One sunny June morning a group from the Nature Walks group met at Blackbury Camp to be taken around for a walk with Graham Jones concentrating on ‘trees’.

If you don’t know Blackbury Camp it is or was an Iron Age Fort. Most people come here to see the glorious floor of bluebells in the spring but it also has some lovely mature trees, probably not going quite as far back as the Iron Age but certainly a few hundred years old, mainly oaks with some beech.

We spent a couple of very interesting hours listening to Graham just talking about the Oak, introducing us to ‘epicormic growth’ (twig growth from the tree trunk). Did you know that 2,300 species are supported by the oak of which 326 species depend on it for survival? Acorns are a favourite food of pigs and in Spain the best Iberican ham come from pigs which have been fed on acorns. So fascinating.

We now know much more about the oaks than we ever did before the walk.
Thank you Graham.

Janet Fernley