Balmy September ushers in season of mellow fruitfulness – with added slugs

Apple trees are laden, vines are healthy, and in Norfolk the harvest is in. But with bees still in shocking decline, all is not rosy

On a balmy evening last week in north Wales, the bats were flitting about, the blackberries were as large as grapes, the little winberries on the Berwyn hills were as sweet as sugar and the rowan trees were bowed down with berries. It was nearly as warm at 9pm in Chirk as it was in Lagos.

Welcome to early autumn 2016. After a very wet and notably mild winter, a soggy spring and a warmer-than-average summer, much of Britain has been basking in tropical-style humidity and temperatures.

That combination of a mild winter, early rain and late summer warmth could result in fine autumn colours as well as splendid fruit, nut, mushroom and seed harvests, say ecologists, farmers and producers.

“The autumn should be spectacular for fruit and nuts,” says Matthew Oates, a conservationist with the National Trust. “It’s been an extraordinarily good year for beech nuts, and also for rowans and hawthorns.”

There will be plenty of holly for Christmas, he says, and anyone hoping to make a crab apple jelly to accompany their Sunday roasts will be spoilt for choice as the fruit look set to be particularly good this year.

The mild wet winter and the resulting vegetation growth will have a downside this autumn, however, says Oates. “It’s a serious slug year. They could do a lot of damage to the mushrooms.”

Mycologists say this year’s mushroom harvest is promising, but in some areas slugs may be the only things enjoying them this autumn. Many foragers reacted in horror to the total ban on picking imposed in the New Forest last week by the Forestry Commission. An autumn harvest traditionally enjoyed by hundreds of local people is to be stopped for the first time in centuries on the premise that gangs of commercial foragers are sweeping the woodland clean of all fungi.

“There is absolutely no evidence that picking fungi causes harm, and no evidence of these ‘gangs’,” says Daniel Butler, a mycologist and forager from mid-Wales. “In the end a mushroom is just a fruiting body. Picking no more harms future crops than harvesting apples damages the tree. If the authorities are still determined to limit mushroom harvesting, why stop there? What makes a mushroom different from a blackberry?

“Since the Norman conquest we have all had certain foraging rights. Provided we are in a place where we are entitled to be, like a footpath, nature reserve, Forestry Commission woodland or urban park, we can gather flowers, foliage, fruit and fungi for personal consumption.”

Blackberry pickers in some parts of the country may have a wait before they can fill their plastic boxes with fruit. Oates says blackberries have generally been later this year: “In the Cotswolds they are only just getting going because the bushes flowered late. Since then the weather has generally been too dry for them, but they are coming now.”

While some householders may have already noticed a sudden abundance of house spiders scuttling across their floors as mating season gets under way, reports in some areas of the press of billions of “daddy-longlegs”, or crane flies, about to invade Britain may not be quite accurate, according to Matt Shardlow of conservation charity Buglife.

“I don’t know where that idea comes from but this hasn’t been a brilliant year for insects,” he says. “The government’s State of Nature report, which is published next week, will show 60% of invertebrates in decline and a huge loss of bio-abundance.”

He says the situation of bumble and solitary bee species this year is really shocking and worse than expected. “A new paper by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology looked at 60 species and found that 40% have distribution declines greater than 10% as a result of a group of systemic pesticides called neonics,” he says. “This is worst-case-scenario stuff.”

Hundreds of volunteer observers working with the Woodland Trust’s nature’s calendar survey have so far recorded little autumn leaf colour compared with 2015. Kate Lewthwaite, the trust’s citizen science manager, says: “Beech, silver birch, ash and oak trees are all significantly behind where they were last year.”

But she says there are already signs that migratory birds are preparing to leave earlier than they did in 2015. “There have been more recordings of house martins, swifts and swallows [leaving] compared with this time last year.”

When the leaves do begin to change, the colours are expected to be stunning. A mild autumn could mean prolonged colour well into November, says Andrew Smith, director of the Forestry Commission’s Westonbirt national arboretum in Gloucestershire. “The abundant rain we experienced in spring, coupled with above-average amounts of sunshine, has meant a great growing season, which allows trees to build up plenty of sugars in their leaves,” he says.

Joe Daniels of the Forestry Commission’s Grizedale forest, in the southern Lake District, says that while birches and sycamores are just changing, the oak is a bit behind. “We’re hoping there will be good colours this year,” he says. “If we get some nice crisp mornings it will be really lovely.”

The owners of Britain’s 500-odd vineyards, which last year produced nearly five million bottles of wine, are among those hoping the heat lasts a few more weeks. “We are quietly optimistic. Grape picking will start probably in two weeks’ time … but the bulk will be in mid-October,” says Julia Trustram Eve of marketing body English Wine Producers. “The next few weeks are crucial. The grapes are healthy, and the vines are healthy. It may not be a vintage year after the poor start we had, but a few weeks’ warmth now will help.”

The apple industry thinks 2016 will see growers match last years’s record haul. “There’s been a huge renaissance in the English apple,” says Adrian Barlow, chair of trade body English Apples and Pears. “We will have record crops of Gala, the most popular apple in the UK by far, but we could do with some cold nights to put colour into the skins. The sunshine has been great for the sugar content.”

Farmers report a mixed year but the prolonged hot, dry weather in Norfolk has resulted in one of the earliest ever cereal harvests, says Kit Papworth, a large Norfolk farm contractor. “We had an extraordinary run of weather and plenty of combine capacity. Our costs have been lower – we’ve cut all the winter crops without having to start the drier, which has never happened before – and probably won’t happen again in my lifetime.”

One of the best British harvests this year will be sunshine, says the Solar Trade Association (STA). New government figures show there is now a total installed capacity of 9.79 gigawatts of solar power, making the UK, which now has 800,000 homes generating solar electricity and 200,000 solar hot water, the sixth-biggest generator in the world – ahead of much sunnier France and Spain.

STA head of external affairs Leonie Green says: “Total generation from solar rose by 41% between January and March compared with 2015. It peaked in August at 23.9% of UK electricity demand, which was a new record.”

James Madden of forecasting service Exacta Weather says: “Hot air built up on the near continent will continue to drift across our shores to bring bursts of warm to hot weather in among some other weather types into October.

“These bouts of Indian summer-type weather will also be enough to continue the several-month trend of above average temperatures for the next several weeks.”

But the Met Office is more cautious. “There will be some drier, brighter periods, particularly in the south and south-east,” says its long range forecast. “Temperatures will be perhaps very warm at first in the south-east, but in general are averaging out close to normal.”

Contributor

John Vidal

The GuardianTramp

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