18 FEBRUARY 1938, Page 17

Woods Transformed

Woodland fires have long been known to produce astonishing transformations in flower-life ; desolation has frequently produced fox-glove and willow-herb as thick as corn where previously fox-glove and willow-herb were hardly known. The thinning out of woods produces something of the same effect and in many thinned-out woods, where previously primrose and bluebell alone grew on a large scale, there has been a lightning increase in the spread of pink carnpion. Slightly taller than the bluebell and flowering at the same time, its petticoat pinkness against the pink-touched blue of the bluebells produces a colour combination that no gardener would attempt but which is at once arresting and right. In another wood, once all larch, with that peculiarly sunless aridity of larch-woods that have gone beyond their prime, I saw a transformation still more remarkable. Cleared of larches, the ground sprang to life. It not only became covered with flowers, from the earliest pools of white violets to the late tangle of teazle and willow-herb that was as tall as a man, but intermediately it gave another surprise. In July it produced, over an area of five or six acres, more wild strawberries than I had ever hoped to see in one place. As large as raspberries, they covered almost every inch of what had once been barren ground. They had the mouth-watering tart lusciousness of those fraises des bois which visitors to France complain they never get at home. H. E. BArEs. [Sir William Beach Thoihas, who is travelling abroad for a few weeks, will resume charge of this pagi on April 8th.]