Learn your slender tare from the your round-leaved fluellen at a Wildlife Trust workshop in Cambridgeshire

Want to know your slender tare from your round-leaved fluellen? There's a wildlife workshop that can help.

The wasp that lays its eggs on an acorn, the strange patterns that appear on a leaf, and the hoverfly that mimics a hornet – all of these and more can be learned about on the Wildlife Trust in Cambridgeshire's annual programme of training workshops, which cover a multitude of natural world subjects, from botanical to practical, run by enthusiastic experts in their field.

On a recent 'Introduction to Wild Flowers' workshop at Cambourne, CEO Brian Eversham engaged with an interested group of country park rangers, ecological consultants and keen-to-know-more members of the general public, along with trust volunteers and staff, all looking to spend a day outdoors discovering the keys to well-known and lesser seen plants.

Brian says: “The highlights included some plants that I really don’t see very often, yet in a very public space, such as slender tare on the grass fringes of a wood, and round-leaved fluellen, often found on the trampled edges of paths. Our workshops are always fun, a great way to learn, and a really good way to get to know like-minded others.”

Round-leaved fluellen is a plant found growing in ground that has been both cultivated and/or disturbed, with round leaves, yellow flowers and trailing hairy stems, typically seen in flower from July to October, while the delicate slender tare is also a scrambling plant usually found on grassy banks on clay soils.

Feedback from courses run earlier this year bears glowing testimony to individual workshops One said of the winter tree identification workshop: “Really informative - there was a good balance of presenting and practical tasks. The resources were excellent and we feel we've learned a lot. We bought the key/text that was used on the day and have been busy honing our newfound skills at home - thanks for a really enjoyable day.”

On the butterfly identification workshop, an attendee said: “The training workshop was absolutely fantastic: our hosts were incredibly knowledgeable, passionate and very clear. We learnt the reasons why butterflies are so important, how bizarre some of their life cycles are, how to ID them and then brought all of this information into the real world with some hands-on identification. Any and all questions were answered with thorough consideration and all attendees were lovely to spend the day with. Kudos all round!”

Coming up soon is a new workshop, also in Cambourne, examining the leaf mining larvae that leave random and sometimes intricate scrawled patterns on leaf surfaces. Easily overlooked, each leaf holds a detective story of working out who or what has passed that way . . .

Introduction to Leaf Mining Insects, Saturday 9 September, 10am-4pm

Find out more at wildlifebcn.org/events/2023-09-09-introduction-leaf-mining-insects-andy-and-melissa-banthorpe

For more on all the workshops, visit wildlifebcn.org/get-involved/training-workshops. The 2025 programme will be available later this year.

Woodland closures

The trust's Waresley & Gransden Wood will be closed for six weeks for seasonal maintenance including some tree removal; the knock on impacts of ash-dieback are still being felt in ancient woodlands and felling in some areas is unavoidable.

The trust is reliant on contractors so the work may take longer than anticipated. After this work, Gamlingay Wood will then also close for a similar timespan – this will result in safer and healthier woodlands for visitors to enjoy.

Visit wildlifebcn.org/news/closure-waresley-gransden-woods and wildlifebcn.org/about-us/we-manage-100-nature-reserves/woodland-management for more.