Street lighting may make our roads and homes safer places, but it also contributes to light pollution.  The bright lights of towns and cities make it difficult for us to see the stars and constellations in the night skies.  In places, the ‘warm yellow’ glow of street lights is being replaced with the white light of LEDs,  the benefits of LED lights include energy savings plus an increased life time as compared to conventional lights. However, when compared to older street lamps they emit more  blue light increases.   Some think that this blue light can suppress the production of melatonin ; this is involved in the regulation of our circadian rhythms - particularly our sleep patterns. Read more...

The maidenhair tree is otherwise known as Ginkgo biloba, or just Gingko is native to China, but is widely cultivated through the world.  The name Ginkgo may be derived from a misspelling of the Japanese Gin kyo or silver apricot - referring to the form of its fruit.   The biloba part of the name refers the two lobed form of the tree’s leaves. Ginkgo is a dioecious species, that is to say, there are separate male and female trees.   The female tree produces quite large seeds within a yellow brown soft fruit-like structure.  Though attractive in appearance, it has a a rancid smell.  The smell is due to butyric acid in the fleshy part of the fruit; and for this reason it is male trees that are usually cultivated.   The male trees produce small cone-like reproductive structures, not dis-similar to those seen on other gymnosperms. Read more...

Tracks and paths are an amazingly important element of any woodland - they are the arteries along which management tasks will be done and the viewing points from which you will see what's happening in your forest.  Usually owners just live with the tracks that have been there for decades, perhaps even hundreds of years, but you can vary the routes or even build new tracks.  Woodland tracks are also often called "rides", presumably because they would have been maintained in order to ride around the woodland on horseback. In creating and maintaining tracks, the key variables are - the soil type, the slope and the tree cover.  Read more...

A biofuel is a fuel (such as alcohol / ethanol) that is derived from plant or animal material (biomass) by a biological process such as fermentation or anaerobic digestion.  Ethanol and methane are examples of biofuels that can be formed from a variety of sources of biomass. Ethanol can be used as a fuel (in its pure form) for vehicles or used as a petrol additive to increase the octane ration / improve emissions.  It is widely used in Brazil.  Ethanol has been produced from a range of plant materials, for example, sweet sorghum, maize, wheat, sugar beet, sugar cane, Miscanthus (elephant grass) and wood pulp.  Cellulosic ethanol is derived from biomass such as straw from crops and wood pulp - the latter is particularly rich in lignin and cellulose. Read more...

It has been known for some time that bees and bumblebees are attracted to flowers by their colour(s), scent (volatile oils), shape, nectar and indeed electric fields (see recent post).  However, it has now been shown that bumblebees can pick a plant on the basis of the nutritional content of its pollen. Anthony Vaudo et al at the Centre for Pollinator Research (Penn State University) recorded the foraging patterns of bumblebees in defined outdoor areas, and then determined the chemical make-up (carbohydrate, protein and lipid levels) of the pollen from the different species present.  They found that the bumblebees went for pollen with a high Protein:Lipid value.    Read more...