The other day when we were out walking in the woods my young friend Otis (he's 3) discovered these balls in the woods.
I thought they were oak galls at first but when he took us to the tree he found them under there were hundreds and hundreds of them.
We then thought they were some kind of fungi but they had no roots and are a bit hard.
We went up to the woods for another look this afternoon and to try and solve the mystery but we are non the wiser.
Any ideas? They under a canopy of beech trees, under this old tree stump, in a sloping bit of the woods above Fairfield, a little off the beaten track.
Helen from Ribbon Circus suggested that they may be old ceramic beads for washing wool, left over from our industrial past. I'm beginning to think she is right. It's just that they look like they have been dumped more recently than that...and it's such an odd place to put them.
Strange and interesting.
We saw some good toadstools while we were there.
So purple. Once you'd spotted one, they were suddenly everywhere!
These little guys were cute too.
It's amazing what you can find on the forest floor.
5 comments:
Not to be gross, but perhaps it is rabbit poop? It looks a bit like the picture at the bottom of this page: http://icwdm.org/inspection/BlackBrownDroppings.aspx#pelleted
Hi Hannah,
I have seen clay balls like this used as a kind of mulch when planting succulents - I think it was in the terrific cactus garden at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney. I did a google image search on 'clay balls' and some very similar-looking ones came up - seems like they are used in aquariums and aquaponics too.
They look quite odd in your woods!
Hi Hannah, i think it's expanded clay and somebody put it there :-)
Hello, Hannah! My first association in Bulgarian ("шикалка")turned out to be what you call "oak gall"!... Did you try to break a ball to see its substance?
A mysterious forest you have there, full of autumn wonders!:)
How interesting to find those balls in the wood. :-)
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