We have been overwhelmed with blackberries this year and have eaten many a crumble with these fruits accompanying apples. They grow on very prickly brambles so a walking stick is essential when picking them. They were always part of our diet when I was a boy when we would pick loads of them from the hedgerows. Mother would bottle them in Kilner jars so we could have a treat at Christmas.

We went down to Trehunsey Bridge for a look around and on the road hedge I noticed a group of bracket fungus growing on a tree stump. I climbed up the hedge to photograph them and later identified them as lenzites betulina fungus. This common fungus grows all the year round on the dead or dying wood of broad leafed trees and there are several fungi on this particular stump.

I assume that their hyphae (very fine roots) were present throughout the whole stump and when a tall oak was infected and cut down, the timber would have a pattern on it and became much in demand by furniture and coffin makers. Nearby were several oak leaves that had become home for the spangle gall wasp.

There was a snowberry shrub overhanging the River Tiddy that was a bit difficult to photograph but, on the walk home I came across lots of shrubs growing on the hedgerow. Pink bell–shaped flowers bloom during June and July and they develop into large white berries that persist throughout winter. Only a few of them contain ripe seeds so the shrub spreads mainly by long underground stems.

Their appearance shows that autumn has arrived and the cold, snowy weather will not be far away. The shrub was brought over from America, as a garden plant during the early 1800s and, as usual with introduced plants, it soon escaped into the wilds and can be seen on hedges and in thickets everywhere.

I read in a Sunday newspaper that due to our cold, windy weather horse chestnut trees have dropped their fruits, commonly called conkers, early. Once on the ground they harden and will be unsuitable for the World Conker Championship to be held this month in Northants. Apparently, they will be too hard to be safely used by competitors.

I wondered why we used to litter the playground at Landrake School, as practically all the pupils, girls as well as boys, played conkers with what I have now learned were bullet–hard nuts that would explode into tiny fragments when hit hard enough to be ‘kinged’. None of us wore goggles to protect our eyes, but the competitors in the championships, if they can find enough soft nuts, will no doubt be wearing them.

A large armoured insect was perched on the bench in the garden. I recognised it as a weevil, more commonly called a hazel weevil as it bores though the husk of an embryo hazel nut to lay an egg. The resultant larva feeds on the developing nut until it falls to the ground in autumn. When you pick up an hazel nut to eat ‘on the hoof’ whilst out walking you might find one that is inedible because it tastes horrible and contains a larva.