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Companion Trees of Markstakes Common
I can’t find much written about so called ‘companion trees’ in the world. We marvel at some of the contorted shapes trunks create as they appear to bounce off each other and imagine the relationship is symbiotic: I’ve come to believe that this is not the case. Whilst horticulturalists and gardeners may speak of ‘companion’ planting, this is not the same as two or more trees or shrubs competing in the wild for light, water, nutrients and a footing.
Visiting Markstakes Common often over the last few months I have come to know the area reasonably well and with the aid of a map created by the Friends of Markstakes Common in 2011 I can pick up some, though certainly not all of the 34 ancient trees one or two of which have notable companions.
It would appear that dominant tree survives, more often birch over everything else, with oak and hornbeam in a close second place, followed by birch while holly, though often abundant, becomes leggy or where there is little light simply dies away. To my eyes birch trumps all others, though it depends clearly on which tree gets a 10 or 25 year head start. It is also clear that where both trees are able to survive their ‘companionship’ my last many decades. Of course in depends very much on the context as to which tree may weaken and fail.
For example, this birch and oak, both of which continue to thrive – although the holly tree identified in 2011 has clearly died back and since tried to reestablish itself with little success: it is barely a bush.
Around the wood, on closer examination as many as 1/5th of every mature tree shows some element of companion growth at some time. The overwhelming pattern however is that the companions eventually fail … leaving a hollowing, rotting trunk, or breaking off and falling to the ground.
These ‘messy’ companions and the amount of dead wood littering the woodland floor is a feature of a natural deciduous wood. It is litter that in a warming climate must be distinctly vulnerable to fire especially where a visitor is careless or thoughtless.
Woodland Visits : When I go down to the woods each day …
I use Waze or Google Maps and check advice from The Woodland Trust ‘Find A Wood‘.
When I visit a wood for the first time I look at the following: parking and signage, nature, variety and age of trees, the varied habitats and undergrowth, a note on birds and animals, as well the amount of human interaction or intervention, from fellow visitors, to historic and current land used. A wood on an urban fringe is used in different ways to an isolated wood or a wood that is popular and frequently visited; being southern England it is difficult to escape noise from air-traffic or roads. I also think about the signage and in some instances proximity to a pub! There are some great woodland walks that have a pub attached, that welcome dogs and don’t mind muddy feet.
I’ll note how easy it was to find in the first and to park. In some cases ‘getting there’ is part of the pleasure as there are some steep banked roads think with woodland plants in spring or with dense, overhanging trees in summer through to autumn.
In some cases it has taken me two or more visits to figure out where best to park, either because the entrance is off a residential street or off a road where there is no immediate parking at all.Â
I use AllTrails once we set off.Â
I usually have our dog with us so I check if there is any signage about dogs. And depending on ownership, time of year I check any information board regarding keeping to paths, sheep, working in the forest and other matters. Following UK Gov The Country Code appears to be a good idea all round for me.
Then I’m off, intent on following or finding a circuit with no doubling back.
I try to clock the trees, types and age and the flora and fauna depending on the time of year.
I’m not great with birdsong and find it hard enough to spot them to make the connection.
I take pictures constantly, usually relying on my phone but where I want close ups taking a Sony DSLR with a macro lens.
I take notes in ‘notes’.Â
The experience includes what goes on underfoot – so the state of the ground and the presence of boardwalks or bridges: Wellies cover all wet weather and sturdy shoes the rest of the time.
I’ve been using PictureThis to identify plants on the move.
And then I try to sum it up, at first just a few sentences and pictures shared in AllTrails. I would hope to write it up later more fully with reference to a Management Plan, where there is one; they are readily available for all Woodland Trust Woods.
I love a gill or stream: hereabouts they are often seasonal, shallow and unchallenged – in ancient woodland allowed to flood and dam. I love patches of water too, from small ponds to lakes and reservoirs. These all add to the woodland experience.
As I get to know ‘my’ woods I then return across the seasons, more often in spring as things change rapidly from February through to the end of May – here on the South Downs, with visits to the Low and High Weald.Â
Whether or when I write it up follows, starting in a Google Doc, uploading to a WordPress blog then adjusting accordingly with keywords, tags and captioned images.
Markstakes Common  Â
I visited Markstakes Common May on the 7th, 12th and 17th May 2022.
(I get to places using Waze and one there I use AllTrails for my walks).
My discovery of Markstakes Common came about by accident: I was headed for a return trip to Beechmill Wood but finding roadworks blocking the road to Newick north of Chailey and a diversion too out of my way to bother with I doubled back, checked on The Woodland Trust website ‘Find A Wood’ and found this gem – a wood and common up there with any of the best ancient deciduous woods I’ve discovered around East Sussex over the last nine months. I was a bit late for any wood anemones or bluebells at their very best.
Nonetheless, even if not in their full glory, the common awash with bluebells on 7th May was wonderful to see – as if a blue mist were lifting off the common.
Then I stumbled across a diversion in the path put there to protect an ancient oak – 360 years or more old, I believe.
Then, there are more, many more ancient trees: oak, beech, ash and hornbeam.
Courtesy of Friends of Markstakes Common there are various detailed maps picking out the ancient trees and the different habitats; it is this that has me fall in love with the Common; it has variety.
There are ancient trees (I’m thinking 34 trees with ‘ancient’ status meaning they are over 350 + years old).
Yet there are trees of all ages, open spaces and meadow, pools and ponds and seasonal streams. I can’t get enough of it. This suggests to me a space that will still be thriving in another 200 years time.
I’d gladly live close-by. Each time I have come here I meet and talk to someone: an elderly gent with whom life-stories were shared, a mum with kids two young for school but hurtling around like puppies. Most of us had a dog, And young couples too. Everyone is happy to talk and share their love for this space.
It is messy; trees fall and are left, maybe a few branches cut away to assist people on a walk. There is mud, partially dried up seasonal streams, a pond of sorts …
Parking is easy; it is well-shaded off a quiet road by a sturdy stone walk with a large access gate. Unlike every other wood of its kind I have been to around the county there is not one sign here relating to the Country Code, the need to keep dogs on a lead, footfall because of bluebells or a myriad of other concerns that can cause organisations a flurry of worries, costs and concerns that necessitate information boards and other announcements in various forms that can stand up to the weather (or not), or look dated … but does any of it work? My understanding is that all that works are ‘ambassadors’ on the ground talking to as many people who visit a space as possible and sharing the word.
I even have to wonder if information boards and signage simply encourage footfall and visitors by their very presence and do little to contain behaviours: some people drop little and let their dog(s) shit where they like, others do not. Some people trudge across beds of wood anemones and bluebells in search of a unique shot or photo op while others keep back.
These trees and these woods will, I very much hope, still be here long, long after we have gone. All we have to do is avoid killing them off while we’re around.
Williams Wood, Warninglid
Photographs: CC BY SA 3.0 J F Vernon 2022
Last autumn I took my interest in trees (urban and woodland, ancient and young) a step further by joining The Woodland Trust and taking a close interest in (and supporting) the world of Lewes Urban Arboretum. My journey across Sussex then began, picking out almost every Woodland Trust Wood in East Sussex with the intention of paying a visit to each during each season of the year: another few months and the task will have been completed.
Venturing out across England I’ve visited a few other Woodland Trust woods while I was in the area; I’m unlikely to pay these a second visit. To minimise my journeys and to spread my interest I have also started to visit all the woods in a catchment of around 10-15 miles out from Lewes. This has me visiting The National Trust, Forestry Commission Woods, RSPB Nature Reserves and other private woods and parks. There are some large garden parks such as Sheffield Park (National Trust) and Wakehurst Place which I have not visited recently or included in this journey both because of the cost of admission and because most are planted with excotic and even invasive non-native species such as rhododendron. I will write about Chalk Downland and the likes of Landport Bottom and Malling Down Nature Reserve (Sussex Wildlife) elsewhere – they are not known for many or indeed any trees.Â
I have visited William’s Wood, Warninglid at least once a month since October 2021 as I spend Saturday mornings down the road at The Triangle, Burgess Hill and enjoy the contrast from a humid swimming pool teaching swimmers in a busy swimming club to the woods where I only rarely come across a dog-walker, cyclist or the odd rider out on a hack. I have also returned several times with family or friends (and our dog). I last wrote up a visit at the end of March. I had Covid from the end of March that kept me at home for a few weeks right when I most wished to be capturing the winter/summer transition through spring which has distinct stages through the dotted white carpet of wood anemones through to bluebells, and other plants on the woodland floor and by the deeply incised running gills.
I read up on any Woodland Trust wood in advance and enjoy the detail that comes from each wood’s Management Plan. Much can change in a wood over four weeks, in this case,as I hoped, the bluebells were out in modest clumps by tree stumps, and in huge carpets under the still open canopy of the older deciduous trees.
This is the High Weald here, ‘ancient woodland’ (‘an area of land where there had been continual growth since 1600’). Inevitably the woods in the south of England are surrounded closely by farmland and parkland, though William’s Wood benefits from not abutting a major town or residential sprawl which greatly increases the footfall and other consequences politely described as ‘anti-social behaviour’, namely litter and sometimes malicious damage. The A22 is just distant enough not to be heard, though plains and assorted aircraft do leave and come in overhead to Gatwick Airport 12 1/2 miles to the north (20km).
Williams Wood is adjoining another extensive wood and abutting a seasonal shoot (pheasants and ducks) – making it noisy on my Saturday visits from October to February for pheasants and September and to the end of January for ducks.
There is really only parking for one car by the gate along the lane to Bellevue Care Home (formerly Stonewick Lodge) as additional cars can inconvenience residents of Stonewick Lodge on the other side of the lane trying to get into their home; a further two or maybe three cars can park on the grass kerb by the B211 (Warninglid Lane)Â
A well marked track, claggy with mud after heavy rainfall and for a few weeks in winter therefore, with ‘Keep dogs on lead’ and ‘Private Woods’ signage either side takes you after some 450m to William’s Wood along the left hand fork – turning right takes you on the Sussex Ouse Way along a path that is mostly fenced in between a shoot and other private properties. The ‘keep dogs on lead’ thing is certainly to avoid scaring pheasants.
Having tried an old fashioned map and struggled with Google Maps providing much once off the road I now swear by AllTrails. This is a record of my late April visit, stumbling around a route that might have taken 45 minutes in well over an hour: I was stopping to take photographs and listen to the wildlife.
This also takes you onto the Sussex Ouse Valley Way, which were I to follow it the south east would take me to the English Channel, home in Lewes and then down to Newhaven and the coast. With motorways, urban sprawl, railways and all other kinds of human activity to negotiate, let alone the distance I may give this one a miss. Wellies are recommended after rain, in all but the driest weather sturdy footwear is recommended though trainers might do.Â
The meadow as you enter William’s Wood was full of primroses.
The first beds of bluebells were a little further on, on banks and in spaces around the gill.
Further on, entering Bishop’s Wood (all part of the same woodland) I hoped to find the largest carpets of bluebells and was suitably pleased by what I found.
Along the way I saw a number of small, bright yellow butterflies (clouded yellow I think), a lesser-spotted woodpecker, black birds, coal tits, a falcon and a few ducks and pheasants that hadn’t been shot or netted during the shooting season.
As well as the sounds of birdlife and a trickling brook, spring smells noticeably different to winter with the scents of flowers and smell of energised greenery. As I suffer from hayfever I don’t quite understand why I am in a wood rather than out at sea or up a mountain in spring – I take antihistamines.Â
Most visits I record a one minute ‘sound scape’; though I am yet to upload any of these. I’d like to be able to identify more of the birds first.
Links:
Woodland Trust
Woodland Trust Management Plan
Sussex Ouse Way
Lake Wood, Uckfield 23rd November 2021
Parking is limited to three or four cars on a stretch of badly broken curb or in a near-by lay-by but at this year especially it is worth the effort. There are no visitor plans or ‘site interpretation’ at the entrances which I rather feel is a mistake – education mattes, and helps. Not everyone will care to download maps or information in advance or once they have arrived picnic in hand, dog on a lead, children in tow.
I’m no fan of the noise of traffic coming at you from two sides of this 20 acre triangular ‘ancient woodland’ plot that makes up Lake Wood. I keep thinking I ought to get earphones and listen to music; this is the sad reality of a number of these Woodland Trust woods here in Sussex where most seem to be on the edge of a main road or on the edge of urban development.
The site was given to the Woodland Trust by the Streatfield family to whom there is a dedication. From the Management Plan I learn that ‘landscaping occured in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
A pond was enlarged, features carved in the sandstone outcrops and exotic specimen trees planet as a part of the ‘Gardens and Pleasure Grounds of Rocks House’. This would make the oldest trees, both conifers and broadleaves, some 140 years or so old. Armed with a tape measure this is what I found with a ‘veteran’ sweet chestnut, beech and giant redwood, in turn with girths of approximately 300cm to 500cm. It is likely that theee were all planted around the same time in the 1880s.
To protect woodland and put it into caring hands who will manage it for generations to come I can think of no better policy; it is that or risk seeing it being developed – in this case with a series of executive homes each with its own access to the lake, or a mass of Bellways Boxes, the lake drained or fenced in, or the wood simply abandoned to motorbikes and picnic litter.
The lake is the creation of Capability Brown and the rides around the lake, including a tunnel through the rocks, were designed for carriages. Excotic trees were planted, many of which survived. Steps, tunnels and a boathouse were cut into the rocks at the time too.
The 1987 storm took down some 100 oak trees and led to the quick spread of rhododendron and the associated effects it has on taking all light from the ground. An early task of the Woodland Trust, working with volunteers, was to remove the rhododendron.
Reading the Lake Wood Management Plan indicates the thought given by the Woodland Trust to getting the wood into a state where it can largely grow into its natural self, encouraging the variety of structures, ages and types of tree and undergrowth currently present with invasive species removed while retaining the ancient specimen trees. My sense of all this is at times more of a living museum, or a safari park for trees, than a truly natural wood – nature would quickly cover and block the so-called rides and paths kept clear by footfall alone could not exist without the steps and bridges so thoughtfully added. Here the need to accommodate, if not encourage visitors, is clear.
Nature in its truest form is more apparent where there are dead or fallen trees – though the mass flattening of hundreds of trees in the October 1987 hurricane is not apparent. I rather believe that with rhododendron invasion the site would otherwise be a mass of 40 year old densely tangled waxy leaved evergreen rhododendrons. Despite their threat as an invasive plant the cherry laurel planted along the dam as a hedgerow remains – it is about as appealing as a neighbour eager to shut out prying eyes from a private garden and looks out of place, or is just another boundary like a wall, road, by-pass or fence.
The rock outcrops are favoured as a feature and so are to be kept free to some degree of birch and holly which would otherwise hide their form.
There is next to no litter – unlike the bag of cans, bottles, crisp and sandwich wrappers I collected in September. I took away one plastic bag that had been used to pick up dog faeces and left in a hedge. I was wearing gloves: I already had a small bag from my own dog so didn’t feel unduly put out. However, there are no bins on site or near the entrances which is a pity – some people clearly leave litter at one entrance as if expecting a bin rather than taking it home with them.
I’ll be back mid-winter. I’m sure it will look different again once all the leaves have gone, with frost or a snowfall.
Moat Wood in late Autumn 21 November 2021
My first Woodland Trust Wood 10 weeks ago and one I have returned to a few times since; it is a short drive, it offers a short walk with a variety of terrains, parking, a village shop and pub serving Harvey’s Best. Even the drive there is magical as the old Roman Road from Ringmer to Halland is an avenue of orange and red horse chestnuts.
My trip this afternoon was to capture the late sun glowing yellow onto autumn leaves. Arriving at a little before 4 O’clock I nearly missed it as the days are fast shortening and some low cloud on the western horizon cut the sun off early.
Knowing my way around I aim for the Church car park to take a loop through the church, passed the primary school to the allotments, then into the woods via the remaining conifer stand towards the moat to get the silhouettes of trees and any remaining colour before pushing through the hazel brush onto the road and back into the village.
The light is bright across the church but I’m also eager to get down the path to spot the startling orange of the chestnut in the hedgerow by the road into East Hoathly.
I’m not suitably confident about my tree silhouettes so already wish I’d gone a lot close to look at the leaves. I am sure to be corrected if I have this wrong.
I’m walking our dog Evie who is on her lead; I’ve come off the footpath to get close to the trees so we double back into the woods. I’m struck how much difference a few weeks can make. The difference between the deciduous trees and undergrowth that have mostly lost their leaves and the plantations.
Since 1987, on the back of the October hurricane which took down a lot of the deciduous trees these pines have been thinned, a practice that will continue here, as it does across Woodland Trust woods in order to restore woods to their deciduous native origins.
A Woodland Trust wood is well signposted at the entrances, where there is usually a sturdy gate or style and in the wood itself there are benches dedicated to those who have made a bequest or where a family have left something to the Trust.
I return to these benches as a fixed and unchanging reminder of where I am – even if I also have All Trails live to tell me where I am, and now used like a digital compass.
Moat wood has a number of mature oak; the intention is to allow these to mature over the ‘very long term’ (50 years and beyond), with only minimal intervention as trees fall, create a break in the canopy and other mature.
I tend to find myself in the same spot each time I return so can in due course create ‘before and after’ shots between the seasons and show and timeline between spring, summer, autumn and winter. Lack of rain has reduced the moat to a soggy mud.
In other places the soggy flat ground and a strong wind has tipped a few younger trees over; unlike the trees of 1987 which were replaced, these will be allowed to rot or regrow where they are.
My trip this later afternoon ends as it gets dark and a visit to the King’s Head for a pint of Harvey’s best by the fire.
Brede High Wood, East Sussex
My second visit here which should have made it an easier trip over but for extensive roadworks at Polegate on the A27 which lost me a good 20 minutes; I usually use Waze to dodge this kind of thing and would have cut across country further in land or along the coast.
I’m back because I want to witness that transition through early autumn as the leaves change; I rather think that rather than a great crescendo of colour, that there are instead staccato events over several weeks depending on which trees you are looking at – the sweet horse chestnut are early, British oak is late. We will see, or my homework reading The Woodland Trust management plan for these woods, their magazine and other research will do its job.
I’m not about to disappear through the woods and around the reservoir for 2 1/2 hours; I might manage it but our dog Evie is getting tired after 1 at best 1 1/2 hours so I have to keep things shorter or come alone.
I have become dependent on All Trails. In the past I have got lost with Google Maps which are fine until you leave the road and I’ve got an Ordnance Survey subscription that I am yet to fully test.
I was looking for change, the streams, the trees, the sites and smells. A tractor was out doing what I could only describe as ‘scarrifying’ the bracken/gorse in a clearing not far from the reservoir. I need to read the Brede Wood Management Plan from the Woodland Trust again to get the lowdown on this; these woods are managed. Parts of it were once farmland. Parts of it were once plantations now being thinned. In places invasive species such as Rhododendron have been removed.
The patchwork of different elements to this wood will become clearer in time. I need to arm myself with a map design for and about the woods.
I also feel I need to be getting out pen and paper to pick out the features in a way that makes them more clear: I am drawn to the sound of a brook which makes it feature so much bigger in my mind than it appears in a photograph. These trickles of bouncing water mean something to me, bring back important childhood memories of being left to play in such spaces creating dams and laying sticks out – even redirecting the water in tiny rivulets.
Mind Bursts 