Elder

I have a funny relationship with the Elder (Sambucus nigra), I love the flowers, love their flavour and have long utilized them along with Elder's powerfully medicinal (and again tasty) berries, though I'm wary of tree itself, aware of it's sanctity. I'm quite superstitious where natures concerned. It's home to the Elder Goddess, a mostly benevolent nature spirit offering blessings through her bountiful gifts, though you must always ask before you take, and folklore tells us that to cut down an Elder or burn it's wood is sure to antagonize her...and you don't want to do that. I don't even like trimming Elder, always offering placations, and never never burning any trimmings. The 'always asking before taking' (and thanking), is something I've long adopted across my foraging practice and has become second nature. It feels only right and proper. It's not just flowers and berries with Elder either, it's been understood since prehistory that all parts of the Elder offer practical uses. Another wonder of natures superstore, or as Naboo on The Mighty Boosh aptly described it...Shamansbury's. 

Autumn fruits

It'll soon be Mabon and the period of second harvest, the fruit/berry harvest. The fruiting shrubs of the forest, the Crab Apples, the Hawthorns and Blackthorns all see their fruits swelling, with the potential of good crops. For me, Blackthorn is my main focus, every year I make a litre or two of Sloe gin/vodka, and this years crop is looking good, with good sized fruits. It's exiting, I look forward to this time of year and its foraging potential.

Though now when foraging or using wild foods, I find there's an increasing conflict of ideas and traditions. When to pick, how to process and of course the myriad of old folk lore around both, most of which is based in sound observations and understanding, although I feel climate change now challenges some of the old sayings and ways. Take Blackberries for instance, traditional folklore says you can't pick them after a certain date in September (moveable depending on your geography nationally) as they become the 'devils berry'. Clearly they don't, though there is a chemical change around said dates which makes the blackberries unpleasant eating. It was easier to explain this to a preliterate population by associating it with the Devil rather than trying to explain chemical changes, hence the lore. But this was when seasons were reliable seasons, I think due to climatic changes and seasonal fluidity, the date is more flexible (although at some point the berries taste will change for the worst, that aspect still hold true). This year as we rapidly approach that point of chemical change, the majority of the forest Blackberries are still unripe, and will probably ripen and still be edible after the old cut off date. With Sloes they say pick them after the first frost, but again due to seasonal climatic changes we might not get a frost until after new year, by which time the sloes will all be gone, eaten by the birds. So you've got to take them earlier. The same can be said for so many other forageable resources, the old lore, which endured for centuries, now conflicts with our weather/climate reality.

I think we're going to have to adapt our folklore to reflect our current climate, and not stick so rigidly to the old lore, respect it, though adapt. 

Keeping regular

''Oak before the Ash, we're in for a splash, Ash before the Oak, we're in for a soak'' is what they say, well, something like that, but you get the gist. If they're right then it should be a good summer, as the Oak has surely won this year. We'll have to see though. There would have been a period when these countrys' folklore sayings, for the most part, held true. Although, with the effects of climate change increasingly felt, for how much longer these rhymes reflect reality must be speculation. I remember when I was a kid (puts on rose tinted glasses, mmm tinty) there did appear a regularity, which may have sometimes had its irregularities, but on the whole ran as we'd always been led to believe it had. You know, defined seasons, flying ants and stag beetles, spring flowers and the devils' berry, for everything a time and a place. Increasingly though, that place has been developed or destroyed and now that time could be, broadly, any time.  Still, we'll see.

Horseshoe Beech

One of the forests mighty ancient Beeches, formally a pollarded tree it was probably left to grow out when pollarding and coppicing were outlawed in the forest in the pursuit of naval timber. Although this is a lovely example of a tree from that period, there are many similar trees spread through the forests woodlands, though what singled this one out for me was the up turned horseshoe affixed high up its broad trunk.  The up turned horseshoe in folklore is associated with luck, but why it should be here on this tree on Brockis Hill is a mystery to me. The horseshoe looks quite old, but as with so many things like this dating by appearance only is hit and miss at best. The hill top exhibits signs of quarrying at some time in the past, maybe the good luck charm is associated with them. I wonder if anybody still knows who or why is was put up. Another forest mystery.

Oak before the Ash

There's an old saying which goes along the lines of; Oak before Ash, we’re in for a splash, Ash before Oak, we’re in for a soak; well, I'd say this year the Oaks have it.  Though, I wonder how long these traditional folklore sayings will continue to have relevance, or even if they endure as truths now; climate change is really kicking in and you frequently see plants and wildlife well beyond their traditional boundaries, both geographical and seasonal. Some species will adapt and survive, whilst sadly, too many others will disappear, their spaces in the landscape either left bare or colonized by migrating wildlife from elsewhere. Either way, change is coming and it certainly wont be to the benefit of our indigenous flora and fauna, nor to ourselves.