Purwell Ninesprings, Hertfordshire: For 50 years, small teasels have grown in this wood. The trouble is, they keep on moving
The alder carr looks tired and dishevelled today, as if we’ve arrived the morning after the night before. Sedges and nettles have passed their peak – their stems lie splayed across the path. Even the sentry of the woods has forsaken its post beside the boardwalk. When I look over to greet this much-loved guardian (an elder alder with a woodpecker hole of a mouth and a twiglet wave), all that remains is a tangle of rotten wood and the crusty bracket fungus that almost certainly hastened its demise.
Beyond the boardwalk, we look out for small teasel (Dipsacus pilosus) – a specialist of damp calcareous soils that has been growing in this wood for at least half a century. Some years it favours an overgrown clearing by the path, where we can admire its dainty white flowers and the spiky spherical seedheads that sway above the nettles like medieval morning stars. But its towering stems are nowhere to be seen.
