The Orchard Path
The Orchard Path
The Orchard Year
Wassailing usually takes place on January 17th - Old Twelfth Night. It is an old custom (wassail comes from the Anglo Saxon 'wes hal', to be whole, in good health) and it is still celebrated to-day. The idea is to protect the trees from evil spirits and to make sure they produce a plentiful crop in the coming season. The best or oldest tree is chosen to represent them all, and is known as the Apple Tree Man, which is feted as a guardian of the orchard. Cider is poured on the roots, pieces of toast or cake soaked in cider are placed in the fork of the tree or hung from the branches for the robins (spirits of the trees). The tips of the lower branches are drawn down and dipped into a bucket of cider and the tree is toasted with cider and songs.
Then the trees are rapped and a huge din is made to drive away evil spirits and wake the sleeping trees. Buckets are beaten and shot guns fired through the top-most branches. Many believed that if the trees weren't wassailed then there would be no apples.
Although many similarities can be found in the ceremonies and songs, they all differ from place to place. Please tell us of your particular celebrations or songs : email info [at] commonground.org.uk. You might know of a wassailing cup like the Somerset one shown on the left.
Mistletoe looks wonderful on the bare apple, lime and poplar trees in February. It is most common in Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and parts of Somerset. How far east and north have you seen it growing? Please let us know : email info [at] commonground.org.uk
The blossom starts in March or April, with plums and damsons, followed by pears, perry pears and cherries and then by apples throughout April, which can still be out in mid May. The last blossoms are from quince in late April followed by medlars in mid May. A number of places hold Blossom Days, and there is a Blossom Route in Worcestershire. Make your own Blossom Route - buy an O.S. Map. 1:50,000 or more detailed 1:25,000 and walk the rights of way beside the orchards, marked as 
Make a note of the times when your fruit trees blossom, and see if they alter over the years. Is global warming making the trees blossom earlier than usual?
Wild flowers thrive in traditional orchards as do all kinds of wild life from bats to birds, bees and butterflies. Little owls, tawny owls, green, great and lesser spotted woodpeckers, nuthatches, tree creepers, tits, starlings and jackdaws will be looking for nesting holes in old fruit trees. Bumblebees will be out looking for nectar.
From March to June, Wild Fruit Trees are in flower.
The 13th in Westmorland is DAMSON DAY.
Almond, plum cherries and pear blossom is out. See the blossom in the Lyth valley and the wild cherry trees in the Chilterns and the Wye Valley.
Look out for bullfinches after the fruit buds. This beautiful bird, prized as a cage bird by the Victorians, is now in serious decline, having lost some three-quarters of its population in the past 30 years. You can do something to help them. Their preference is for the buds of the Conference pear, then other pears, followed by plum and apple - plant a Conference pear and leave a tenth (a tithe) of the fruit for these elusive birds.
Wild flowers will be appearing now - primroses may have been out for some time. Traditional orchards are particularly good for wild flowers, such as cowslips, early purple orchids, hay rattle, ragged robin, common knapweed, meadow vetchling, bird's foot trefoil, ox-eye daisy, lesser stitchwort, common fleabane and creeing cinquefoil. What is to be found in your orchards?
Look in an orchard around St Mark's Day, 25th April, and you are likely to see many insects including St Mark's Flies, largish black insects drifting lazily about with long legs dangling.
Profusion of apple blossom and wild flowers ... Visit the cobnut plats (plantations) in north Kent - the ground beneath some of them will be covered with wild flowers such as bluebells, cow-wheat, wood anenome, wood sorrel, common spotted orchid, broad-leaved helleborine and primrose.
Seer Green Cherry Pie Fair (Bucks) is traditionally held on June 22nd ... Blue tits, great tits and other birds will be foraging in the trees for codling moth caterpillars and other insects. Traditional orchards will be buzzing with wild life.
Cherries can ripen in late July. Apples ripen between July and December ... Goldfinches, greenfinches and chaffinches will be eating the seeds of Yorkshire fog, common bent, red fescue, crested dog's tail, cocksfoot and other orchard grasses.
Plums ripen during August - September. Pears ripen between August and November. The August Bank Holiday is PERSHORE PLUM DAY at Pershore College, Worcestershire
The first Sunday in August is traditionally Cherry Pie Sunday in Buckinghamshire ... Apple picking begins. Greengages and plums also ready for picking ... From mid-August to October, Kentish cobnuts will be on sale ... Giant puffballs and field mushrooms start appearing.
The first cider apples and perry pears are collected in mid-September ... September 15th is PEAR DAY at Cannon Hall Museum nr Barnsley, Yorkshire.
Bats enjoy eating the insects that feed on over-ripe fruit such as plums. Look out for the serotine, the noctule and long-eared bats as well as the more common species such as the pipistrelle.
"During September 1999 ripe plums inspired a feeding frenzy of butterflies, and on one sunny day I saw seven species in the orchard - coma, large white, painted lady, red admiral, small copper, small tortoiseshell, and speckled wood." James Marsden, Much Marcle, Herefordshire.
Time to make plum jam.
On October 21st APPLE DAY is celebrated up and down the country.
Contact Common Ground for an event near you (email info [at] commonground.org.uk), or make your own celebration at home with some locally grown apples, cheese and cider, or make an apple pie and invite round some friends. Give a friend some apples. Gift boxes of more unusual varieties can be bought - look at the gazetteer for a fruit provider near you.
Windfalls are life-savers for many species of birds and animals. You may see a noisy colourful flock of fieldfares and redwings, hundreds strong perhaps, descend on an orchard full of ripe fruit. Mistle and song thrushes, blackbirds, starlings and jays are particularly fond of them, as are hares, badgers, foxes, hedgehogs and deer.
A few golden apples on the tops of the trees shine in the weak sun. Look out for apple trees along railway lines and motorways, holding onto their fruit.
On the Tuesdays leading up to Christmas there is a Holly, Mistletoe, Wreaths & Christmas Tree Auction at Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire. As traditional orchards are such important places for wild life, we are asking people with orchards to make a diary of the things they see throughout the year. If you are interested in taking part in our orchard observances, please contact Common Ground : email info [at] commonground.org.uk
