iWalk Cornwall

The Woodland Trust run a Nature's Calendar website where they ask voluteers to record the first sightings of "indicator" species, and this is also featured on BBC Springwatch. The datasets gathered provide scientists with a better understanding of the climate over time and the differences across the country. Being the furthest south and west part of Britain, Cornwall is often the first place where these indicators appear - or to look at it another way, Spring reaches Cornwall before anyone else! One of the indicator species is hawthorn, which is fairly easy confuse with blackthorn as both have thorns and white flowers which appear in Spring. There are a few things to look for to tell them apart. As a general rule, blackthorn starts flowering on bare stems whereas hawthorn has leaves before it flowers but as you can see here the blackthorn can put on some leaf pretty fast in the sunshine to make that distinction trickier. The colour of the pollen is quite a goo