Monthly Archives: August 2014

Another good turn out and yet another beautiful morning.

Mary and Graham picked up litter on Crag Lane, Buck Stone Road and the copse opposite Tesco’s, while five of us headed off down to the Seven Arches to clear vegetation from the Meanwood Valley Trail.

In an hour and a half we managed to make a massive difference – completely opening up the path from two or three feet wide to seven or eight feet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From experience, if we only cut back vegetation by a foot or so, it grows back even further in a year.  We therefore cut the vegetation right back and where the main culprit was brambles, we pulled them up by the roots as far as we could.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We all enjoyed ourselves and felt a great sense of achievement.

Your correspondent does not know how the Friends of Adel Woods do it, but we did it again:  torrential rain on Friday evening, torrential rain on Sunday morning, but a glorious day on Saturday for a team of thirteen to litterpick and help Steve Joul clearing tree saplings from Adel Moor.

 

To remind you why we clear saplings, Adel Moor is the last bit of original heathland in Leeds and is a unique habitat, home to moorland species including the common lizard.  If we did not clear the saplings, the moor would be birch and oak woodland in a matter of years – the number of tree seedlings and saplings is amazing.  The birch saplings need to be dug up by the roots:  if we merely cut them down, they come back even thicker – as shown by the many thriving coppiced birch trees.

 

Our team self selected into two groups:  those who did the important task of prevention, pulling up hundreds of seedlings by hand; and those who felt in need of hard exercise, digging up coppiced trees with mattocks and spades.

 

In the morning sunshine, the moor – and in particular the heather – looked magnificent.  The FOAW and the many other groups who have worked on the moor over recent years can be very proud of their achievements.

Unfortunately we did not find any lizards this morning, but Geoff did find interesting galls on oak seedlings on the margin of the moor and the surrounding trees- see the picture below.