Hamadryads Arb-Mycota

Welcome to Arb-mycota, a website dedicated to trees, fungi and the ecology of arboreal systems. Here I hope to share with you my passion for the life within our Ancient woodlands.

Individual ancient trees and NAWS (Naturalised Ancient Woodland Sites) have been continuosly wooded and/or unmanaged for hundreds of years. This means that more often than not, they are home to a great diversity of life, particulary the fungi and insects which live on dead wood (Saprobic organisms) Even a single veteran tree standing alone in a field will have a complex of flora and fauna associated with it, it may be home to bats, owls even bees, and upon it branches lichens and within the trees roots and woody tissues may be fungi that are rare and endangered.

We are all far too tidy as a society and more concerned with the asthetics of a tree or garden and tidy away the most important ecological niche, Deadwood. The truth is deadwood is not really dead in the strictest sense, it is alive with organisms. To you it may be unsightly (debatable, see "the beauty of deadwood"), to you it may just be dead wood, but to fungi and invertibrates it is a vital resource, it is food and a place to live.

  (above) An ancient beech pollard-

   Fagus sylvatica 

Throughout the site I will show you many beautiful organisms that live within the woodlands and deadwood habitats of our forests. I also hope to show you how you can make a BIG difference by doing the smallest things within your gardens, no matter how small it is.

Our gardens are an important bridge between ancient woodlands that have become seperated by our towns. It is ALL our responibilities to enable woodland communities to migrate from one wood to the next. It is this isolation of our now fragmented woodlands that is reducing biodiversity generaly. If populations of organisms cannot travel to a new site, eventualy the genetics will be thinned out and further exadurate the problems. We really must try to do what we can to rejoin our natural nieghbourhoods together, and give bio diversity a chance.

The life of our woodlands is so very special, and I hope to show you all just how beautiful and special it is. I hope that by doing so you will all do just a little bit towards helping "nurture the nature" we have excluded from our natural nieghbourhoods.

It is time to think "inclusional" (Alan Rayner, et al)

Tony Croft A.K.A Hamadryad