It felt like time for another visit to the tree I’m following today for #30DaysWild. It feels like midsummer under the canopy and the understorey vegetation is changing in response to the changing light. The bluebells really are over now and are setting seed.

Shade-tolerant wood sorrel now covers the woodland floor and bracken and male ferns are nearly unfurled.

New shoots of ivy identify themselves by their fresh, bright green leaves – it’s easy to see how the sycamore’s fissured bark provides a good anchorage for them.

The flowers on the tree are more or less finished now and a few tiny ‘helicopter’ fruits are starting to form. You can still see the cork-screw remains of the stigma down which pollen tubes grew to fertilise the ovules on the youngest helicopters, along with a ring of anthers beneath the developing seeds.

Slightly more mature helicopters have lost the stigma and anthers and you can already see the fault line down which the fruit will eventually split in two.