Secret History

Ten practical activities focusing on observation, comparison, and analysis of habitat types:

Here are ten practical activities that turn these historical and biological concepts into "citizen science" projects. These can be done in a local park, a graveyard, or even your own backyard, anywhere in the world.

1. The "Slow-Flower" Survey

Goal: Identify Ancient Woodland Indicators (AWI).

• Action: Find a local patch of woods or a shaded hedgerow. Look for flowers like Bluebells, Wood Anemones, or Primroses.

• Learning: If you find these, you are likely standing on soil that hasn’t been ploughed or disturbed for hundreds of years. You’ve found a remnant of an ancient landscape.

2. The Tree Girth Calculator

Goal: Estimate the age of your local "neighbors."

• Action: Take a tape measure to a large tree. Measure the circumference (girth) at roughly chest height (1.3m).

• Learning: Use the formula: Girth in cm ÷ 2.5 = Estimated Age. Does the age of the tree match the age of the buildings around it, or is the tree a "legacy" survivor?

3. Fungal Ghost Hunting

Goal: Find evidence of trees that are no longer there.

• Action: In autumn, look for mushrooms growing in a grassy area where there are no trees nearby. Use an identification app to see if they are "mycorrhizal" (root-connected).

• Learning: If you find a Birch Bolete in the middle of a lawn with no Birch trees, you’ve found a "fungal ghost"—the underground network is still living off the decaying roots of a tree that died decades ago.

4. Create a "Privacy vs. Prospect" Map

Goal: Understand architectural intent.

• Action: Visit a historic house or public building. Stand at the main entrance or a large window and draw a simple "sightline" to the most attractive feature in the distance.

• Learning: Are there trees blocking that view? If they are evergreens (like Holm Oak or Laurel), they were likely planted later to provide privacy as the area became more crowded.

5. The Bark Rubbing Texture Test

Goal: Compare the "skin" of different eras.

• Action: Take paper and a crayon. Find a very old tree (thick, gnarled bark) and a young tree (smooth or uniform bark). Take rubbings of both.

• Learning: Notice how ancient trees have "muscular" ridges and deep fissures. This texture is a physical record of the tree surviving centuries of storms, droughts, and pests.

6. The "Lawn Audit"

Goal: Measure human impact on biodiversity.

• Action: Stake out a 1-meter square on a perfectly mown lawn and a 1-meter square in a "wild" corner or hedgerow. Count how many different types of plants are in each.

• Learning: You’ll likely find only 2-3 species in the lawn but 10-15 in the wild corner. This shows how "neatness" often erases historical biological diversity.

7. Detective Work with Old Maps

Goal: Spot the "Great Clearing."

• Action: Go to a website like Old Maps Online or your local library. Compare a map from the 1800s to a satellite view of your area today.

• Learning: Look for "Shelter Belts" (lines of trees) that have disappeared. Can you guess why they were removed? Was it for a new road, a housing estate, or to open up a view?

8. The "Economic Tree" Scavenger Hunt

Goal: Identify trees planted for survival, not beauty.

• Action: Look for Sweet Chestnut or Hazel trees. Check if they have been "coppiced" (cut near the base so multiple thin trunks grow out).

• Learning: These were the "hardware stores" of the medieval era. Multiple trunks provided poles for fences, fuel for fires, and nuts for food.

9. Topography Sketching

Goal: See the "Ice Age" bones of your town.

• Action: Find the highest point in your area. Look at the shape of the land—not the buildings. Sketch the "V" of the valleys or the "Flat" of the plateaus.

• Learning: Those shapes were likely formed by massive amounts of meltwater 11,000 years ago. You are looking at the same foundation the mammoths stood on.

10. The "Exotic" Audit

Goal: Trace the history of global plant hunting.

• Action: Identify 5 trees in a local park. Check if they are "native" (Indigenous to your country) or "introduced" (from places like Japan, the Mediterranean, or the Americas).

• Learning: Introduced trees (like the Monterey Pine or Cedar of Lebanon) tell you about a time when your local area became wealthy enough to "import" nature from around the world.