APRIL 2025 · GROUNDED
Spring woodlands
Burrington Combe and Dolebury Warren, Mendip Hills
Early March in the Mendips, before the bluebells. Burrington Combe, Dolebury Warren, Priors Wood. The canopy is still bare but the light is starting to change — longer days, lower contrast than midwinter, the first warmth reaching the woodland floor.
This time of year the decomposition is visible. The woodland floor at Burrington is limestone — irregular outcrops breaking through the leaf litter, moss colonizing every surface that stays damp, which in March is most of them. The fallen timber is in various stages of return: fresh wood, weathered wood, wood that has become mostly fungus and moss and barely remembers being a tree.
The window between winter opening and spring closing is narrow.
Burrington Combe and Dolebury Warren — April 2025
The fairy cups are bright red, growing on decaying wood, vivid enough that the eye goes straight to them. They are small, a centimetre or two across, clustered on the substrate. The colour is not incidental to their function. The orange jelly fungus grows differently, in lobes, semi-translucent in spring light, the colour of a wet October afternoon.
A felled tree cross-section: growth rings visible, bright green moss already colonizing the weathered outer bark. The rings are tight. The tree was not large but it was old. Something grazed here.
Dappled light in the late afternoon, filtering through bare branches, the leaf litter below it. This is the woodland before it closes. In a month the canopy will fill and the light will change again, and these particular images will not be possible. The window between winter opening and spring closing is narrow.
The orange jelly fungus on a moss-covered branch, caught in early spring light, the colour holding.
Bright red fairy cup fungus on decaying wood surrounded by moss and spring undergrowth
Ancient woodland canopy with bare branches and emerging spring growth in Mendip Hills
Cross-section of felled tree trunk showing growth rings with bright green moss on weathered bark
Moss-covered tree trunk close-up with textured growth revealing woodland decay and renewal
Bright yellow-green moss covering fallen timber in ancient Somerset woodland
Vivid orange jelly fungus growing on moss-covered branch in early spring light
Dappled late afternoon light filtering through bare woodland trees with autumn leaf litter