A woodland soil seed bank

One of the Forest of Dean's great wildflower displays is courtesy of timber harvesting operations, when the woodland soil is disturbed and the change in light regime on the woodland floor from tree felling, breaks the dormancy of seeds buried in the soil. A couple of years after harvesting operations in most areas of the Forest of Dean, a carpet of Foxgloves will rise, until the canopy closes in again, shades out the flowers and seeds again lie buried and dormant in the soil, awaiting another timber harvesting operation to begin the cycle again.

I was fortunate enough to time a visit with minimal wind and some drizzly rain to make some images of a Foxglove carpet in a planted ancient woodland site and tick off another item in an ongoing project on the Forest of Dean.

Early start

A simple question for a landscape photography exam.

Question : If sunrise is at 04.50 hrs and it takes 55 mins to travel by car, what time does the alarm clock need to be set for?

Answer :  Working back from sunrise, allow; 30 mins to find some inspiration; 30 mins walk in head torch; 5 mins to get suited and booted; 10 mins for wildlife encounters on the car journey; 25 mins for 2 cups of coffee, morning ablutions and regain full consciousness and 10 mins snooze = 02.05 hrs

Dawn

In actual fact the wildlife was far more arresting with headlights revealing the need to brake for Deer, Fox cubs and twice stops made for hedgehogs that curled up and needed to be carefully shoed out of the road to the safety of the verge. It did occur to me that if BBC broadcast Springwatch live at dawn there'd be a lot more interesting fauna seen.

It's been a few years since conditions presented the opportunity to revisit this location for dawn, the late flowering of Mossy Saxifrage with sunrise to the NE.  The last visit was met with rain, this visit revealed an extensive bank of low cloud/fog over the Herefordshire/Worcestershire border exactly where the sun would rise, sigh. A clear  sky overhead, meant a less than optimal twilight illumination. Also hill fog was ominously covering the visible hill summits to the north and depressingly a surprisingly brisk and chilly NW'ly wind was vortexing down from the hill above. The wind has been a notable feature of late spring/early summer 2015 on the western side of the UK and sadly it has impacted on trips and subject matter, a pity really as the air clarity has been excellent.

Warm light

The prospect of flowers illuminated by first light, bit the dust. A less than convincing image of another view was made, that tried to minimise any foreground elements that could be affected by the wind, whilst waiting for light levels to rise as the sun cleared the cloud. Sometimes there are just too many compromises made prior to a composition.

Sheltered Mossy Saxifrage

It is frustrating when events don't meet expectations, doubly so when the location has so much interest for the flora and geomorphology, but the wind strength meant that isolated cushions of flowers needed to be sought out in the lee of trees, boulder lobes or sheltered hollows in the block field debris. In hindsight,  maybe I should have gone with an image in a low light, long exposure, of a blurred flower carpet? Maybe next year?

Mossy Saxifrage

Semi natural ancient woodland chanced upon

I had walked by this wood on a fair few occasions over the years, on the track from the Tidenham Chase car park to the Wye Valley woods, but had never set foot in it. The reason being it appeared unpromising, views from the path indicated it to be a modern conifer plantation and I'd never thought to look at it more closely on the ordnance survey map or on google maps satellite view. Recently I was looking for a plantation on ancient woodland site (PAWS) to make a photographic record of any spring woodland flowers present and remembered this wood. The 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey explorer map was scrutinised and it showed symbols for deciduous, evergreen,  coppiced trees, scrub and bracken. The wood had a mixture of boundaries; linear, an indeterminate boundary and the longest boundary was distinctly irregular and adjoining cultivated fields. The adjoining cultivated fields had fairly straight boundaries of planned enclosures, except where the fields bounded the wood on the north side.

1:10,600 surveyed 1880 printed 1887

 A look at the Ordnance Survey 1:10,600 (1 mile = 6 inch)  county map and the wood boundary was extant in 1880 and deciduous trees, firs and brushwood are mapped.

Revision 1900 Published 1903

A check on newer revisions of the 1880 map showed some additional detail in 1900 with woodland rides mapped.

Google satellite view

A Google satellite view shows predominantly deciduous woodland, so my preconceptions of a conifer plantation were way off the mark. The woods place name of Clayton is either a persons name, or Old English for 'clay' and 'town' or 'place with good clay', I thought the persons name more likely as I know Drybrook sandstone outcrops in the core of the Tidenham Chase syncline and is an area undergoing heathland restoration by the Forestry Commission.

BGS Bedrock geology

The BGS geology map shows the wood is underlain by Carboniferous limestones, mudstones and clays with the overlying Drybrook sandstone outcropping just to the south, so the name Clayton Wood seems to be a based on the geology. The geology indicates that the soils might be base rich, which would be a suitable habitat for wildflowers and clay on a north facing slope, would be a good reason to leave the land wooded. My speculation on the woodland and geology had proven to be wide of the mark, so a visit was made.

Clayton Wood - post harvesting operations 

The ground between the heathland on the Drybrook sandstone and Clayton wood was a distinct band of heavy clay, planted with pine and I was thankful for the spell of dry weather.

Singled coppice and wood anemone carpet

Clayton Wood itself was a revelation, recently harvested  of Western Red Cedar/Hemlock and juvenile beech trees the woodland floor was covered in brash and carpets of spring wildflowers.

Wood spurge and Ransoms

 The canopy and understory of the wood are western red cedar/hemlock, beech, oak, hazel coppice, ash, holly, hawthorn, cherry, birch and I suspect some of the suckering coppice stools are small leaved limes that along with some other trees, need to be in leaf for me to make a positively ID.

Dog's Mercury and Primrose

The wildflowers ticked most of the boxes for ancient woodland indicators with carpets of wood anemones, ransoms, dog's mercury, wood spurge and again some other flowers that will need to be in flower to positively identify. I also forget to check if a wood bank defined the boundary, some yellow flowers weren't examined at closer quarters to see if they were celandines or something else and mosses/lichens/rushes/sedges and grasses were overlooked too. I didn't notice any bluebells or patches of nettles, which might be my oversight and I'll check on a future return visit.

I found this an interesting exercise, with desk study and a field visit to establish a woods potential ancient credential and further visits may reveal some more indicators and insights.