Nothing here is waste. Lichen, crystal and wildflower all make a home in the one piece of timber the forest let go.
Drag your cursor across the timber to peel back the colour hidden in its grain, then wander into the field guide.
Year oneA beech came down in a dry March storm. Nobody hauled it away, so the forest started on it instead.
Year threeThe bark split and held the rain. Moss took the shaded flank first, then lichen took the dry ridge above it.
Year sevenQuartz sits in the hollow where the roots tore out, and bluebells come up every April in the log's long shadow.
Each one moved in for its own reason. Keep scrolling and they pass by in the order they arrived.
Hypnum cupressiforme
The first to arrive. It holds water like a sponge, and that damp is what let everything else follow.
Parmelia sulcata
A fungus and an alga living as one. It only grows where the air is clean, so finding it says something about the whole wood.
Silicon dioxide
Not grown by the log but lifted by it. When the tree fell, the root plate pulled this cluster up out of the clay.
Hyacinthoides non-scripta
Flowers in the log's shade every April. The bulbs sit deeper than the beech's roots ever reached.
Bluebells open along the south side. The moss is at its greenest, still soaked from winter.
The moss dries to a dull gold and curls up. Lichen barely changes; it grows a few millimetres a year.
Fungi push through the softest wood near the root end. Leaf litter fills the hollow around the quartz.
Frost picks out the lichen in white. With the canopy bare, the whole log gets light for the first time all year.
The log lies roughly east to west, root end east. Positions are measured from the root plate.
| Find | Where on the log | Best seen | Look for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feather moss | North flank, the whole length | Late winter, spring | Flat, overlapping fronds like tiny ferns |
| Shield lichen | Upper ridge, 2 to 6 m | All year, best after rain | Grey-green lobes with a net of fine ridges |
| Quartz | Root hollow, east end | Winter, before leaf litter | Milky points half buried in red clay |
| Bluebell | South side, in the shade line | April to May | Flowers hanging on one side of the stem |
Look at it in every season and write down what moves in. That's all a field guide is.