It’s hard to know when spring should start – sometimes the world definitely seems to be warming up but this winter you could be excused for thinking just the opposite. Anyway it’s certainly been a slow start to seeing the season turn this time around, but life is rapidly coming back to the forest and it particularly all kicking off at ground level.
Snow actually keeps the earth reasonably warm and as it melted you could start to see green shoots poking their heads above the white blanket. Most plants on the forest floor have to wake up early and get a burst of growth in while they can still get a good amount of strong light before the canopy of leaves forms and shades the ground. That’s one of the reasons you tend to get a better flora in deciduous forests than evergreens.
So, the bluebell tips are up and thrusting, and the snowdrops are already well in flower, in their annual race to preserve the species. Some plants, such as the wonderfully aromatic wild garlic which, when it grows thick, carpets the forest floor once more in white, prefer dappled light and come later. It’s good to see wild garlic making such a comeback on all these TV cookery programmes – we use it all the time in soups and salads and it has a sweeter more floral taste. Tread on it whilst walking through the trees and the scent is enough to make your mouth water with hunger. (Although when if finally dies off in mid-summer the niff can be a bit strong!).
But it’s not all peace and quiet and vegetarianism in the forest. We have some lovely streams and rivers running through the woodland which teem with life and we regularly go out with our nets stream ‘dipping’ to see what we can find. The river bed is an altogether more scary and competitive and vibrant place to live, especially with spring just on the horizon.
One recent dipping trip turned up a rare visitor in our waters – a Perla, or stone fly lava. It’s something of a scary monster in river bank terms, an inch long (so about as long as the top joint of a man’s thumb) and highly carnivorous. It might not look that terrifying to our eyes, but imagine it at human scale and you’ll know what the fresh water shrimps and baby tadpoles feel like when they see it coming!
Of course under the rules of Mother Nature even the most ferocious Perla is still a part of the food chain. In a few months time it will hatch on the top of the water and have an ephemeral life, hoping to mate and lay its own eggs before almost certainly being eaten by a trout or salmon. This in turn may end up mistaking a fisherman’s fly of the same design as the Perla for the real thing and end up on my barbeque. I do enjoy a nice trout for supper – looks like being a good year for them.
