The Bluebell Wood
Wondrous sights and unexpected encounters in the Bluebell wood - the quintessential British springtime spectacle
A short drive away from my home, through the red-brick road of Stock Harvard (with its preponderance of old houses buttressed close to the road), one needs to turn down a narrow school lane to arrive at the spectacle. With the advent of springtime, the members of the Turner household start to get twitchy and impatient — akin to how passerines feel before they migrate — for we know that the emergence of beauty is imminent — and we don’t want to miss it. So, come the second week in April, we take this short drive to Swan and Cygnet Woods1, our annual pilgrimage to the ephemeral festival of spring: the emergence of the bluebells.
A week or two earlier, and the woodland floor in this relatively small wood2 looked very different. Small white stars, casting their petals up to the heavens, dotted the floor like miniature constellations. These were wood anemones, beautiful in their own right, but a mere shadow of the spectacle which was to come. Wood anemones are some of the first flowers to emerge in spring, declaring as they bloom that the deathly ravages of winter are finally over — or at least we hope so, for late frosts at this time of year are an orchardists worst nightmare.
Like any good and fitting prelude, the wood anemones fulfil their duty, setting the stage and getting the audience ready for the magnificence of the imminent grand finale. For it is the bluebells who steal the show of the forest, while the dying embers of the white starlets fade away. This is a spectacle that thousands flock to see every year; for in the briefest of moments in the woodland calendar, another colour (and a rare one at that3) is added to the dual brown-green palette of the British ancient woodland — a profusion of lilac-blue bells carpet the woodland floor as far as the eye can see. It is sublimely beautiful — and unique. No other member of the British floral community flourishes with such intensity, density, and sheer mass as the bluebell, and few other flowers put on a show that rivals them. The rest of the country appears to agree with me, for when the nation was polled as to our favourite wildflower, the bluebell took top spot.
The woodland I am in is one of two halves. I am not talking about the narrow country lane which bisects this woodland from the neighbouring Hankins Wood, though that certainly gives the impression of two separate woods. The greater, more fundamental division is ecological. The clue is in the name of the wood: Swan and Cygnet Woods. Cygnets are young swans; it doesn’t take a detective then to deduce that Cygnet Wood is therefore the younger of the two woodlands. It is a recent plantation, an add-on to serve as a buffer to protect the ancient semi-natural Swan Wood — a reversal of the natural order of nature where the older protects the younger. You can tell by just looking at it that Cygnet Wood is younger. Absent are bluebells and the richer floral understory of the directly neighbouring Swan Wood. As is always the case in nature, when there is a pattern, there is a reason. The complete absence of bluebells hint that something crucial is missing from Cygnet Wood…
The answer to what is missing is simple — and complex — in equal measure. To put it simply, age is what is missing from this recently planted plantation of native trees. But something more fundamental is also missing from this wood: the intricate, mature, and complex suite of ecological relationships and rich community of species that are associated with ancient woods. One simply cannot plant a new woodland and expect these complex relationships and diverse ecological communities to immediately form. They take time (lots of time) to develop and mature and require relatively undisturbed soils in order to do so. These optimum (and necessary) soil conditions are what the antiquity of the Swan Wood provides — and what its younger cousin, Cygnet Wood, lacks. Trees have been continuously present in Swan Wood since 1600, and probably long before that. The ancient soil has had four hundred long years to decompose four hundred year’s worth of leaves and decaying creatures — and where there is an abundance of death, an abundance of life flourishes. Innumerable species of microorganisms thrive in the rich humus that has formed from this ancient ecological recipe, along with countless bluebell bulbs. All this diversity and abundance constitutes the full and unique symphony of an ancient British wood.
Ancient woodlands are extraordinarily valuable both from an ecological and a cultural perspective. This is reflected in their protected status in UK law. However, nothing stands in the way of the unscrupulous — certainly not the law! For when there is money to be made, loopholes abound. If a landowner can convince some distant bureaucrat that the supposed “economic benefits” outweigh the costs, ancient woodlands can be felled to make way for modern developments — which are apparently more “valuable”. National treasures of priceless worth are destroyed to make way for ugly business parks and shoddily built houses. It is absurd.
What’s more, this “cost-benefit” mindset of the developers betrays a hubristic fallacy that is indicative of the “quantitative age”4 we live in. These businessmen believe by simply planting some “equivalent number of trees” elsewhere, that they have fulfilled their responsibilities and have “offsetted” the biodiversity damage they have incurred by felling an ancient woodland. Fallacies of fallacies! Ancient ecological relationships of immense worth are destroyed in an instant by the most irreversible of acts: the wielding of a chainsaw, the toppling of ancient giants, the desecration of the soil — all in order to “build, build, build” and “grow, grow, grow”. Thankfully, wise souls in the past have saved this wood from such a fate, preserving the bluebell spectacle for modern eyes to see — and thus for a moment allowing us to forget the pressures and pulls of the digital age.
It is not just the bluebells that make Swan Wood special. Rumour has it that near mythical creatures stalk these woods, though one would have to come at the dead of night to be in with a chance of catching a glimpse. Medium sized holes — or setts — puncture the land here and there: the tell-tale sign that badgers are resting below in preparation for their midnight sorties for food amidst the bluebells. Up in the trees, a rare beast is also slumbering safe in its nest — though this creature can hardly be called a “beast” for even a hardened naturalist has to admit this creature is cuteness epitomised: the fabled hazel dormouse. This is a species I long to see, and though it is tempting to take a peek in the dormouse boxes, to do so would incur the wrath of the warden — and the law, for dormice are strictly protected against disturbance.
As one journeys towards the centre of the wood, one is in for an exotic surprise: a thick stand of bamboo! Needless to say, this plant with its “exponential tendencies”5 should not be anywhere near a British ancient woodland. No one knows quite how it got here. My theory is some disgruntled gardener carried out a covert operation of “guerrilla gardening” in the light of the full moon on one lonesome, summer’s night… Anyway, the bamboo has obviously spread seems quite at home. Countless young feet have trampled down the shoots and soil over the years to create a miniature maze through these thick bamboo stands, and the Woodland Trust (who manage the wood) seem to have given a reprieve to this invasive for the sake of giggling children. However, I do hope they are managing it, as I know only too well what an absolute menace this vigorous plant can be when it gets out of control.
The spectacular native and the invasive exotic; unseen rarities, and familiar bird song — all juxtaposed in this magnificent natural orchestra that is Swan and Cygnet Wood. It is a precious place indeed. What is special about the woodlands and forests near your home? Tell me about them in the comments below.
The Bluebell Wood
A deep blue sea appears suddenly, flooding -
the sky reflected upon the forest floor.
Ephemeral hues erupting amidst the birch and oak
in this brief and precious moment.
Who would have thought, when deep in winter's iron grip,
this riotous colour lay latent in the ice-baked earth.
But with the lengthening of days, these silent bells chime -
the advent of the season when new life redounds.
This, a most dappled tide, crests and descends with
the gradient of old, earthen banks, catching on its peaks
the golden glow of the dawn - the beauty is complete.
So I linger (as I must) at the shore, in this most ancient of woods.
Hadden Turner
(Chelmsford, 2024)
These reflections are free, but any tips given (or paid subscriptions) support my work, help me to write more pieces, and are greatly received by this young writer.
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/media/46957/4385-swan-and-cygnet-woods.pdf
For Britain is not blessed any longer with vast tracts of unbroken forest.
Blue is a relatively rare colour in the natural world. Few flowers take on this colour (and those who do tend to be small such as forget-me-nots and speedwells and likewise few birds do as well. Apart from that blue is highly unusual in reptiles and mammals.
See Wendell Berry, Quantity Versus Form.
The growth rate of this member of the grass family is extraordinary.
We truly have some wondrous scraps of Eden in the Pacific Northwest of America. In Olympic National Park, we have massive spruce trees that somehow survived the blade and were never harvested to make airplanes for Boeing. We have a few oh-so-precious Western Red Cedars with their lemony scent and soft red bark dust. Where I live, we are known for our forest and some old growth trees older than 1,000 years still stand. However, the timber industry took most out of our trees. They clear-cut land and leave behind a scene of genocide - tree stumps and branches baking in the sun. All other life is gone. No bluebells or grasses. No native plants like salal, salmonberry, or osoberry. The company who does this (weyerhauser) replants a mono-forest of Douglas fir trees (because they grow fast and straight and can survive as a mono-forest). They boast about replanting three trees for each one they take and claim they're "sustainable." Then those monoforest grow up so thick, no wildlife can even move between the trees. The soil is never nourished by elk or deer. The trees do not look well and the ground is only covered by needles because it's too dark for plants to grow. The lower branches on the trees are dead because they cannot access sunlight. These mono-forests are a huge fire hazard. Each summer, the West Coast of the United States has a fire season. There are days when we cannot go outside because the smoke is too thick - the landscape is dulled by the haze. We wear masks to protect our lungs.
I know of a wild ancient western Red cedar and I visit her often. How she survived is a wonder as she is surrounded by many crumbling cedar stumps. I've used her boughs as medicine and found big tasty chanterelles growing at her base. I pray she will not be seen as "timber," succumbing to the blade and turned into money - or as they say "profitable board feet."
Our temperate rain forests in Washington are a place of the sacred and profane. Sacred trillium, huckleberries, cancer killing plants, healing tree resins, and soft beds of bright green moss like you've never seen. But, within them lies the profane - huge crumbling stumps of the elder trees that once stood. Our forests once produced a bounty of gooseberries - but those are gone too. As are the condors that once flew over these lands.
May we be better ancestors than our ancestors.
“Though as a man I inherit great evils and the possibility of great loss and suffering, I know that my life is blessed and graced by the yearly flowering of the bluebells.” Wendell Berry - A Native Hill