Wild Daffodils

Wild daffodils at Harwoods Green

Harwoods Green, part of the Stopham Estate, is one of the best places to see wild daffodils that we know of.  The woods are chestnut coppice which is still cut on a long rotation and a small area had been cut this winter. This process ensures a mixture of different age growth in the wood and variation in the canopy cover.  This seems to affect the density of daffodils and also the bluebells which will appear later in the spring.  The wild species is much smaller than the cultivated varieties, but has a special charm and it is wonderful to see them scattered across the floor of the wood.  As you walk up through the wood, a larger, cultivated-type of daffodil with a crowded double head appears.  These probably originate from a long-ago demolished  row of brick workers cottages at the top of the hill.  You can still see some twisted trees that probably originated in garden hedges and there were until recently the remains of garden gate posts.
Although most bluebells were only present as small clumps of leaves there was one small group in flower, along with violets and celandines by the path.  We also spotted a couple of wood anemones in flower and some rosettes of early purple orchid leaves with their characteristic big brown splodges.  There were a few spindly-looking flowers of ladies smock by the path at the end of the wood, but huge clumps in sunny banks of streams near Furnace Pond Cottages.  In a neat hedgerow by the Wey and Arun Canal white blackthorn flowers alternated with pale green new leaves of hawthorn, but few other trees were showing more than tight buds.
We heard blackbirds, songthrushes, wrens, blue tits, great tits and robins singing and calling all morning, but no sign yet of any summer visitors around hear (we have been hearing chiffchaffs at home all week).  We were even reminded that the summer is not over yet by the presence of two large flocks of redwings chattering in the tree tops.

See more photos of Wild Daffodils here