St Tudy was formerly known as Eglostudic. The village church is dedicated to a St Tudius, a sixth century abbot and missionary who was active in Brittany. It is doubtful whether he actually visited North Cornwall, but it could have been established by one of his monks around this time.
The present church in St Tudy dates from Norman times. It was extensively rebuilt in the 15th century, and repaired during the 19th century. It is built on the site of an earlier church of the 6th century. The circular churchyard is typical of Celtic churches from this period.
Set into the stone hedge face of the churchyard is "The Clink": initially this was the church ale house, then became the local constable's lock-up (hence the name).
The blackbird is a species of thrush. The name "blackbird" is mediaeval, first recorded in 1486. Since most of the crow family is also black, plus many seabirds, the choice of this particular species for the name is thought to be due to its size. Up to the 18th Century, larger birds such as crows were referred to as "fowl" and the term "bird" was only used for smaller species.
The word "crow" is sometimes used to refer to the whole crow family (including jackdaws, rooks and ravens) and sometimes specifically to the common (carrion) crow. Carrion crows can be distinguished from their cousins by being totally black (jackdaws have grey heads, rooks have pale beaks) and having a slender and fairly straight beak (i.e. not the broad beak with a hooked top that a raven has). Biologists use the word "corvids" for "crow family" to avoid ambiguity, or to show off.
If there are sheep in the field and you have a dog, make sure it's securely on its lead (sheep are prone to panic and injuring themselves even if a dog is just being inquisitive). If the sheep start bleating, this means they are scared and they are liable to panic.
If there are pregnant sheep in the field, be particularly sensitive as a scare can cause a miscarriage. If there are sheep in the field with lambs, avoid approaching them closely, making loud noises or walking between a lamb and its mother, as you may provoke the mother to defend her young.
Sheep may look cute but if provoked they can cause serious injury (hence the verb "to ram"). Generally, the best plan is to walk quietly along the hedges and they will move away or ignore you.
The valley is known as Buzzard Valley.
Buzzards are not quiet birds! Their long, loud "pieeuuu" call can be often be the first thing to give away their presence and is one of the easiest bird calls to remember. It is thought that the original Latin word for buzzard was probably an onomatopoeia (i.e. an imitation of the bird's call) within the constraints of what was deemed an acceptable Latin word (suggesting "pieeuuu" would probably have resulted in being fed to the lions!).
The stream meets another just before Wetherham manor and forms a tributary of the River Allen.
The Rivel Allen is a major tributary of the River Camel, joining it just above the estuary near Wadebridge. It was known as the Dowr Alen in Cornish, which is documented as meaning "shining river". There is also a River Allen in Truro, although that one is Dowr Lain in Cornish, so as long as you speak Cornish, you won't get them confused!.
There are some elder trees along the bottom of the meadow.
Elderflowers appear in late May and are easily recognisable as large white umbels on the shrubby green trees. If you are harvesting the flowers to make cordial or wine, avoid picking umbels where the flowers are going brown or haven't opened yet; they should be bright white with a yellow centre.
Elder trees were associated with witchcraft which may have arisen because their berries were used in medicines. Consequently there were many superstitions about cutting down or burning elder trees.
Elder be ye Lady's tree, burn it not or cursed ye'll be.
To make elderflower cordial, remove the bitter stems from about a 20 flower heads and soak overnight in 1 litre of water containing the juice of 2 lemons. Strain the liquid and dissolve around 600g sugar to make a sweet cordial. To make dissolving the sugar easier, you can pre-dissolve the sugar in the water in advance by boiling the water and allowing it to cool before adding the elderflowers although you lose some of your sugar on the discarded elderflowers that way. Dilute with water or sparkling water to serve. It can be frozen for use at other times of the year.
Autumn colours are the result of two different chemical processes - one that gives rise to yellow leaves and one that results in red leaves. They depend differently on temperature so a cold autumn tends to produce more yellow colours whilst a mild autumn produces more red. In both cases, the length of time the colour has to develop is limited by the leaves not being blown off the tree by wind. Much of Cornwall is pretty exposed and breezy so sheltered valleys offer the best chance of good autumn colours.
Mosses are close relatives of the first plants to colonise the land 500 million years ago. They descended originally from freshwater algae but evolved an outer coating that protected them from the temperature changes and UV radiation that made life on the land more of a challenge than in the water. There are now estimated to be over 10,000 species of moss.
The size of the nuts from wild British chestnut trees is quite variable but the largest rival the nuts sold in supermarkets. Nuts that are very flat or less than the girth of your little finger are not worth harvesting; anything bigger is viable. A painless way to extract the nuts is to grip the husk between your feet and rub it between your boots or against the ground. This saves having to handle the spiky husks as the spikes are very sharp and tend to break off under the skin to leave behind splinters. Often the husks contain one (fairly round) large nut surrounded by several small, flat nuts, so it's worth squeezing out quite a few husks to get the larger nuts. Discard any nuts with holes in (as they will contain maggots) or that are very dark in colour - the fresher ones will be "chestnut" brown rather than dark brown.
Holly has separate male and female plants, so not all holly bushes produce berries - only female plants. In less biologically-enlightened Pagan times, holly was thought to be a male plant (the spikes symbolising aggression) whereas ivy was regarded as a female plant (symbolising attachment). The Christmas Carol "The Holly and the Ivy" is thought originally to derive from Pagan fertility myths onto which Christian symbolism has subsequently been added.
Grey squirrels were introduced to the UK from the USA in the late 19th Century and within decades they had replaced the native red squirrel in most parts of the country.
During spring, wildflowers amongst the grass attract insects foraging for nectar such as bumblebees.
During flight, bumblebees beat their wings around 200 times every second. However, the buzzing sound they make is not from the beating wings but from the bee's vibrating flight muscles. On cold days, by using their flight muscles, the bees are able to warm up their bodies to temperatures as high as 30 Celcius.
The original tarmac was made from coal tar and ironworks slag. In the 1920s, coal tar was replaced by the tar from petroleum oil - bitumen. This oil-based tarmac is known as asphalt in the UK. However in the USA, "asphalt" means bitumen (i.e. just the tar with no "mac"). If that wasn't confusing enough, tarmac is known as "bitumen" in Australia!
In June, foxgloves flower along the lane.
In spring, whilst foxgloves seeds are germinating, the established foxglove plants from the previous year start producing their characteristic flower spike. Once these have been fertilised and the seeds have been produced then the plant dies. One foxglove plant can produce over 2 million seeds.
Both navelwort's Latin name and common name are based on its resemblance to a belly button. Other common names include wall pennywort and penny pies due to the shape and size resembling an (old) penny.
The paths here are graded silver and are cut by volunteers. You can help them if you have secateurs by pruning any brambles or nettles off the stile and path edges on your way through to stop them building up. If the path along the edge of the field is getting badly overgrown, or on the next direction, from the stile into the woods, please use the app to report this as a Footpath Issue to see if more heavy duty cutting can be arranged.
To report an overgrown path, on the directions screen in the app tap on the ☰ menu next to the direction number for the problematic path (or tap on the direction number on the map screen to get the ☰ menu) and select Report Footpath Issue. The app will use the direction number to work out the parish and path number at that location and then create an email to Cornwall Council’s Countryside Team so they can contact the relevant Parish Council. If possible, take photos and attach them to the email as that will help the countryside team to see how bad it is and prioritise it.
Footpaths in Cornwall are graded "gold", "silver" and "bronze" (bronze paths are normally dead-ends that don't link up with other paths).
For parishes that take part in the Local Maintenance Partnership, gold paths are normally cut routinely once or twice each year. Routine cuts on gold paths are typically done in May/June, and any second cuts are usually in July - September.
Paths graded as silver are cut at the discretion of the Parish, so these in particular need to be reported to the Parish Council (via the Countryside Access Team - countryside@cormacltd.co.uk - who have the contact details for each parish council) if they start to become overgrown. Also gold paths which happen to be in parishes who don't participate in the scheme are less likely to get a routine cut, but the Countryside Team can cut these themselves if they get badly overgrown.
Blackberries are closely related to raspberries and technically neither is a berry but an aggregate of many individual tiny fruits, each containing a tiny stone like a miniature cherry.
Bramble flowers produce a lot of nectar so they attract bees and butterflies which spread the pollen between plants. One study found the bramble flowers as the fifth highest nectar producers out of the 175 species studied. Brimstone and Speckled Wood butterflies are particularly fond of bramble flowers.
As well as through pollen being transferred by insects from other plants, if there are not many insects around (e.g. in cold or wet weather), bramble flowers are able to produce seeds without being fertilised (the flower is able to use its own pollen).
Wetherham Manor, near St Tudy, sits on a Saxon site (hence the name - "ham" meaning village or estate). It was recorded in the 14th Century as Wytherham. The rest of the name is thought to be derived from the Cornish word for woodland (similar to Withiel). Wetherham Manor had a colourful start to this millennium with the once owners being imprisoned for threatening bailiffs with a shotgun and evicted by the bank to the outbuildings with their dogs, cats, peacocks and "too many ferrets".
A dovecote (also known as columbarium or culverhouse) is a mediaeval invention, used to farm pigeons for meat. The circular shape was so that a ladder could be attached to a revolving pole in the centre to reach the nest boxes high in the walls (as the birds prefer to nest high up, out of the reach of predators such as foxes). In the Middle Ages, only the Lord of the manor was allowed to keep pigeons and this wasn't relaxed until the 17th Century which is why dovecotes (especially old ones) are often found at manor houses.
The woods contain some huge beech trees.
Compared to many native trees, the beech colonised Great Britain relatively recently, after the last Ice Age around 10,000 years ago. Beech trees have a shallow root system and are therefore often found in areas where water is plentiful such as near rivers. In the 17th and 18th Centuries, tall, stately beech trees were very fashionable in the estates of wealthy landowners and many mature beech woodlands today are the result of 18th Century parkland landscaping projects.
Granite is the most common igneous rock found at Earth's surface and also the oldest - thought to be formed up to 300 million years ago.
Ivy is unusual in that it flowers particularly late in the year - from September to November - and therefore provides vital nectar for insects such as bees and moths. Ivy berries are an important winter food source for birds and will remain on the plant all the way through the winter until spring. The berries also have a high fat content so provide a dense source of energy at a time when animals need lots to keep warm.
Lesser celandines are common plants along woodland paths recognisable by their yellow star-shaped flowers. Despite their name, they are not closely related to the Greater Celandine. Lesser celandines are actually a member of the buttercup family and, like buttercups, they contain the poisonous chemical protoanemonin.
One in five of all known fungi form lichens. Studies suggest that many species of fungi that form lichens started out from ancestors that lived on organic waste. Fossils have also revealed that the symbiosis between algae and fungi dates back more than 400 million years roughly to the time when plants first evolved from green algae.
Church Ales were celebrations held within the church calendar, particularly at Whitsuntide and May Day, when ales were brewed and sold in order to raise funds for the Church or for good causes in the parish. With the growth of Puritanism in the late 17th century, drinking was seen as sinful. Church Ales were considered to be nothing but drunken disorders and were suppressed. Church houses were gradually abandoned, demolished or put to other uses.
The St Tudy Inn (formerly the Cornish Arms) is a 17th century village inn, located at the opposite end of the short lane leading from the War Memorial. It was conveniently proximate to "The Clink", allowing anyone who became drunken and troublesome to find themselves in new accommodation within the time it took for the constable's pint to be poured.
Fungi are often most noticeable when fruiting, either as mushrooms or as moulds but their main part is a network made up of thin branching threads that can run through soil, leaf litter, wood and even living plant tissue.
Fungus is the Latin word for mushroom but is derived from the ancient Greek word for sponge since this is what they were thought to resemble. Biologically, this isn't so far off either as fungi are more closely-related to animals than plants.
95% of all plant life on Earth, including trees, relies on a symbiotic relationship with fungi. It is thought that without fungi, land plants could not have developed at all. Fungal mycelium often grows around or actually within the roots of plants and give the plant access to water and nutrients it couldn't otherwise obtain easily from the soil. In return, the plants provide the fungi with sugars produced through photosynthesis.
Newts are members of the salamander family, which dates back to the Jurassic period. The newt species you are most likely to encounter in Cornwall is the palmate newt. Great crested newts aren't found in Cornwall at all. Common newts, contrary to their name, were only ever found in the far east of Cornwall and have become rarer over time. In recent years, the newt population has declined in the UK overall due to pollution and destruction of their habitat. Old farm ponds with good weed cover make good habitats as newts prefer still water to fast-flowing streams.
The name "newt" is actually from a mistake. The Old English word was ewt and so it should be "an ewt" but because this sounds the same as "a newt", ewts accidentally gained the "n" from "an".
Newts walk with a side-to-side gait by moving their front-left and back-right legs forward at the same time, followed by the other diagonal pair. This waddling form of motion is the origin of the phrase "pissed as a newt".
However, unlike drunk people, when injured, they have the remarkable ability to regrow limbs, eyes and even their heart! They are consequently of major interest to medical science.
Dragonflies were some of the first winged insects to evolve, around 300 million years ago in the "age of amphibians" before the dinosaurs. Fossils of early dragonflies have been found with wingspans of up to two feet across.
Dragonflies are named after the way they hunt, as both the larvae and adults are carnivorous predators. Mosquitoes form a large part of their diet both for adults and particularly for the larvae (nymphs). One dragonfly can eat tens of mosquitoes in a day and an average of over 100 per day has been recorded for the nymphs of some species. It is thought that this is an important factor in keeping the mosquito population under control. Dragonfly nymphs have a massive lower jaw to engulf their prey (a bit like an Angler Fish) and are also able to propel themselves by shooting a jet of water out of their anus.
Their two sets of wings beat out of phase, and the frequency, amplitude and the angles of each set of wings can be controlled. This allows dragonflies to hover in a completely stationary position for over a minute, perform extravagant aerobatic manoeuvres and even fly backwards.
Damselflies are predators similar to dragonflies but are easily distinguishable by the way their wings fold back parallel to the body when at rest whereas the dragonflies' wings are fixed at a right angle to the body. The Damselfly has a much smaller body than a dragonfly which means it has less stamina for flight. Nevertheless, it can hover, in a stationary position, long enough to pluck spiders from their webs.
Male damselflies have two sets of genitalia. At the start of mating a packet of sperm (spermatophore) is transferred outside of the male's body between the two and then passed on to the female who uses it to fertilise her eggs as she lays them. Female damselflies lay their eggs inside vegetation. For some species this is in water plants and the female can swim underwater for half an hour before returning to the surface to breathe. Males often guard the egg laying female to prevent a rival male from sneaking in and replacing the spermatophore with his own.
Damselfly eggs hatch not into damselflies but water-living nymphs which look a bit like a dull-coloured damselfly with a 3-forked tail instead of wings. The tail is actually a set of gills used to breath underwater. When the larva is fully developed, it climbs out of the water on a stem or rock. Its skin then splits open and a damselfly emerges with wings which need to be inflated and dry before it can fly.
Camellias are bushes with thick, glossy leaves (but usually a little shorter than rhododendron leaves). As their similar appearance suggests, they are fairly close cousins of rhododendrons but not as closely related to rhododendrons as heathers are (which appearance doesn't suggest!). They flower in the winter, typically between December and the end of March.
Camellias are native to eastern and southern Asia. The first camellia grown in England was in 1739. Many varieties now popular in Britain as ornamental garden plants are from species collected during plant hunting expeditions in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They were regarded as the ultimate luxury flower in Victorian times.
Tea is made from the leaves of one species of camellia which has been bred for many years to hone qualities considered desirable for tea. However, the leaves of many other camellias can be used to produce a similar beverage and tea from another camellia species is popular in some parts of Japan.
The seeds of camellia plants contain oils. In East Asia this is used by hundreds of millions of people as a cooking oil. In Japan it's used for hair care. It's also used to clean and protect the knife blades.
Rhododendron is a member of the Ericaceae family to which heathers also belong and like its cousins, it is tolerant of acid soils. The word rhododendron is from the Ancient Greek for "rose tree" due to their spectacular flowers. As a result of these, rhododendrons have been popular ornamental plants for over two centuries and the species that we now call the common rhododendron was introduced in 1763. The plants thrive in the UK climate and were once native but were wiped out by the last Ice Age. Being a vigorous plant, common rhododendron was often used as a root stock onto which more fragile but exotically-coloured hybrids were grafted.
Azalea is a name given to a sub-group of rhododendron species which typically form a bush rather than a large tree. There is no clear biological distinction but most azalea species are deciduous (whereas rhododendrons are evergreen) and azaleas often have smaller leaves, funnel-shaped flowers and are more tolerant of sunny locations than rhododendrons.
Rhododendrons are so successful in Britain that they have become an invasive species, crowding out other flora in the Atlantic oak woodlands. They are able to spread very quickly both through suckering along the ground and by abundant seed production. Many of the root stocks of ornamental specimens have suckered off some new common rhododendrons which have then out-competed the ornamental tree and killed it off!
Conservation organisations now classify the rhododendron explosion as a severe problem and various strategies have been explored to attempt to stop the spread. So far, the most effective method seems to be injecting herbicide into individual plants which is both more precise and effective than blanket cutting or spraying.
A problem with rhododendrons is that they kill bees. Rhododendron nectar is highly toxic to honeybees, killing them within hours. Some other bee species such as mining bees are also adversely affected. Bumblebees seem to be unaffected though.
Honey made with rhododendron pollen can be poisonous to humans, causing severe low blood pressure and low heart rate if enough is eaten. Rhododendron honey is used in Nepal as a hallucinogenic drug.
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