Sycamore foliage is not one of the glories of autumn. We stood under the bare canopy of a lone tree, surrounded by a slippery carpet of fawn leaves riddled with black tar spot fungus, while all around us the oaks in this gorge above the river Tees still clung to russet foliage that glowed in the early morning sunlight.
Nor is sycamore bark pleasing to the eye. As the mature tree’s girth increases, it cracks into irregular plates that curl at the edges until they eventually fall away, like healing scabs. I hastened the process by picking at the edge of one of these woody scales.
Underneath, a huddle of black millipedes, elegantly arranged like embossed calligraphy on the smooth new bark, slowly came to life. One by one they snaked away on a rhythmic wave of legs, into another crevice.
The next bark patch revealed a cluster of earwigs that raised their tail forceps in self defence before scurrying to safety. A third sheltered a dozen more millipedes, a minute tangerine-coloured money spider and an empty moth pupal case surrounded by cocoons of parasitic wasps whose larvae had dined on its contents.
Higher on the trunk a chasm between bark plates was packed with orange ladybirds. This tree was proving to be a high-rise hibernaculum, which, under its flaky bark, would provide dry and secure winter housing for a host of small invertebrates.
Back in 1961 sycamore’s stock was devalued in the eyes of many conservationists by a league table that has been cited many times since. It revealed that, despite a recorded presence in the British Isles spanning half a millennium, this tree’s leaves only hosted 15 species of insects.
Oak foliage, the exemplar for supporting insect biodiversity, fed 284 species. But single-criterion league tables can distort ecological value judgments. In this patch of woodland, where both trees mingle, the evidence under the bark casts sycamore in a more favourable light, as a refuge for countless small animals through the coldest months of the year.
@seymourdaily
