Martin Fone looks into one of the most curious — and curiously named — natural phenomena visible on a country walk in Britain.
A winter woodland walk, an opportunity to admire the deciduous trees’ skeletal frames with their filigree of twigs against the lowering sky, to hear the creaking of the boughs in the wind. Something about a Silver Birch (Betula pendula) catches the eye, five dense, ball-like masses of stunted twigs hanging from its branches. The mind…
