Joanna has been struck by autumn’s bounty, glowing against blue skies
This week, following the horrors of Storm Claudia (which caused severe flooding in nearby Monmouth) we’ve had cloudless blue skies here in Herefordshire. And the bounty of autumn has been glowing as a result. So, yes, I took pics. Like this one.
It strikes me every time I drive past it. It’s a crab apple tree laden with bright red fruit. And totally leafless like the huge tree standing behind it.
Bounty, indeed.
But not everything is leafless. Below is an image of the hardy white fuchsia in my kitchen garden. It’s still covered in blooms, as you can see, and determined to keep going until the frost gets it.
Which might be soon, sadly, as it’s currently very cold and there’s a lot of frost around.
Bounty? Well, it’s a mast year
You’ve probably already heard a great deal about how 2025 is going to be a mast year with huge amounts of fruit, nuts and seeds. But just in case it’s passed you by…
The Woodland Trust thinks it’s still too early to say but believes 2025 may well turn out to be a mast year for acorns. Mast derives from Old English (possibly related to meat) and means the fruit of forest trees like oak and beech and chestnut, which was much used as food for pigs.
The Trust’s blog gives a good description of why mast years occur and what such bounty means for both trees and wildlife. And it says that research has shown that mast years for beech trees are synchronised across all of northern and western Europe.
How do the trees communicate to achieve that?
No one is sure. Maybe the mycelium helps?
Can you tell that I watched a TV documentary on mushrooms a day or so ago? 😉
Another old word, pannage, is the privilege of allowing pigs to feed on mast in the lord’s woods. But the peasant had to pay his lord in kind to get pannage. The word is derived from Old French, not Old English. It describes one of the many forest laws enforced after the Conquest. William I was keen on hunting and kept a lot of forests for his own use. Woe to you if you harmed one of his deer, for example.
Pannage still operates in the New Forest.
It has two benefits there: it fattens the pigs, obviously; but they also hoover up the acorns which, in quantity, can be poisonous to ponies and cattle. Pigs have stronger stomachs than horses or cattle, it seems.
The ancient ginkgo tree has an autumn tale to tell…
This is the huge female ginkgo tree in the car park of my local health centre. I know it’s a female, because it bears lots of fruit like that shown here. More bounty. Though, technically, they’re seeds, not fruit. The ginkgo doesn’t flower.
The ginkgo tree is one of the most ancient in the world, dating back 270 million years. And it is supremely beautiful in its butter-yellow autumn colour, even though it can be a pain if you are unfortunate enough to have to park underneath it when the wind is blowing strongly 😉
For those who would like to enjoy a smile at my expense, I suggest you read about my previous encounter with that ginkgo tree, at the end of a blog about autumn ups and downs. The ginkgo showed me the power of nature.
In spades. And it still makes me laugh when I think back to it. Ginkgo 1 : Joanna 0.
My health centre car park has other bounty, too.
Apple trees, laden with fruit. Not quite leafless yet, though getting that way.
And isn’t that blue sky stunning? It really was as blue as my picture shows it to be.
In spite of the cold, it made me smile when I came out after being pummelled by my physio. (It’s working, honest, but it hurts at the time.)
A bounty of berries, too
For the moment, there are berries in abundance. Like on this cotoneaster in my garden. And on the hawthorn tree by my driveway (against the same blue sky). How long will the bounty last?
That probably depends on how soon the flocks of fieldfares arrive in my part of the world. They are remarkably efficient gobblers of berries as the video below shows. Gorgeous birds, though.
fieldfare video by mariia – stock.adobe.com
Bounty from other climes
When I visited Pompeii at this time of the year (many years ago), I was struck by the fruit on the trees. Some, I thought wrongly, was clementines. But in fact, the orange fruits I saw turned out to be persimmons which aren’t much grown in Italy.
And they, too, can be eaten by birds, though I didn’t know that at the time. Perhaps only in China? (China produces about 80% of the world’s persimmon crop.)
There are, of course, citrus too. In all its many varieties. In Europe, the fruit is at its best around mid-winter. Seville oranges and marmalade in January, anyone? And fabulously sweet and juicy navel oranges from Spain and Italy. Yum.
While I recognise those vicious citrus thorns in the image below, I expected the tree to be evergreen. Perhaps this particular variety isn’t?
I have citrus trees—kept in the conservatory in winter because of the frost. When I lived in Cyprus, we grew oranges in our garden since we never had frost. And we learned that the best way to store citrus fruit is to leave it on the tree until you want to use it. I have absolutely enormous lemons on a tree in my conservatory. Just waiting for a gin to call for a fresh lemon.
Forest bounty: mushrooms and more
There’s also fruit on the forest floor for the animals to eat. Back to the mycelium and its mysterious way of allowing trees to communicate?
We think of mushrooms as isolated specimens but they are the fruit of a much larger, underground, organism. They can be beautiful, as these images show.
They can also be deadly to humans if they don’t realise what they’re picking. The red one is probably fly agaric. Definitely not for eating though it won’t kill you. Probably.
Me, I buy my mushrooms from the supermarket.
Wimp, eh?
I have many hazel bushes in my garden. A couple of months ago, I was admiring the bounty on the bush by my garden gate. I resolved to pick them when they were ripe enough.
And when I went back? Of course, the squirrels had had them, every one. So I’ll give you an image of a squirrel with a nut. Not a grey squirrel. They are vermin, to my mind: “tree rats with good PR” as Sophie of this parish is wont to call them. Native reds, on the other hand, are definitely to be cherished in the few places, like Scotland and the Lake District, where they are still to be found.
And finally…
Christmas, they tell me (incessantly, in every advert), is coming soon. So I’ll leave you with an image from last year’s Christmas market in Edinburgh, taken from the moving train as we left. I rather like the fact that only the ferris wheel and the tower are even vaguely clear.
For the record: images without attribution were taken by me, Joanna Maitland.
Gorgeous, Joanna. Thank you so much. Here in London, I only really appreciate Autumn if I make special expedition to look properly. If I go to the Physic Garden, for instance. Hmm. Maybe I should go today!
Go for it, Sophie!
Living where I do, I don’t have the local conveniences of a big city — Birmingham and Cardiff are both about an hour and a half away — but I do see the glories of the countryside every time I go out anywhere. And Herefordshire is very beautiful, hilly and woody and varied in a way that delights the eye. Can’t help but notice. OTOH, I do miss the amenities of London which were within easy travelling distance when I lived darn sarf. You pays yer money, eh?
I mentioned the Monmouth floods at the start of this piece. The damage has been immense so if anyone would like to make a donation to the restoration fund, you can do so here:
https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/monmouthmayoralfloodfundraising?utm_medium=FA&utm_source=EM
It’s a very worthy cause and I hope they’ll make their target. Thank you.