Hitchin Cemetery Oct - Dec 2023

 

Hitchin Cemetery October - December 2023

The back end of the year seemed a little wetter than average and various fungi were seen pushing up through the grass including many conventional parasol-shaped ones and also puff balls, which eject their spores from a little hole on top when hit by raindrops. Some of the cemetery fungi such as Parrot Waxcaps (not shown) are indicators of a good meadows which have been kept free from fertilizers, insecticides & weed-killers.

 

Late insects were taking advantage of the cemetery well in to November, such a Southern Oak Bush Cricket, found resting on a Beech tree trunk with its very long antennae (tricky to see in the photo). Also spotted was a very tiny Bark Louse found under a leaf, this is the sort of insect found in abundance but so small they are difficult for us humans to see and are the type of food that birds search for under fallen leaves all through the winter. 

The seven bird boxes which were installed earlier in the year were checked and cleaned and three were found to have been occupied & we maybe need to assess whether the unused ones could be put in better positions.

The normal jobs undertaken by the cemetery volunteers include lots of general tidying, hedge-trimming, pruning and weeding of graves. Sometimes a bit of a bigger project is to clear a grave, in this case of William and Mildred Hitchcock-Spencer, which is in danger of getting lost in the long grass. This grave is near the Cemetery Lodge where a considerable effort was made re-align the edge stones and seed with wildflowers. 

 

 

Another job was to clear the pine needles away from a footpath and lift grass cuttings from meadow areas where they had been missed: removing the hay helps improve reduce the soil fertility which, perhaps paradoxically, the helps the wild flowers to thrive.  

 

During 2023 there were four cemetery tours which help spread the word about what a fascinating and important place this is. We attracted 134 people and for the 2024 tours we will need to find a way of restricting numbers as they are proving too popular!

A final event of the year on 30th December saw the cemetery act as the start and finish point for a New Year Plant Hunt where the challenge is to spot as many plants in flower within a three hour window. Fourteen eager spotters took part including one of the three Hertfordshire Flora recorders. With so much expertise available and mild weather being on our side we managed to spot a staggering total of 40 species in flower! Arguably this is not good news as global warming is almost certain to be causing such late flowering.

The volunteers look forward to maintaining the cemetery in 2024, and helping to keep it as a very special place in Hitchin.