Another trot that turned into a trek. I was called into the copse by a gorgeous gall or oak apple.

I peeled some bark of a dead bit of wood, to inspect under the microscope and two fast moving and many legged critters scuttled away to hide.
Just look at this, though, the richness of the colours. Such glory in decay.

Along the mammal tracks there are a variety of scrapes and holes. I think of badgers first off, but then again it could be anything. Squirrels burying acorns. And then I thought of what difference this makes to the ecosystem. It will make a difference. The soil disturbance.

Some of the scrapes are clearly deer feeding on whatever these plants are. Remember that I spotted signs before? Again, everywhere I went, evidence of munching at a very particular part of the plant. I think the plants are cuckoo pints. My dad tells me that wood anemone - a roe deer favourite - have bulbs too. But the leaves are wrong. Maybe the deer ate the wood anemone and left the cuckoo pint? Unlinkely.
Cuckoo pints are toxic due to oxalate crystals. Even so, parts were used medicinally and...
The root was used to make Portland sago which was used as a substitute for arrowroot, (a thickener), or made into saloop, a popular drink amongst the masses before the general introduction of tea and coffee. The root needs careful and thorough processing before it can be consumed.
Whatever is eating these plants seems though to select only the young leaves. And anyway, the deer man dude said that roe deer can eat plants that are toxic to other animals. I might try emailing him.
I revisited the fallen poplars that I found last March when the leaves were still budding even though the trees had crashed from air to earth. On the standing trunks, some shoots and a lot of fungus and mold.
And here, on one of the trunks lying on the wood's wet floor, a shoot. Life springs eternal.

And life comes in so many forms - and in even more forms if you allow wonder and imagination free rein. Gaze at the green and gold scales, the wide mouth and the forked tongue of this woodland dragon.

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