Goodbye Autumn

April is the time when Milton Country Park finally loses its autumn colours, and the first signs of spring appear.

10 April 2015

I am not sufficient of a botanist to identify these leaves with any confidence, but I think they may be Hazel.

Goodbye Autumn

Since autumn has ended, winter has come and gone; but in terms of the appearance of the park, it has made very little difference.  The trees, that were essentially bare at the end of November, are still bare, having lost at most an odd leaf or two.  The reeds that were brown at that time, are still brown, just maybe a little dashed down.

Todd's Pit 9 April 2015

This was taken early on a misty April morning. The grey mist, the brown reeds and the bare branches give an essentially autumn scene.  However, in the foreground, the first green shoots of the nettles show that spring is on its way.


Something Stirring in the Woods

Near Hall's Pond  16 April 2015

One of the habitats in the park that interests me most is ground under the woods.  This is covered in forest litter of dead leaves interspersed with moss covered rotten logs.  A lot of plants grow either directly on these logs or in close proximity to them.  This is a habitat I hope to explore further in the coming year.

Here young shoots of cow parsley are growing alongside the moss.  Also, visible in the image are a couple of other seedlings poking through the dead leaves. 


Not Everything is Green

Todd's Pit 16 April 2015

There is one thing about reed beds that fascinates me: in November they are brown, in July they are green, but I have never noticed a reed bed that is half green and half brown.  Perhaps in the course of this project I will.

The woods behind these reeds are nicely green, but there is precious little sign of any new shoots in the reeds themselves.  Two of the white blobs in the image are not carrier bags but nesting swans.


The Dawn of Spring

I end this post with two images of the dawn of spring which appropiately enough were taken at the dawn of the day.

View across Todd's Pit  18 April 2015

Mist rises over the water with brown reeds glinting in the early morning sun.  A lot of vegetation has no leaves at all.  But this is not autumn; the golden leaves on the trees are not last year's growth, but new leaves on the willow trees.

By Fen Road Exit  13 April 2015

In this image, a fully leaved hawthorn bush catches the early morning sun.  The trees behind the bush are still totally bare.  This is spring set in an autumn setting.  Hello spring!

NEXT: APRIL FLOWERS