Melwood

Melwood Welcomes 2022

www.melwood.org.uk

As usual, the first two clumps of snowdrops put in an appearance on about New Year’s Day. The mass of plants were about on schedule and looking good by the start of February. Although we don’t have an exact map of where every clump is, it seems this year that there are rather more small groups scattered widely around the wood. The main areas have produced a really good show and been appreciated by large numbers of visitors to the wood. There are four species of Snowdrop on sale in most garden centres and hundreds of varieties derived from the three Galanthus plicata commonest species, all three of which occur in Melwood. The most distinctive species is Galanthus plicata, which has larger and broader leaves than the other two and frequently, larger blooms. In Melwood we have a single clump of a distinctive and unusual variety of G. plicata with unusually long petals. Its origin remains a mystery. Winter Aconites were once restricted to just one area, which still persists, although now rather overgrown; a job for the brush-cutter when the aconite growth has fully died down. Elsewhere, a few individual plants have shown up remote from the original clump and this year there seems to be even more scattered individuals. Two groups that were present last year have expanded and the prospect for further expansion seems good. The cultivated daffodils that have been in the wood since before it was a nature reserve are coming through strongly but the true wild bulbs that we have planted over the last couple of years are currently less obvious. Perhaps this is a lack of the hybrid vigour present in the cultivated varieties. Time will tell and they should be obvious when they flower. It is perhaps a bit early to assess whether the native English Bluebells have settled in, but with 100 planted in 2020 and another 100 in 2021,

I hope we will see some evidence later in the spring. The Spanish species grow strongly but are generally a much more robust species and may need to be segregated or removed if the English ones look likely to establish and spread; the aim is a true English bluebell wood. The sighting of a water shrew on one recent visit was certainly a bonus. It is many years since I last saw this tiny animal on the banks of the Mel and it took more than a casual glance to spot it. I first noticed a few abnormal ripples from beneath some overhanging vegetation on the river bank, so I stopped to take a longer look. It took a few minutes before the shrew eventually came out and scuttled along the water’s edge to the next patch of vegetation. There it dived under water to get fully beneath the leaf cover where there may be more insects to feed on. They need to eat two or three times their own body weight each day to maintain their very rapid metabolic rate. A further unexpected sighting was of a group of four or five willow warblers. It is unusual to see even one in winter, as they should have migrated south to warmer climates, where their diet of insects is easier to find. This little group were hunting for insects around the smaller trees and bushes and may have been a family group that left it too late to migrate. So far the winter has been relatively kind to them, so there is a good chance they will make through to the spring. The one working party so far in 2022 has concentrated on the paths and hedges. ‘Leisure parties’ at the bonfire site usually disappear over winter but this year, perhaps because of milder and generally dry weather, there have been a number and it is very pleasing to note that the site has been left clean and tidy each time. Well done to those that have cleaned up after themselves.

Jim Reid Melwood Conservation Group

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