In the Botanic Garden, near the Hills Road entrance, the Copper Beech has lost almost all of its leaves, as has the Wild Service tree.

A few trees have kept their leaves – the Italian Alder and three young Liquidambar Orientalis (Oriental sweetgum). The leaves on the Liquidambar are a mix of fresh green and yellow leaves. The Caucasian Wingnuts are in leaf with lots of dark green leaves.

The Platicarya looks like it did in the summer, and while there are of leaves on the ground and some of the smaller branches have lost leaf, overall it looks in full leaf. Close up, the leaves themselves look just a bit more veined in contrasting green and yellow than they did in summer.

The gardeners have chopped down the Gunnera leaves and piled them in stooks by the stream. The leaves look fresh and green. I remember last year how they matted down to a deep purple-blue soggy mass.

Over a period of about ten days in September, I visited the Cambridge University Botanic Garden three times. On the first two visits I saw maybe five or six squirrels but on the third visit I saw around fifty young squirrels. Why so many squirrels, so suddenly?

I asked CUGB, and the wildlife experts wrote that in their opinion the reason was that:

Last year was a mast year for oaks. Mast years happen in intervals of round 7-10 years and are years when oaks produce masses of acorns and this is synchronised- so all the oaks in an area will do the same thing. This provides an abundance of food for species like squirrels who then overwinter very well and then are able to breed really well the following year. Now’s the time that lots of young ones are becoming independent and are out and about more. Hence lots of squirrels. When its not a mast year, there are fewer acorns and this is a way that plants can keep their herbivores in check. See this article in the Woodland Trust site, what is a mast year?

Where are the seed cases from the Hop hornbeam? When I went to look at the tree last week, I could only find two, hanging on the outer branches over the path. The tree has seed cases about two inches long made up of multiple little squashy (air filled?) sacs. I searched for several minutes and couldn’t find any on the grass below the tree. There were plenty of wind-blown leaves, so what happened to the seed cases? I don’t think they crumbled to nothing because I have one on the table that I collected months ago, and it is holding together with no signs of disintegrating.

Had squirrels taken them? That might be. It would fit with the relative inaccessibility of the two cases hanging on the furthest thin branches. Then again, was that location really squirrel-proof? Perhaps another smaller rodent, but what would be big enough to pulverise the seed case in search of the seeds?

The tree is on the path leading to the cafe, just to the left of the path when one is coming from the Hills Road entrance,