Photo-a-Day  (Thursday, 26th October, 2023)

If you go down to the woods you will get a nice surprise. The kids in their element running through the leaves. Hiding behind the trees or putting leaves over themselves. I wish I could just walk through the woods and remember the simple times.

That's a nice glade of Beech Dennis , we have one like it in here at Pretty Corner Woods. I wonder why ferns & brambles etc never grow under Beech trees ?

Good picture, did you enter at the wrought iron gates.

What a lovely scene. A friend used to live not far from Mowpin Lodge so we used to go that way regularly; it's a lovely area which can be both picturesque and mysterious, depending on the season and the time of day, which I think is true of most woodland and woodland paths.

Isn't that just a lovely peaceful scene..you can't beat nature.

I love all the startling colours of the dead leaves. I still like shuffling through them when the wind has blown them into mounds roundabout…..
treacherous when wet though on pavements. They do make a pretty picture ….

How beautiful. Green and gold.I wish I could crunch through the leaves as I did with my brother and sisters when we were children. The plantations used to be our playground.

What a good idea it was for the forward thinking Wigan Council to have all those rhododendrons removed.

So nice and peaceful it could feature on a Calendar for October

Apparently nothing much at all will grow under beech trees because of the deep shade they cast...I have never seen Rhododendrons growing under them, that said Rhodies are very invasive & most 'parks' will have them out or severely pruned these days.

The council wasn't very forward thinking when they allowed the Rhododendrons to grow wild and take over were they Parkie old flower. At one time along the road through the plantations there was some very colourful Rhododendrons growing which had been planted by the Lindsay's, but unbeknown when planted the purple flowered Rhododendron Ponticum self seeded, and over the years these seedlings growing into shrubs began taking over, eventually spreading everywhere by a lack of good forestry management, this then lead to the entire Rhododendrons having to be removed and burned because of the Phytophthora fungus which these Rhododendron Ponticum shrubs harbour, this fungus though not harming this host shrub does affect and eventually kills other trees and shrubs. It wasn't just Wigan council that removed them either, as all local government authorities and Forestry Commissions throughout the UK had Government Legislation to do the same.

According to Arboretum Pete the reason nothing grows under Beech trees is because the leaves from Beech are high in lignin and so are slow to decompose, and so the build up of these slow decomposing leaves produces an acidic soil, also the low growing branches block out sunlight which along with this acidic soil negatively affects the growth of plants.

Mangelwurzel Squirrel. Indeed,
Rhododendron is a nice flower,
Evergreen and lasts forever.
But it can't beat the Strand Power.

A nice pleasant photo Dennis, the leaves certainly are tumbling down now with Autumn coming in all at once, with those cold winds blowing.

There also was a good show of bright colourful rhododendrons at the front of the infirmary, though they'd changed to the purple flowered ones and they too got dug out making more spaces for the car parks, and then folks going for treatment or visiting someone at the hospital then had to pay to park their car there.