Episode 2.93 - Hedera Helix and Vespa Nests

Send us Fan Mail On a misty mid-October morning at High Ash Farm, with the clay pond in the woodland completely dry and deer tracks printed in the mud, Chris Skinner and Matthew Gudgin turn their attention to ivy — the last great pollen and nectar flow of the year. Thick stems, some four inches across and fifty years old, climb the oaks without rooting into them, clinging instead by tiny sucker discs. Chris explains the plant’s two lives: the pointed juvenile leaves on the trunk, and the smoo...