As I write, the first aconites are appearing on lawns and in the churchyard, a cheerful little flower appearing at a time of year when we all need a little cheering. The single golden-yellow bloom, sitting on a kind of leafy ruff seems to glow like a candle. Snowdrops follow in a couple of weeks, and then the first celandines.
In the meantime there are fungi. Although the mushrooms of the forest floor were poor last year, the bracket-fungi growing on dead logs and twigs are abundant. One big log we found, saw-cut at both ends, was completely covered by fungi in gorgeous patterns: orange frilly ones (called curtain-crusts) alternating with tiers of purple-grey brackets called turkey-tails, and lumpier whitish ones, the beech brackets. With so many fungi to support one wonders how long the log will last before it has been digested into sawdust. A friend of mine studied a fallen log of wild cherry from a tree more than sixty feet tall. It fed the fungi for at least fifteen years, by which time the log was little more than a shell, all rotted away within. Hard woods like oak will last a lot longer. Most old oaks are hollow and rotted within but are still healthy.
By coincidence, a small grove of wild cherries at Burnt Wood was badly knocked about by the late winds. Cherry wood seems to be brittle, unlike the supple hazel which bends with the wind. Yet a dead tree is as much a habitat as a live one. It will feed a host of fungi and invertebrates (and things that feed on them) for years. One doesn’t expect much bright colour in mid-winter, but I was surprised to find some Scarlet Elfcups, as bright as holly berries. These are cup fungi, like little egg-cups, scarlet within and with a fine felty bloom on the outside. If they were a bit earlier, I’d have been tempted to put them on the Christmas tree.
Another example of nature at her most artistic can be seen on old walls, like the brick-and-flint wall bordering Moons Lane, a tapestry of mosses and lichens, some of the latter like little angel trumpets, and contrasting nicely with the deep orange brickwork. There was more beauty yet in the frosted hogweed stems outlined and illuminated by the low sun. Nature in mid-winter may be subtle but all the more beautiful to our colour-starved senses.
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