Reasons to do nothing

There's a strong temptation to tidy up the garden in autumn, cutting down old flower stems and raking up all the leaves, but there are rewards for doing nothing. 

One is that seed heads provide food for garden birds in autumn.

Another is that dead leaves and flowers can be incredibly beautiful after their soft tissues have rotted away, leaving only the veins that conducted water and sugars through them when they were alive. Our recent wet, mild autumn and winter have been particularly good at revealing these botanical skeletons.

These are the exquisitely skeletonised bracts of an Astrantia flower, that I spotted in our garden today.

Giant bellflower seed capsules

Two skeleton leaves

The seed capsule and bracts of henbane

Flower bracts of Hydrangea

Skeletons.....

I threw these old seed heads of henbane Hyoscyamus niger on the compost heap back in the autumn and since then winter weather and fungal decay have done their work, reducing them to skeletons and revealing their complex network of veins.

More skeletonised plants here

Skeleton leaf

I found this almost intact skeleton leaf when it was raking up the leaves from under the hedge. The network of smaller and smaller veins is the plant's amazing distribution and collection system for the living cells in the leaf - water carried outwards via the xylem to the outer reaches of the leaf then sugars, made by photosynthesis in the leaf cell chloroplasts, carried back into the plant. A wondwerful example of the beauty of the functional in nature...

Ghosts of 2009..

Down amongst the dead leaves left over from last autumn lie the skeletal remains of last summer's wild flowers. We found this partially decayed seed head of giant bellflower Campanula latifolia in the woodland beside the old railway line that leads to the Nine Arches viaduct in the Derwentside Country Park , where the green shoots of this year's plants are already beginning to sprout.

All the softer tissues in the seed capsules have rotted away, leaving the network of tough-walled xylem vessels - the internal plumbing system that that supplied the developing seeds with water. Double-click for larger, clearer images.