Mawnan church was originally built in 1231. It was restored in Victorian times and when the north wall was rebuilt in 1827, the remains of a former church building and fragments of carved stone were discovered.
The Latin name of the buttercup, Ranunculus, means "little frog" and said to be because the plants like wet conditions. It is thought it may have come via a derogatory name for people who lived near marshes!
During winter, from November to March, winter heliotrope is visible along the edges of roads and paths as carpets of rounded heart-shaped leaves.
Despite only having the male form in the UK (is and therefore unable to produce seeds), it can spread vegetatively through its network of underground roots. A small fragment of root can give rise to a new plant which allows it to colonise new locations. Within less than 30 years of its introduction it had been recorded in the wild in Middlesex. Roughly a century later it has become one of the most common plants along roads and bridleways in Cornwall.
Fungi are often most noticeable when fruiting, either as mushrooms or as moulds but their main part is a network made up of thin branching threads that can run through soil, leaf litter, wood and even living plant tissue.
Holly is able to adapt to a range of conditions but prefers moist ground. It is very tolerant of shade and can grow as a thicket of bushes underneath larger trees. However, given the right conditions, holly trees can grow up to 80ft tall!
The Helford creeks are formed from an ancient river valley that has been flooded by rising sea levels. In total, seven creeks (Ponsontuel Creek, Mawgan Creek, Polpenwith Creek, Polwheveral Creek, Frenchman's Creek, Port Navas Creek, and Gillan Creek) connect to the main Helford River inlet between the headlands of Nare Point and Rosemullion Head. The creeks are an important area of marine conservation and contain eelgrass which provides a habitat for a variety of wildlife including seahorses.
The dandelion-like flowers along the coast are most likely to be catsear, also known as false dandelion. Catsear is very salt tolerant, not only growing along the coast but actually in sand dunes. The easiest way to recognise it is by the hairy leaves, hence the name. If you can cope with the texture, the leaves are edible and are much less bitter than dandelion leaves.
Another way to tell them apart is when they are flowering. Although dandelion flowers over quite a long period, the most profuse flowering is in April and May whereas catsear's intense flowering period is in late June and through July. Catsear has neater flowers than dandelion with squarer edges to the petals (but still toothed). The stems supporting the flowers are also solid, in contrast with the hollow stem of the dandelion.
The Ramblers Association and National Farmers Union suggest some "dos and don'ts" for walkers which we've collated with some info from the local Countryside Access Team.
Do
Don't
Roughly a third of the way along the right hedge, a small path leads down to Prisk Cove.
Prisk Cove lies just outside the mouth of the Helford River. There is a shingle beach at all states of the tide. As the tide goes out, larger pebbles and areas of rock are revealed. At low tide, part of a reef is uncovered that runs along the side of Rosemullion Head. The sheltered corner between the beach and headland allows a diverse range of seaweeds to thrive and these provide food and shelter for other marine life.
Both the flowers and leaves of the common daisy are edible and are high in Vitamin C but the flavour is bitter and medicinal so they are unlikely to appear on the menu of many restaurants.
The first record of the name Rosemullion was in 1318 when it was written rosemylian. The name is thought to be from the Cornish words ros (meaning promontory) and mellyon (meaning clover).
In Jan 1940 after a mine sweep, the Canoni River - an oil tanker of over 7,000 tons - left Falmouth harbour to carry out engine sea trials . To everyone's surprise she hit a German mine and sank within an hour. It was quickly worked out that the mine was laid close inshore by a German submarine just after the minesweep was completed. The submarine was capable of laying 9 mines and the remaining mines were found and detonated. The Navy realised that the submarine had used the light on the Manacles buoy to navigate into the shallow water in Falmouth Bay at night and so the buoy was extinguished for the rest of the war.
Foxgloves have a life cycle which spans two years. The seeds germinate in spring and during their first year they produce a "rosette" of large, velvety green leaves with toothed edges. These are particularly noticeable from October onwards once other vegetation has died back. The leafy foxglove plants remain dormant throughout the winter, ready for a quick start in the spring.
In October 1940, the coaster Jersey Queen suffered an aerial attack with machine gun and cannon fire, and incendiary bombs on its way through the Irish Sea. Two of the crew were injured but the incendiary bombs slipped off the hull into the sea preventing any major damage. Two days later, she struck an acoustic mine in Cornish waters and sank in Falmouth Bay with the loss of two crew. When the mine detonated, the captain was knocked unconscious but was pulled from the water by one of the crew. Despite suffering attacks on two subsequent ships he captained, he survived the war and was awarded an MBE for his service.
Wild garlic can be preserved as a frozen paste for use as a cooking ingredient throughout the year. Simply whizz up roughly chopped leaves in a food processor with enough olive oil to make a fairly thick paste and then freeze this in an ice cube tray (or slightly larger silicone moulds if you have them). Standard cooking olive oil will do for this (it's a waste to use extra-virgin as the powerful garlic will mask its flavour). Turn out the frozen blocks into a bag and keep in the freezer. They can then be used as garlic "stock cubes", added just before the end of cooking.
The beach (in particular the more sandy area a little further along the coast path) is known as Bream Cove. In Cornwall, bream seem to be most common on the southern part of Channel coast around here and the Roseland.
The name "bream" is confusingly used for unrelated fish.
"bream" on its own is normally applied to a freshwater fish of the carp family, sometimes qualified as "freshwater bream" or less usefully as "common bream". This is often stocked in lakes for sport fishing.
"sea bream" is a very loose term used to cover over 100 species of marine fish. Many are warmer water fish which is why Cornwall is the main place in the UK they have been caught. The most common (and likely to be sold in supermarkets or restaurants) are black bream and red bream but at least 5 other species are also caught, gilthead bream being perhaps the next most common in Cornwall. Some of these species are on the increase in southern UK waters, most likely as a result of global warming.
During late winter or early spring, if you encounter a patch of plants with white bell-shaped flowers, smelling strongly of onions, and with long, narrow leaves then they are likely to be three-cornered leeks. Once you're familiar with their narrow, ridged leaves, you'll be able to spot these emerging from late October onwards.
Three-cornered leeks are sometimes confused with wild garlic. This is not surprising as they are part of the onion/garlic family, many of which have white flowers. However, "wild garlic" is normally reserved for their broader-leaved cousin (also known as "ramsons") which smells and tastes of garlic, whereas three-cornered leeks smell more of onion and taste more like chives. It's a relatively subtle distinction since both plants are "oniony" and edible.
The leaves of ramsons are also softer whereas the slightly sturdier and much more slender leaves of 3-cornered leeks has earned them the "leek" name. However, this is a bit of an overstretch as the leaves are nowhere near as tough as (wild or domesticated) leek leaves.
Nansidwell Manor is a grade II-listed property which was converted to a hotel in 1938 but later reverted back to a private house. The manor and several nearby houses were purchased in 2007 by a land management company, which is reported to have been owned by a Russian oligarch who was formerly a university professor and went on to found a gold mining company. Nansidwell was recorded in 1540 as Nansudwall. Apart from "nans", meaning "valley", the rest is thought to be based on a personal name from the mediaeval period.
As you might guess from the name, Mawnan Smith began as a blacksmiths. This was located on the crossing of two ancient tracks which are now the roads that cross in the village. The first record of the "smith at Mawnan" is from 1645 during the Civil War. By 1888, Mawnan Smith had grown into a village with a pub, school, post office and 2 places of worship.
Carwinion House was built in the 18th Century and during Victorian times, the Rogers family were keen plant hunters, planting many exotic species in the gardens. The property was gifted to the National Trust in 1969 and the Rogers family lived there for another generation as tenants, tending the gardens and creating a nationally important bamboo collection. After Anthony Rogers died, the furnishings from the house and many horticultural items were auctioned off and the National Trust began seeking new tenants in 2014 to renovate the house and tend the gardens, with a view to eventually re-opening the property to the public.
Cow parsley, also known by the more flattering name of Queen Anne's Lace, is a member of the carrot family. Over the last few decades, cow parsley has substantially increased on roadside verges: there is more than half as much again as there was 30 years ago. The reason is thought to be to an increase in soil fertility caused by a few different factors. In the more distant past, verges were grazed or the grass was cut and used for hay. Now when it is cut by mechanical devices, it is left to rot in place forming a "green manure". In the last few decades there has also been an increase in fertilising nitrogen compounds both from farm overspill and from car exhausts. Whilst this extra fertility is good news for cow parsley and also brambles and nettles, it is causing these species to out-compete many other wildflowers along hedgerows.
Bamboo is a member of the grass family. Like grass, it can spread through underground stems. This combined with its dense growth makes it able to out-compete many other species. The largest species of bamboo can grow over 100ft tall!
Bracket fungi are one of the most important groups of fungi responsible for wood decay. This is good for nutrient cycling but less good if you own a forestry plantation. Many bracket fungi begin on living trees and can eventually kill a branch or whole tree by damaging the heartwood and allowing rot to set in. They can continue to live on the dead wood afterwards and a much more diverse range of species of bracket fungi are found in old natural forests with lots of dead wood.
When photographing bluebells, the flowers that look blue to your eye can end up looking purple in photos.
The first thing to check is that your camera isn't on auto white balance as the large amount of blue will cause the camera to shift the white balance towards reds to try to compensate.
Another thing to watch out for is that the camera's light metering will often over-expose the blue slightly to get a reasonable amount of red and green light and the "lost blue" can change the balance of the colours. You can get around this by deliberately under-exposing the photo (and checking there is no clipping if your camera has a histogram display) and then brightening it afterwards with editing software.
Beech trees can live up to 400 years but the normal range is 150-250 years. Beech trees respond well to pruning and the lifetime of the tree is extended when the tree is pollarded. This was once a common practice and involves cutting all the stems back to a height of about 6ft during the winter when the tree is dormant. The 6ft starting point kept the fresh new growth out of the range of grazing animals. When allowed to grow to full size, a beech tree can reach 80ft tall with a trunk diameter of around 3ft.
Black fungi that resemble lumps of coal are known as coal fungus but also King Alfred cakes due to a legendary baking disaster by the regent. The dried fungus can be used with a flint as a fire starter - a spark will ignite the inside which glows like a piece of charcoal and can be used to light dry grass. There is evidence that prehistoric nomadic tribes used glowing pieces of fungus to transport fire to a new camp.
Primrose seeds are quite large and therefore, due to their weight, don't travel far from the plant. This causes a clump of primroses to spread out very slowly over time and means it takes a long time for primroses to colonise new areas. This makes large carpets of primroses a very good indicator of ancient woodland where they would have had many hundreds of years to spread out.
Ferns evolved a long time before flowering plants and dominated the planet during the Carboniferous period. The bark from tree ferns during this period is thought to have been the main source of the planet's coal reserves.
Porth Sawsen has been recorded as "Porth Saxon" on OS maps since the 1880s but records of Porth Zawsen date from the 1860s. It is thought to be based on a personal name. The beach faces south into the Helford river estuary so it gets the sun throughout the year. The estuary is quite sheltered from sea swells so there isn't much in the way of waves but currents in the river are quite strong, particularly at mid-tide. At high tide the beach is mostly slate pebbles but as the tide goes out there is some grey-gold sand. There is a WW2 pillbox at the left hand end of the beach where the pebbles increase in size to small rocks towards the low tide line.
Honeysuckle flowers appear from June to August and their fragrance is due to a class of chemical compounds known as jasminoids that occur in, as you might have guessed, jasmine but also Ceylon tea. Honeysuckle is the food plant of the White Admiral caterpillar so keep a look for the butterflies in summer.
During the Second World War, about 28,000 concrete fortifications were built across England and around 6,500 of these still survive. The hexagonal blockhouses known as "pillboxes" are assumed by many to have been named after similarly-shaped containers for medical pills. However, commentary on early models during the First World War suggests the origin of the name is actually from "pillar box", based on the slots for machine guns resembling a postbox.
Porthallack is a small, southeast-facing sand and pebble beach near the mouth of the Helford River estuary and the coast path runs along the top of the beach. The proximity to the mouth of the estuary means that more seaweed seems to wash up here after storms than on the beaches further up the river. The beach is named Porthallack from the Cornish words for "willow trees" and "cove". The estuary is quite sheltered from the swell so there isn't much in the way of waves but currents in the river are quite strong, particularly at mid-tide. As the tide goes out, on the left side of the beach the pebbles increase in size to larger rocks.
Sorrel is native to the UK and common in fields and hedgerows. It's salt tolerant so it can often be found on the coast in Cornwall. The leaves resemble small, narrow dock leaves. In summer the plant is often evident in abundance in fields by its red seeds at the top of a tall stalk.
Sorrel is used as a culinary herb in many cuisines and in Cornwall during Victorian times, sorrel was known as "green sauce". Some of the most well-known uses are in soups or as a salad vegetable. In French cuisine it is sometimes used when cooking fish as - similarly to lemon - the acidic juice can soften thin fish bones during cooking.
The second part of the Latin name of red campion - dioica ("two houses") - refers to the plants' gender. Whereas many plants produce male and female parts on the same plant, entire plants are dedicated on one gender or the other in this case. The male plants' flowers can be recognised from five yellow stamens sticking out from a protruding ring in the centre of the petals. The female plants' flowers have no protruding ring and instead have 5 curly white stigmas. These produce a white froth to trap pollen.
Bramble flowers produce a lot of nectar so they attract bees and butterflies which spread the pollen between plants. One study found the bramble flowers as the fifth highest nectar producers out of the 175 species studied. Brimstone and Speckled Wood butterflies are particularly fond of bramble flowers.
To make blackberry wine, combine 2kg blackberries + 4 litres of boiling water in a plastic container with a lid. Once the water has cooled to lukewarm, mash blackberries and add red wine yeast and pectic enzyme (blackberries contain pectin so this is needed to stop the wine being cloudy). Cover for 4-5 days then strain through muslin.
Transfer the liquid to a demijohn and add 1kg of sugar. Top up with a little more water to make it up to a gallon. After fermentation, the wine should clear by itself; in the unlikely event that it doesn't, use some finings. Rack off from the sediment and bottle; it's worth allowing the wine a year or two to mature as it massively improves with age. As a variation, you can add 500g of elderberries and increase the sugar content for a more port-like wine which will need a couple of years longer for the elderberry tannins to mellow out.
Ash trees can live for over 400 years and the life of the tree can be prolonged further by coppicing. Ash was traditionally coppiced to provide wood for firewood and charcoal. It is unusual in that it can be burnt green (without requiring seasoning first) as the living wood has a very low moisture content.
Over 160,000 species of butterfly and moth have been described and nearly 19,000 of these have been found in the UK. Butterflies are effectively a sub-group of moths that fly during the day. They have adaptations for this such as wings that fold flat against each other with a camouflaged underside to help them hide from predators when landed but a patterned upper surface to attract mates during flight. Whilst moths' feathery antennae are highly optimised for an incredibly sensitive sense of smell, butterflies can make use of vision so their antennae are more streamlined and are also used to measure air temperature.
Sycamores like moist soil and the young trees need a lot of water (equivalent to an inch of rain per week) to get established. For this reason, sycamores are very often found along streams or in low-lying meadows that collect water. Once their roots grow deep enough, the mature trees can withstand drought by tapping into underground moisture.
A glebe was an area of land used to support the parish priest (in addition to a residence in the form of a parsonage or rectory). Occasionally the glebe included an entire farm. It was typically donated by the lord of the manor or cobbled together from several donated pieces of land.
The "National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty" was founded in 1895 when snappy names weren't in fashion. Their first coastal acquisition was Barras Nose at Tintagel in 1897. Five years later, Tintagel Old Post Office was their first house to be acquired in Cornwall. The National Trust now owns over 700 miles of British coastline.
The National Trust now has over 4 million members and is the largest voluntary conservation organisation in Europe. In the UK, the National Trust has more members than all the political parties combined and the only organisation currently larger at the time of writing is the AA.
National Trust cafés serve around 4.5 million cups of tea per year which is enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool.
The National Trust owns 250,000 hectares of land, of which 10% is currently woodland. The organisation has made a commitment to increase this to 17% by 2030 by planting 20 million trees.
The National Trust is the largest owner of farms in the UK. It has around 2,000 tenants and over 600,000 acres of land. It has been calculated that 43% of all the rainwater in England and Wales drains through National Trust land.
The National Trust maintains a network of around 15,000 miles of paths on their land, roughly a quarter of which are public rights of way and the remaining majority are permissive paths.
Rockpool fishing is quite a popular childhood pass-time as a number of species can be lured out from hiding places by a limpet tied on a piece of cotton (leave a trailing end as if anything swallows the limpet, very gently pulling both ends of the cotton will cause it to release the cotton-tied limpet from its gullet). If you are intending to put the creatures into a bucket: ensure it is large, filled with fresh seawater and kept in the shade; ideally place in a couple of rocks for the creatures to hide under; do not leave them in there more than a couple of hours or they will exhaust their oxygen supply; ensure you release them into one of the rockpools from which you caught them, preferably a large one (carefully removing any rocks from your bucket first to avoid squashing them). Species you're likely to encounter are:
Gorse is a legume, related to peas and like other members of the pea family it's able to get its nitrogen from the air. It's also tolerant to heavy metals in the soil and to salt. This makes it able to grow in Cornwall's harshest environments: moorland, coast and mine waste tips.
Like other members of the pea family, gorse produces its seeds in pods. The seeds are ejected with a popping sound when pods split open in hot weather. This can catapult the seeds up to five metres. The plants are able to live 30 years and survive sub-zero temperatures, the seeds can withstand fire and remain viable in the soil for 30 years.
Gorse seeds each contain a small body of ant food. The seeds also release a chemical which attracts ants from some distance away. The ants carry the seeds to their nests, eat the ant food and then discard the seeds, helping them to disperse.
The seeds of common gorse are the source of the chemical used to identify people with the rare "hh" blood group. The red blood cells in the vast majority of people (in blood groups A, B, AB and O) have a material called "H substance" on their surface. It turns out that the chemical extracted from gorse binds remarkably specifically to this and cells from the "hh" blood group (that have no H substance) are left alone.
Gorse is also known (particularly in the Westcountry) as furze from the Middle English word furs. This itself is from the Old English word fyres, closely related to the Old English word for fire.
Before the Industrial Revolution, gorse was valued as a fuel for bread ovens and kilns as it burns rapidly, very hot and with little ash. It was in such demand that there were quite strict rules about how much gorse could be cut on common land.
In more recent times, due to reliance on fossil fuels, this is now out of balance and gorse has increased in rural areas which have been abandoned agriculturally.
As gorse ages, it accumulates more dead material. The spiky, springy nature of the plant even when dead means air can circulate well through the dead material and when this dries out in the summer, it substantially increases the risk of fires. As gorse seeds have evolved to withstand fire, controlled burning can be used to used to keep the gorse at a young age where uncontrolled fires are less likely.
Gorse is present as two species along the Atlantic coast and size is the easiest way to tell them apart: Common Gorse bushes are up to 10ft tall whereas Western Gorse is more of a mat - less than 1ft tall. Common Gorse flowers in spring whereas Western Gorse flowers in late summer - early autumn.
In 2005 a man had to be rescued from a 10ft deep patch of coastal gorse by helicopter. Whilst mountain biking home along the coast from a bar, with the assistance of a not insignificant amount of alcohol, he managed to catapult himself into the bushes where he remained stuck for 2 days before being found by a passer-by. She asked if he needed help, to which he replied "can you ring the RAF?".
Between the two species, some gorse is almost always in flower, hence the old country phrases: "when gorse is out of blossom, kissing's out of fashion" (which is recorded from the mid-19th century) and "when the furze is in bloom, my love's in tune" (which dates from the mid-18th century). Common gorse flowers are bright yellow. Western gorse flowers are very slightly more orange - more like the colour of the "yolk" in a Cadbury's creme egg. Also like creme eggs, gorse flowers are edible but are significantly better for use in salads and to make a tea, beer or wine.
Common gorse flowers have a coconut-like scent but rather than fresh coconut, it is reminiscent of desiccated coconut or the popular brand of surf wax, Mr Zoggs. However, not everyone experiences the smell in the same way: for some people it's very strong and for others it quite weak. One complicating factor is that Western Gorse flowers don't have any scent, so you need to be sniffing a tall gorse plant to test yourself.
Flower scents are volatile organic compounds which drift though the air and has evolved as an advertisement to pollinating insects that nectar is available. Squeezing the flowers releases these compounds onto the surface where they can evaporate and therefore intensifies the smell. Similarly the warming effect of sunlight helps the compounds to evaporate faster and so the smell is more intense on sunny days.
Gorse flower wine can be made using 5 litres of gorse flowers stripped from the stems and simmering these in 5 litres of boiling water. Once the flowers are removed, 1.3kg of sugar should be dissolved in the hot water and allowed to cool to room temperature. Then add 500g of chopped raisins and juice and zest of 2 lemons and ferment with white wine yeast and yeast nutrient. Although flowers are present year-round, they are best picked in spring (April and May) when they are most profuse and fragrant.
Seaweeds are algae and rely on sunlight to produce energy via photosynthesis in the way terrestrial plants do; they therefore thrive in shallow water where the sunlight penetrates. On the shoreline, you're likely to see brown bladderwrack and red dulse on exposed rocks; within rockpools, green sea lettuces and red coral-like seaweeds. At very low tides, or if you wade into the water beside rocks, brown ribbon-like kelp is common, which is a favourite hiding place for many fish such as bass, pollack and wrasse.
No seaweeds are known to be poisonous and several are eaten raw, cooked or dried. Seaweed is quite rich in iodine which is an essential mineral, but in very large doses is toxic, so excessive consumption are not recommended. A number of food additives such as alginates, agar and carrageenan are produced from seaweed and used as gelling agents and emulsifiers in many processed foods.
The large black birds nesting on offshore rocks, known colloquially as the cormorant and shag, are two birds of the same family and to the untrained eye look pretty similar. The origin of the name "shag" is a crest that this species has on top of its head and the cormorant doesn't. The cormorant is the larger of the two birds with a whiter throat. The shag's throat is yellow, and mature shags have a metallic green sheen on their feathers which cormorants lack.
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