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The woods around us consist mostly of ash trees (Fraxinus excelsior), and every autumn we have a few weekends of frantic leaf collecting (particularly frantic around the chicken run). The trees seem to shed leaves at random – one tree

of the seedheads become flimsier and more decrepit. Eventually they collapse, dropping thousands of seeds all over the surrounding area.We have collected thousands and thousands of seeds, some of which are awaiting redistribution and others which have been used

. Grazed by flocks of hardy looking sheep, woolly Highland cattle and the occasional feral goat there are great drifts of meadowsweet and loosestrife interspersed with the seed heads of yellow rattle, tufted rushes and sweeps of heather. The main house

of discomfort: ticks "the size of young crabs", snakes and disease. Eventually he died of, perhaps, diptheria on a rain-soaked hillside. His servant carefully packed up all his stuff, including boots, but threw away all the seeds and specimens that he had