Quarry Wood

 

It was great to find some good veteran trees on the KWT walk at their Quarry Wood reserve today.seems to be a good fungal site as well. 

This first Beech was the star and we spent a lot of time chatting about veteran trees at this spot. Its a fine tree and would perhaps stand up as just an impressive notable tree if it were not the suggestion of a hollowing trunk from the impressive numbers of fruiting bodies of the Southern Bracket, Ganoderma australe, around the base of, the trunk. Coupled with the size, 4.88 m, I personally think this makes it a veteran. Opinions may differ and on size alone according to ATF criteria you would perhaps consider it a young ancient tree. However I will err on the side of caution, and stick to veteran. 

 

While waiting to get walking, I did get to look at the Sweet Chestnut leaves and for a change I did find some evidence of likely leaf-miners. This first is the commoner and paler species of Tischeria currently found on Sweet Chestnut in this country, Tischeria ekabladella. The adult micro-moth flies in May and June, and the larval stages occur on Oak and Sweet Chestnut (visibly) from September or October.The frass is ejected from the mine through a slit cut in the upper surface, leaving the blotch mine rather obviously whitish on the top surface of the leaves . The larva overwinters and then eventually pupates in the discoid case constructed inside the mine.