The Tuesday tree: a bluebell wood

What a beautiful month this is in the British Isles. It is only as an adult that I have really come to appreciate May. For a school or college student, May means looming exams and no time to appreciate the unfurling beauty of nature. These days, I still feel lucky every year that I have the leisure to look about me and to walk in the woods in this season.

In our part of Scotland, the wild bluebells are almost fully out now. That’s well behind England, but a good week or two ahead of last year, just as everything has been this spring. Our bluebells are not as dense as they sometimes are: in good years, the grass in this woodland is hidden beneath a blue haze. But, scattered amongst the grass and dotted with white stitchwort, they are still a lovely sight.

In one corner of the wood, many of the bluebells are actually pink or white:

while in another, they contrast with the brilliant yellow of broom:

The frequent rain we’ve been having recently – making up for our hot, sunny April – seems to saturate the colours and make the grass an unearthly emerald.

Beneath birds’ nests concealed in the trees, there are little broken eggshells in the grass,

and overhead, the canopy of wet beech leaves is green,

upon green,

upon green.

I wrote a pean to this bluebell wood last year, In the enchanted wood. This is also the wood that featured in its winter starkness in The Tuesday tree: the forest floor.