An autumn narrative

A forecast of rain clearing with some brief intermittent sunshine and low winds before a more extensive weather front arrived presented the opportunity for a quick outing to simply capture autumnal colour in the woodland of the Forest of Dean. Wetted trunks of beech trees and leaves with contre jour lighting would be just the ticket. So a 10 min car journey, 10 minute walk from the car, set up, wait a few minutes for a break in the cloud and hey presto.

Asturias trip report - 2

Next up on the itinerary was a stay at the Hotel rural Los Riegos in the Redes Natural Park run by two biologists : Sergio and Paloma. Their knowledge, guidance and insight was invaluable, which meant we undertook some excursions that otherwise would have been overlooked and consequently we extended our stay from 2 to 4 nights. After unpacking there was time for a late afternoon excursion and enquiring about a suitable walk in old woodland with spring flowers, Paloma recommended one and provided a map.

Veteran beech pollards

The walk was along old trackways in places lined with beech pollards, through predominantly beech woodland. The size of some pollards and coppice stools indicated a great age to the trees and a long history of woodland management. Natural regeneration was evident with a mix of age ranges of saplings to young trees and in places dead wood was being conserved as a habitat resource, the woodlands appeared to be managed for conservation too.

Beech woodland

The trees provided a habitat for communities of bryophytes and lichens, that might interest a specialist.

Some of the woodland flora was familiar from the UK.

Wood Sorrel (Oxalis acetosella)

Whilst other flora was not so familiar and Dog's tooth violets once again put in an appearance.

Hollow-root is classified as a neophyte in the UK.

Hollow-root (Corydalis cava )

It was a surprise to stumble upon St Patrick's Cabbage in a beech wood ~1,200 metres asl, the first indication was a group of emerging plants and then an actual specimen ready to flower. St Patrick's cabbage is part of the Lusitanian flora an enigma in plant distribution.

St Patrick's cabbage (Saxifraga spathularis)

St Patrick's cabbage (Saxifraga spathularis)

It was a good interesting walk and did not require a huge amount of imagination to see the potential for Autumnal colour.

The next day a walk was selected for its geology, geomorphology and scenery, starting from Caleao to the Desfiladero de los Arrudos.  Surrounding Caleao are a patchwork of small fields that appeared to be farmed in a traditional manner, some fields were being manured.

A landscape of traditional small scale farming

A trackway of some age.

View over farmland to the outer gorge cutting through limestone/dolostone lithologies

Downstream of the gorge is an extensive alluvial fan of boulders, many imbricated and deposited when the stream capacity of the palaeo-Arrudos dropped exiting the gorge. The size of the boulders indicate an event(s) where extremely high volumes of water flowed through the gorge. The boulder deposit had subsequently been colonised by woodland with many trees pollarded or coppiced.

One interesting flower was Angel's Tears, a native daffodil whose distribution seemed to be intimately associated with the underlying bedrock geology.

Angel's Tears (Narcissus triandrus)

In the main gorge there was compelling evidence for comparatively recent rock fall debris free from mosses, overlaying older rock fall debris colonised by mosses.

Rock fall debris chronology

The main gorge is formed from the Arrudos cutting down through steeply inclined beds of sedimentary rocks, predominantly almost pure quartz sandstones with occasional beds of shale. The depth of the gorge and the contrast between the gorge sides with ragged outcropping beds on one side and 'smooth' bedding plane surfaces on the other, is dramatic and visually impressive.

Desfiladero de los Arrudos - highly inclined bedding planes

Desfiladero de los Arduous

Outcrop of intensely fractured quartz sandstone - possibly associated with a fault/thrust plane?

The excursion up into the Desfiladero de los Arduous was good and it was another location that would be best visited in the Autumn.

Autumn woodland - Forest of Dean and Wye Valley

With the 1st day of winter, this post is a retrospective of the autumn 2016 woodland photography, where I made a conscious decision to concentrate on the woodland of the Lower Wye Valley. Specifically the woodland growing on the steeper slopes of the upper gorge. The Lower Wye Valley is the habitat for some rare and uncommon trees. The challenge is : locating them, identifying them, finding photogenic specimens and lighting. Some species of Whitebeam are endemic to this area, the global population concentrated on crags along a few kilometres of the river Wye.

Whitebeam leaves and berries

Photographing Whitebeams, was an ignominious failure, identifying the species relied on determining subtle nuances in the morphology of the leaves and berries, I lost the will on that one. Whitebeans current habitat appears predominantly restricted to crags and their shrubby nature, proved too challenging for my idealised vision. I need to regroup and try another approach for the future.

Wild service leaves and berries

Wild Service trees, also proved equally challenging with photogenic specimens elusive.

Wild service bark

Ambitions for images of expansive views of the wooded river valley once again fell short and what I consider good lighting was used to illuminate the autumnal colour of the beech woodland on the slopes.

A wood amongst boulders of quartz conglomerate was also visited.  Harvesting operations a few years back, resulted in canopy gaps and deadwood on the ground, brambles that overran the woodland floor are being shaded out as the canopy once again closes over and saplings create an understorey.

A Scowles woodland, where I had high hopes for an image with a backdrop of autumnal beech trees never happened, the timing of my visit coincided with beech leaves having already fallen or were still green. The trip emphasised another indicator of ancient woodland, the heterogeneous rollout of autumnal colouration and leaf fall, amongst 'wild' tree populations.

The oak/beech woodland in the Dean, provided an image showing the intimate relationship between underplanted beech and oak timber trees.

A number of images were made for a couple of long term projects on decay in woodlands.

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 Only one trip coincided with autumnal mist.

And that was it until next year.