November 2026 Ramsbury Nature Notes by Peter Marren
It's curious that the famous poem To Autumn by John Keats doesn't mention that most autumnal of sights, the changing colours of trees, the yellows, reds and russets of the dying year. But Keats's 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' seems to be September, and early September at that, with its 'more and more flowers for the bees' and gathering swallows still twittering ahead. It's just as curious that we don't seem to have a proper word for the phenomenon. Leaf 'senescence' doesn't seem adequate. I prefer the French 'feuille morte' even though it just means 'dead leaf. In countries where the colours are even more intense, like Japan or Finland, they do have such a word. But in New England which has the best autumn colours in the world, it's just 'the fall'. After such a dry summer, we wouldn't expect an early harvest of fungi, and there isn't one. Field mushrooms have been and gone, and I hear that penny bun boletes are in very short supply this year. At the restored river bridge at Seven Bridges there was a mass fruiting of the Fairy Inkcap, whose tiny, pleated heads all crowded together look like page-boy haircuts as seen from the back. The next day they had all gone for these delicate caps turn into inky fluid within hours. I have seen some mighty brackets on mature trees, some of which are as hard as wood. These fungi have a powerful biochemistry that enables them to digest the cell walls of the tree - how trees can grow to upwards of a hundred feet tall and live for centuries. It's roughly the equivalent of being able to end a meal by eating and digesting your knife and fork. It has been a low year for acorns but a great one for berries and hazelnuts. My hazel is carpeted beneath with husks which squirrels have neatly halved to wolf the nut inside. Spindle berries are not good to eat but their candy-pink cups clasping the bright orange berry within are a delight for the eyes.
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