Ham Lands local nature reserve is located on the bend of the River Thames between Richmond and Kingston. Ham Lands has a rich mix of habitats including woodland, scrub, grassland and wetlands, that contain a wide diversity of plants and animals, including many rare species that are hard to find in London. Its history is fascinating. Check out the Friends of Ham Lands website to find out more and subscribe to the newsletter to find out what's occurring.

As autumn progresses, we have experienced some magnificent colours in the leaves and fruit, from brilliant reds to golden yellows. We have also enjoyed many wonderful blue skies and some amazing sunsets.

The rain has brought new life too.

Some tiny flowers have been popping up, including speedwell, shepherd's purse and stitchwort. These are a precious food source for tiny pollinating insects at this time of year.

We have 46 different types of tree living on Ham Lands. The oldest trees will be the English oaks at a youthful 100-120 years old. The oldest oak in Richmond Park, to compare, is thought to be 750-800 years old.

Some 43 of these tree types are deciduous; this means they shed all their leaves in the winter. The leaves change colour when the energy-containing green chlorophyll is broken down and the components are absorbed and moved to other parts of the tree.

These components become a food store for the winter months and a resource to use for making new flower and leaf buds ready for the next season.

When the transfer is complete the leaves are shed. Leaf-shedding gives the trees some protection from high winds and frosty weather. The three evergreen trees - holly, holm oak and yew - shed their leaves slowly throughout the year.

So what happens to all the shed leaves? What happens to the fallen twigs and the dead branches?

Enter fungi

A part of that story is explained by the amazing world of fungi. We are still discovering what they do, how they live and how they interact. And if you look carefully you will be able to spot some of them.

Some fungi are called saprotropic. These are the fungi that are busy helping to recycle and break down wood and leaves and return precious nutrients to the soil or inside a tree.

Some are called mycorrhizal. These are quite remarkable because most of the time you don't know that they are there, but they have a critical symbiotic relationship with the trees and the plants they live close to.

Most plants, in fact, have a symbiotic relationship with a fungus. Tiny threads under the ground allow the plant or tree to swap carbohydrates from the plant with critical nutrients from the fungus.

The fungus can also help provide the plant with water and can sometimes warn it if there is trouble brewing.

We can see the fruiting bodies of some of these fungi popping up in October and November. This is when you can spot the fairy rings around some trees.

Another type are called parasitic, which can break down weakened parts of trees and even the trees themselves.

Remarkably, there will be hollow spaces inside some trees where fungi will have broken down damaged wood and the tree will have put up a protective barrier to keep the healthy wood alive. These hollows will provide really important habitats for birds, small mammals, reptiles and a huge array of invertebrates. But fungi are only part of the amazing story.

Worms

Critical in the transformation of the autumn leaves back into soil are earthworms.

There are 27 different types of worms in the UK. They don't have lungs or gills but breath through their skin. They have to live in damp humid places. They don't have eyes, just a few photosensitive cells along their backs so that they know if they know if they are in the open and at risk of being eaten by a bird.

Worms are essentially a tube with a mouth at one end and an anus at the other. They suck in decaying organic things like leaves, bodies of small creatures and fungal matter.

You might spot a piece of leaf sticking out of a small hole in the ground that is being pulled down by a worm.

With the help of the soil that was on the things the worms eat, the leaves get ground down in a part of their gut called a crop.

The end result is a fine paste that is eventually excreted.

Some worms leave worm casts on the surface of the soil. Worm casts have been found to be 5x richer in available nitrogen and seven times richer in available phosphate.

Each worm can produce 4-5kg of nutrient rich casts in a year.

Critically worms help aerate the soil, pulling air into the soil as they burrow and creating channels for water to penetrate.

There can be several hundred worms living in a square meter of soil. So the wiggly worms that you may find in your garden or under a log are critical to healthy soil and everything that grows in it.

Other invertebrates enjoy a chew too. Beetles, springtails and so much more will be giving a helping hand. But the critical workers are the fungi and the earthworms.

Conclusion

So if you do have a garden, don't be too tidy.

Leave piles of leaves and twigs. Let the fungi and the worms fertilise your soil and keep it healthy.

Try to keep digging to a minimum so that the mycorrhizal fungi can feed your plants.

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Huge thanks to the Friends of Ham Lands for contributing this fascinating piece.

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