Digitalis and Dentures!

Today the children decided to walk to the part of the woods they have named 'Summit Camp' as it lies at the top of a steep incline. They were keen to find trees to climb, hang swings from and attach guide ropes to. Whilst exploring the camp for suitable trees, Abby made a toothy discovery. A set of dentures were lurking in the undergrowth! This encouraged the children to do some further investigating of the ground flora and fauna. Laiba and Manhoor discovered that many of the woodland insects had colours which mimicked the leaf litter of the woodland floor making them blend in like magic.

Many of the oak trees in our woodland have diseased lower limbs so the children had to look carefully for suitable trees to climb and tie ropes to. They looked for tell-tale signs of unhealthy limbs such as fungi, bore holes, moss and lack of leaves. Abbas, Abdullah and Harris finally found a suitable tree  from which to tie their guide rope.

Meanwhile, Abby found the crook of a tree in which to make a den. She chose to tie a row of ferns to her rope to create a rather beautiful screen.

I attempted to help the children make a rope swing and managed to get the rope tangled around the branch. Luckily Abdullah was on hand to unhitch the rope for me.
As we made our way out of the wood, we wandered past patch of majestic foxgloves. Abby remarked on the striking spotted pattern on the inside of the flower trumpets. we talked about how these markings serve to advertise the flower's pollen almost like a botanical landing strip to pollinating insects such as bees and hover flies. We also discussed why some plants are highly poisonous, but also that as with the foxglove, can be used in medicine (a species of foxglove - digitalis lantana is used in heart medicines).