the nervous courtship of a smaller, slimmer male spider strumming the web to pacify the object of his desire. Males have to absorb sperm on to their palps (special appendages) and then insert the package into the females to ensure fertilisation of the eggs. They may get eaten for their trouble. There is no mercy in the arachnid scheme of things: protein never goes to waste. In May, I had played with the tiny spiderlings that had hatched out from an overwintering egg package. They hung together in a golden ball until touched, when they splayed out in all directions along nearly invisible threads, like an exploding star. Only one or two of these tiny creatures would make it through to become a succulent web-builder like the one before me now.

  More than thirty species of spiders have been found in Grim’s Dyke Wood, providing a whole catalogue of entrapment and wiliness. A variety of sheet-weaving spiders make white webs looking like untidy hammocks; they can be found decked around herbs or in trees. They lack the formal beauty of the orb webs, but they are as effective in catching smaller insects.11 When dew condenses on them, they suddenly become easily visible. On sunny days they can apparently vanish. Tangle-web spiders have three-dimensional webs, finer than thistledown, that seem to lack any logic at all, as if they were stranded wisps of candyfloss; but they are snares of subtle complexity. One of these species in the wood is the mother-care spider (Phylloneta sisyphia). She g
uards her spherical egg sac, feeds the hatchling spiders on what she regurgitates, and later on what she catches, and finally dies so that her offspring can make a meal of her dead body. The funnel weaver (Tegenaria silvestris) makes a trap around the hole in which it lives composed of threads that are not sticky, but are teased to snag the legs of any passing item of prey—which is then dragged into the lair to be consumed. Sac spiders use their silk to make a hideout for themselves inside rolled-up leaves or under bark, which they occupy during the day, only to emerge at night to stalk their prey directly. With eight specialised eyes to scope the world, they do not need the ruse of a sticky web to secure their food. In the wood there are three species of Clubiona with this mode of life, each with a slightly different habitat on trees or on the ground. An uncommon little crab spider (Diaea dorsata) lurks on holly leaves to grab its prey: the front parts of the animal are all coloured green, and its front legs are long and held out like a defensive shore crab. Maybe it would be a quicker death for an insect to fall into the strong jaws of the four-eyed jumping spider, Ballus chalybeius, which can both stalk and pounce. To complete this catalogue of carnage, let us bring out a pirate spider (Ero furcata) that pursues and eats the orb-weavers. Nobody of bug size is safe in Grim’s Dyke Wood.

  On one of my regular ambles through the wood I spot a curious object lying among the litter. A piece of wood—probably beech—but inflated like a bladder, and approximately the size of a tennis ball. I imagine it must be some kind of gall produced on a tree branch in response to an attack by an insect, or maybe an infection. In any case, it is now hard and hollow, like the flint that held the Iron Age hoard. This flask holds a spider. A perfectly round hole at one end is lined with silk. This is where the lace-webbed spider (Amaurobius fenestralis) hid from its enemies during the day before coming out to hunt at night. Such a secret passage hidden in wood must be added to the collection: I have no other example of a portable lair.

  Many spiders will die with the first frosts. Near the end of October the autumn colours are well advanced. Seen from the Fair Mile the wood looks all gold and russet. Only the cherry leaves provide deep-red tones; the English maple and the wych elm leaves are lemon yellow, and English oak a dull brown in its annual decline. Golden, orange and brown beech dominates. Even without scarlet, the Chiltern woods have provided the decoration for a thousand chocolate boxes; but though the sight is thrilling, it is perhaps just too obvious to have inspired great art. Constable, Paul Nash, even David Hockney have avoided the subject. Inside the wood everything still looks quite green. The leaves have changed colour at the tree crowns first, while those on branches nearer the ground are still verdant and remain attached. The sun in the canopy provides a golden painted roof reflecting down into the gloomier woods below. A few leaves flutter down from the high branches. Husks and nuts still lie on the ground to crunch underfoot, reminding me of the bombardment I had received earlier in the month. Now these falling leaves would hardly disturb a spider on its web.

  An orb-web spider (Aranaeus) spins its subtle trap in the wood.

  8

  November

  Little Shots and Pheasants

  Frost and wind have detached nearly all the leaves from the beech trees. Only young saplings hang on to theirs, as they will all winter. The floor of the wood is now all orange-brown, and the tree trunks parade upright in their stripped ranks. The light has changed drastically in the last week; hard and clear, today it accentuates openness and airiness. I realise that I had missed seeing the sky; there was something oppressive about the dense canopy that shut out so much of the world. Now the wood has been readmitted to the wider countryside. To the south I appreciate the gentle rise and fall of distant hills—other woods with their own histories, arable land sown with winter wheat, a patchwork of usage that has been the pattern in the Chiltern Hills since Saxon times. All the beech trunks shine as if they have been newly polished. A small biplane from White Waltham airfield is retreating northwards overhead in the direction of Fawley Court. I wonder why the growl of a turbo-prop engine always sounds so melancholy; more a sad, modulated groan as if in mourning than any kind of machine.

  A pair of red kites circle high overhead, the distinctive profile of their forked tails highlighted against a porcelain sky. They cry to one another with a shrill urgency: wee-wee-woo, wee-wee. The two wheeling birds are searching for carrion, and they are buoyed effortlessly on thermals. Kites only came back to their home in the Chilterns twenty-five years ago, after their extermination in the nineteenth century; it was a deliberate reintroduction. I recall my amazement when I first saw one—it seemed then an impossibly large and exotic raptor, as if it had flown in from the Caucasus or beyond. Now these huge birds are everywhere. Kites prefer to keep out of the wood; open skies are their domain. Their cries are heard often when they cannot be seen.

  Lambridge Wood is home to a pair of common buzzards. This species too had been eliminated, but came back of its own accord, following the kites. Buzzards are burly, serious birds, but they display surprising agility when they fly through the densest parts of the wood. I watch a stately bird sitting motionless on a broken branch commanding a view of the woodland floor. Its eyes glitter. Any unwary wood mouse would quickly provide it with a useful snack. The buzzard’s only rival hunter inside the wood is a tawny owl, which I have heard spookily woo-wooing but have never seen. Since it is largely a nocturnal bird, I imagine that it does not cross paths with buzzards on many occasions, but I do know this stealthy hunter has been through Grim’s Dyke Wood. I discovered a dark, bean-sized owl pellet composed of its regurgitated, undigested waste. When I dissected the object under a binocular microscope it pulled apart easily. I found matted hairs, vertebrae and a few tiny teeth that were all that remained of a mouse or a vole; glassy claws of some small bird.

  A fine cock pheasant is standing on top of the woodpile. He is by far the showiest bird ever to grace the wood: white collar like that worn by any country vicar contradicted by a red head and breast and blue neck, recalling some grandee prelate’s finery. His fat body is warmly speckled and barred brown as if it had been generated from the beech litter by transmutation. This posing popinjay reminds me why kites and buzzards were formerly so persecuted. Beech woods on estates were, and indeed still are, assets for shooting, and all birds of prey are anathema to gamekeepers. Lambridge Wood has no regular shoot in the twenty-first century, but if I listen hard I can just make out the sharp cracks of rifles coming from over Fawley way, or maybe as far as Stonor. Pairs of birds are already hanging in the window of Gabriel Machin, butcher to the discerning of Henley. The cock pheasant in our wood is an escapee, though he does not know it.

  I reflect not a little ruefully that pheasant-shooting is overall a good thing. Were it not for this sport of the well-to-do or well-connected, many more beech woods would probably have been cleared by now and put down to barley. When timber lost value, status sports did not. In 1854 George Jerome of Henley “was charged with trespassing in Lambridge Wood on 24th Dec., in search of game.”1 Poor man, he was probably trying to get something to put on the Christmas table. Lord Camoys of Stonor fined him five shillings (plus ten shillings costs), or twenty-one days’ hard labour. George Jerome probably had no choice but to accept the latter.

  Big Shots and Feoffees

  In early 1643 the pigeons in Lambridge Wood suddenly broke into panicky flight. A cannon was discharged in Duke Street in Henley, killing four Royalist soldiers.2 The “Henley Skirmish” marked a violent climax to the period when the town became a battlefield in the Civil War. In the tussle between King Charles I and Parliament, Henley was in a vulnerable position for the same reasons it had become such a successful commercial centre. The town lay between Oxford, which the King had established as Royalist capital in 1642, and London, which was staunchly with Parliament. Henley was an important port and river crossing—its bridge was destroyed and rebuilt several times during the years of turmoil. After the Battle of Edge Hill on 23 October 1642, the tow
n was battered in a bloody tug-of-war between the opposing sides. Reading was initially held for the King, and Prince Rupert—Charles’s ablest commander—occupied Henley, while a large troop of his horses were quartered at Fawley Court, less than a mile downstream towards Marlow. The Fawley estate is neighbour to Greys—and our wood—on the north-eastern side of the Fair Mile. Seen on a clear November day, that part of its grounds called Henley Park rises clearly to a similar height to Lambridge Wood, though only the upper part of the flanks of the hill opposite us is wooded today. It too became part of our history.

  At the time of the Civil War the Fawley estate belonged to the splendidly named and commensurately distinguished lawyer Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke. He was a Deputy Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, and a Parliamentarian, though a moderate and sensible man who was reluctant to see any harm happen to the King. He had removed himself to London when Henley was taken over by Prince Rupert and his henchmen. A thousand men of the King’s horse trashed his grand house and ruined his estate.

  Divers writings of consequence and books which were left in my study, some of them they tore to pieces, others they burnt to light their tobacco…they broke down my park pales, killed most of my deer…and let out all the rest, only a tame young stag they carried way and presented to Prince Rupert…They ate and drank all that the house could afford…they likewise carried away my coach and four good horses, and all my saddle horses, and did all the mischief and spoil that malice and enmity could provoke barbarous mercenaries to commit.3