It had been more than four months since we last walked through this woodland. Gone were the songs of wood warblers and blackcaps. Gone too the carpet of spring flowers, of woodruff, sanicle, primroses, wood sorrel and bugle, now hidden under arching fern fronds below a closed canopy of leathery oak leaves.
Luminous May, with its sappy, translucent foliage, had given way to stillness and the cool, deep shadow of summer. A troop of sulphur tuft toadstools around a tree stump served notice that the gentle descent into autumn would soon begin.
But not yet; farther into the wood we found honeysuckle, Lonicera periclymenum, enjoying one last hurrah, with a spectacular display of blossom.
Honeysuckle berries are eaten by birds. The seeds pass through their gut unharmed and germinate under trees but will not flower in their dense shade. Seedlings face a long climb, coiling around any support within reach during their ascent to the sunlit canopy. That may take a decade, and gnarled old specimens develop thick stems, like tropical lianas, trailing long strips of loose, papery bark that are torn off by woodland birds as nesting material.
Fortune had favoured these young plants: there was no need to climb far because a tree had fallen, creating a glade where early morning sunshine flooded in. A hint of their nocturnal floral fragrance still hung in the air and, like glowing beacons, the flowers lured hoverflies and bumblebees from the shadows.
In August there are few sources of pollen here, aside from fading flowers of enchanter’s nightshade. The long honeysuckle stamens offered easy access to food, although their most precious resource – nectar – lies beyond reach of short-tongued bees. Secreted deep in the tubular corollas, it is accessible only to the long, uncoiling proboscis of a crepuscular moth. Honeysuckle flowering needs bright sunshine but its blooms only fulfil their destiny after sunset.
Some small flies resting on the flowers were almost certainly Chromatomyia aprilina, whose leaf-mining larvae feed inside honeysuckle leaves. We found their signature tunnels along leaf mid-veins, with side chambers excavated into the softer tissues; another link in a web of dependency surrounding a plant whose coiling stems weave their way into the fabric of the wood.
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