#The sheer neglect of wetland is why I committed to the big ShadowClan change early on

[bonefall]

Sorry to bother with my maple tree questions (again), but I was just wondering what books you’d recommend for me to become more familiar with England’s tree ecology? 👀 i… I feel rather silly having to look up “do maple trees / apple trees / insert plant life here exist in northern England” every time I want to talk about the spring flowers :;

But also if I don’t describe the native plant life changing then what am I to write about in the heavy silence that follows awkward questions I just gotta talk about the whirlybird seeds falling a hair too early for the season or I’ll turn into a puddle

A really good intro to the types of flora you'll see in England can be found by visiting Woodlandtrust.org.uk! They do education on woodlands specifically, so I use them a lot when I'm writing about ThunderClan territory.

From there, I take a tree they're talking about and try to read more about it, then use iNaturalist to confirm if it's in my modeled region. There are also times I work backwards, using iNaturalist to browse the sorts of trees and flowers that exist here and learning more about how they got there, and if the cats would have it in their territory.

For the non-woodland biomes, I find Wildlifetrusts.org helpful sometimes. Sadly though, this site is not nearly as well managed as Woodland Trust and there's some dead links, so I find that researching rivers, moorland, and bogs is harder.

I think I've got forest ecology research down to a good science, but the other biomes, I have to tap into my search engine skills. It's probably a symptom of how non-forest biomes kinda tend to get neglected by casual conservationists. LOVE YOUR LOCAL WETLAND, GOD DAMN IT