LandScape Sept Oct 2014

LandScape - Life at nature’s pace

www.landscapemagazine.co.uk

Harvest feast to share

Yorkshire’s enchanted valley The heat of the forge

Virginia creeper | Hydrangeas | Late summer garden | Harvest festival meal | Make a wind chime | Farrier | English Oak | Beavers | Fallow deer | Nidderdale

SIMPLE BEAUTY

Sept / Oct 2014

Issue 17 | Sept / Oct 2014 | £3.99

Sept / Oct 2014 £3.99

Life at nature’s pace

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marvellous mopheads These beautiful hydrangeas bring gentle colour and delicacy to the late summer garden

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fruitful abundance Ornamental fruits and colourful foliage fill the borders and hedgerows, ready to adorn the home and garden table fruits A decorative place setting is formed from dried oak leaves and cucumis fruits. The ornamental cucumis fruit are miniature relations of cucumbers and melons. They will last for up to three months.

A garland from gourds A wreath made of dried hydrangea blooms, cucumis fruits, crab apples, Chinese lanterns and ornamental gourds adds colour to a garden door.

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taste of the countryside The distinctive rich aroma and taste of wild mushrooms combine to create dishes that are synonymous with warmth and comfort

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ushrooms are filled with nutrients, including vitamin B and minerals such as selenium, copper and potassium. With a delicious, rich flavour, they make excellent ingredients for many dishes at this time of year.

Fresh mushrooms have clean, bright caps with no blemishes or bruises. The gills are pale pink or not too dark. Mushrooms are 90 per cent water and very porous.

They can be wiped with a damp cloth or rinsed in clean water, but should not be left to soak.

Because they contain so much water, mushrooms will shrink considerably during cooking. When pan frying,

The penny bun bolete, Botelus edulis, grows at the edge of clearings in woodland.

The chanterelle, Cantharellus cibarius, is found in mixed woodland, often under birch trees.

their high water content prevents mushrooms from caramalizing easily or quickly. The solution is to cook them slowly until the moisture is released. Mushrooms soak up fat readily, so quality butter or olive oil is used for cooking.

The most common edible mushrooms in the UK during the autumn are the field mushroom, the parasol mushroom, the penny bun bolete (also known as cep or porcini) and the chanterelle. Any of these four types can be used in the recipes over the page. All can be foraged in the countryside. Farmers markets and delis are a reliable source of wild mushrooms. Never eat wild fungi unless absolutely certain that it is safe to do so.

The field mushroom, Agaricus campestris, grows in meadows grazed by sheep, cattle and horses.

The parasol mushroom, Macrolepiota procera, is found in pastureland and on grassy, seaside cliffs.

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music in the breeze Honour and Beau are making simple wind chimes to hang in their garden 70

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Farrier Nina Thomas punches a stud hole into a red hot horseshoe. Studs are fitted to horseshoes to give horses extra grip, primarily when working on grass. They are removed after work.

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With hammer and anvil Farrier Nina Thomas uses centuries-old The shaped hot shoe is placed against the hoof horn where it leaves a singe mark. This allows Nina to see how well it is fitting.

techniques to shape horseshoes in the heat of the forge

The magnificent restored Eilean Donan Castle. Views of the castle, the most photographed in Scotland, are one of the highlights of the walk from Letterfearn to Faire an Duine.

A walk beside loch duich An autumn stroll combines breathtaking scenery with views of a magnificent, remote, Scottish castle

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itting in the heart of the district of Kintail, on Scotland’s west coast, Loch Duich is surrounded by a remarkable landscape. The huge Five Sisters of Kintail mountains tower above the sea loch’s southern aspect while Eilean Donan Castle stands on the water’s edge near the village of Dornie. To the north, the serrated contours of Skye’s Cuillin mountains rise spectacularly.

The four-mile walk starts at the hamlet of Letterfearn and goes along the shores of Loch Duich to the vantage point of Faire an Duine overlooking Loch Alsh. It combines awe-inspiring scenery, history and stories of myths and legends.

In September and October, the foliage on the trees surrounding the loch is taking on its vibrant autumnal colours. Scotland’s notorious midge, with its voracious appetite for human blood, is on the wane.

Letterfearn sits on a narrow scenic road that follows the banks of the loch. Its name translates from Gaelic as ‘hill-slope growing with alders’ and the steep ground behind the village still has little pockets of woodland.

Walking along the road, the fresh breeze brings with it the taste of salty air from the loch. To the south, the Five Sisters of Kintail are visible rising steeply above the water. ›

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Warm-blooded mammals, beavers stay warm in cold water thanks to two layers of fur. An outer layer of coarse guard hairs protects an inner layer of dense short hair that traps air. This acts as an insulator.

The beaver strips bark from trees to reach new sugar-rich wood below it.

Nature’s woodcutter With nose, eyes and ears on top of the head, the beaver can keep a low profile as it swims on the water’s surface.

Extinct in Britain for 500 years, beavers are once again colonising rivers and lakes in Scotland, England and Wales

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usk’s last light soaks through the overhanging trees and snags on a prow of ripples shifting across the shallow water. A slick line of nose, eyes and ears appears on the surface. The creature emerges onto the bank, its paddle-shaped tail slithering over the mossy shoreline past a tree stump of willow gnawed to a point. It is a wild beaver, in Britain.

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Re-introducing beavers The Eurasian beaver Castor fiber is an indigenous species, once common across this land. Echoes of the beaver’s once large populations survive in place names such as Beverley, meaning ‘beaver stream’. Although similar in appearance, it is genetically distinct from the North American beaver, Castor canadensis.

Hunting for fur and meat eventually led to the beaver’s extinction in Britain in the 16th century. It was also pursued for the pungent castoreum it uses to make scent mounds. This contains salicylic acide and was used to treat headaches, fever and hysteria.

Now after an absence of 500 years, the Eurasian beaver is poised to recolonise the waterways of Britain.

Re-introduction trials are underway in two of the wildest pockets of western Britain, with a third planned for next year. Any re-colonisation would be a slow process.

Beavers are reluctant to cross land, so population growth generally stays within a river catchment area. However, the feasibility of re-colonisation is aided by the fact that beavers can establish large populations from just a small number of founder animals. The animal also has a natural instinct to choose a genetically different mate.

Scottish trial colony

A semi-aquatic life Beavers inhabit the riparian zone, that is, the area between land and water. Their terrain is slow-moving freshwater rivers, streams and lakes surrounded by deciduous-rich woodland. Although beavers breathe air, they spend much of their time in or under water. Up to 95 per cent of activity occurs in the water or within 65ft (20m) of the water’s edge. They are well adapted to this semi-aquatic life. Hind feet are webbed to aid propulsion, and both ears and nostrils feature closing valves. The eyes have transparent eyelids, termed nictitating membranes, that act as goggles. Inner lips located behind the front teeth enable the beaver to carry or gnaw branches while submerged without swallowing water. A beaver can stay underwater without breathing for 15 minutes. It can swim submerged on a single breath for a distance of half a mile. Its lungs are large and its muscles contain a high level of an oxygen-storing chemical called myoglobin.

The fur is extraordinarily warm, crucial to survival as the animal does not hibernate. An outer layer of hairs 2in (5cm) in length protects an under-layer of finer ¾in (2cm) long fur. This creates a dense coat with approximately 12,000 hairs per ›

It is the Scottish Beaver Trail in Knapdale Forest, Argyll, that has been the most extensive, and the most revealing, of a beaver’s life in Britain so far. The forest stretches from coast to coast on a peninsula that shelters from the Atlantic Ocean behind the Isles of Jura and Scarba. Perforated by freshwater lochs, it offered an ideal site for the trial. From 2009, a total of 16 Norwegian beavers have been released into an area stretching 17sq miles (45sq km). Their progress was monitored using visual observations, remote camera traps and GPS ear tags. “The beavers have adapted well to life in Scotland and have bred every year,” says Simon Jones, the Scottish trial project manager. Fieldwork ended in May 2014. The Scottish Government will decide in 2015 if the beavers become permanent residents.

Welsh and Engiish projects Up to 20 beavers are to be released to the wild in the River Rheidol catchment in Ceredigion, mid-Wales, in another pilot scheme next spring. “They will effectively be contained by the topography for many years, while we study the impact they have,” says Adrian Lloyd Jones, the Wales project manager. “The area is backed by steep, high hills, and below are rocky gorges which the beavers will not want to travel through.”

A smaller-scale study is underway in England. Devon Wildlife Trust released two beavers into a fenced enclosure on the headwaters of the River Tamar in 2011.

Data about their impact will help inform future decisions about re-introductions into the wider countryside. “It’s vital we understand the consequences for the environment before we think about re-introducing beavers to the wild,” says Mark Elliott of the Devon project.

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Photography: GAP Photos; Food & Foto; NaturePL

frosty garden beauty

delicate sprigs of heather warm and hearty pheasant dishes A message to new

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