Finding Crab Apples

The Millennium Seed Bank at Kew Gardens preserves millions of different kinds of seeds, focusing on plant life that could be threatened with extinction and plants that would be most useful to us in the future. It’s the biggest plant conservation project in the world, so Isaac and I were super pleased when Jamie, CWT’s senior education officer, gave us the opportunity to be involved in it.

 Our aim was to find the whereabouts of Crab Apples in Edward Mills’ woodland in the Rusland Valley, with a view to going back to collect them and their seeds on a different date. Due to us misunderstanding the map, we walked a lot further than necessary then gave up because we couldn’t see any anywhere - only for Isaac to spot them right next to where we had parked when we returned back to the car!

Seascale Beach Clean with Nugen 

After finding the Crab Apples, we headed over to Seascale for a beach clean organised by Nugen, with some Atkins staff helping too. Despite it being VERY windy thus very difficult to actually keep the litter in the bag, we did manage to collect a lot in just a couple of hours – as well as having a chance for a bit of rock-pooling. (Try to distinguish between Isaac and the boulders in the picture!) We were also joined by the year 6 pupils of Seascale School. 

Overall we collected 60kg of litter, which was 30 full bin bags and 838 peices of plastic.

Isaac

About the authors: Sian and Isaac were Apprentice Conservation Officers with the Trust from September 2016 to spring 2018