Ashdown Forest

Field meeting reports

Meeting date: 13 July 2003

(Leader: Pat Donovan)

As the temperature was a degree below 80, it was decided to seek the shade of Five Hundred Acre Wood rather than the open bracken-covered south-facing slopes. Since our 1987 visit, which was just four months before the Great Storm, the wood has changed dramatically, with many fine trees lost and new rides created. Most of the plants were recorded in these rides, and included Oreopteris limbosperma (Lemon-scented Fern), Lythrum portula (Water Purslane), Carex viridulua ssp. oedocarpa (Yellow Sedge) and one fine spike of Epipactis helleborine (Broad-leaved Helleborine). David Lang made an unsuccessful search for Epipactis purpurata (Purple Helleborine) along the road verges where it had been recorded previously, but in the wood he spotted one minute seedling. Lesser mortals had to take his word for it….