How we spent the day on Wednesday 25th September
The children and staff headed out from school at approximately 9.30 to embark on their seed collecting expedition. We met Maggie Kennedy at Larachbeg and by 10.00 we were off. The children managed to identify 12 different species of native trees (with a little help) and collected a leaf, bark rubbing, seed or berry from each, where this was possible. The crop of nuts, such as acorns and hazelnuts etc was quite poor this year, owing to the very wet and cold spring that we had. This meant that the seeds were not pollinated....it was too cold for the insects to be on the wing. However with a bit of diligent searching we managed to find seeds from most of the species.
We returned to school about 11.45 and talked about what we had found and then started to make up information sheets on the various species. This was done in the groups of two which the children had been in to collect the seeds. We had mixed up the children in the morning, so that the older ones could help the younger ones(....or vice versa?) and we kept to these groupings for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. It was lovely to see them all co-operating with and helping each other and they did a very good job too!
The twelve species found :
Oak, Alder, Blackthorn, Ash, Wild Cherry, Willow, Rowan, Scots Pine, Hawthorn, Wytch Elm, Birch and Hazel.
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Beginning to see results of their labours
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