... and there in a wood a piggywig stood

 

Beech trees and pignuts in the Dell

The Dell is one of my favourite spots. A little wood along the banks of a burn, mostly beech and ash trees, it was almost certainly planted in times when the estate and farms surrounding it would have been self sufficient in raw materials. Ash for tool handles, building and fuel, beech for pannage, fodder for pigs.

Others appreciate the quietude of the Dell

 Pigs thrive in woodland especially on beech mast. I've no doubt that the wood was planted more than a century ago with pigs in mind.

The reason I'm so sure is the abundance of pig-nut, conpodium majus, growing on the woodland floor.

Conopodium majus

 They are a fairly common plant, an indicator of long established grasslands.

The delicate leaf fronds and the creamy white flower heads are not what the pigs like. It is the nut or tuber at the end of the long root that is so attractive. At one time country folk especially children would dig up the nuts to eat. They are a bit like hazel nuts or sweet chestnuts to eat but, as they aren't nuts, they have no hard shell. They seem to be a sort of tuber

The  pig nut or the earth nut

Their presence was probably the reason for the planting of beech trees in the Dell. Unlike ash, beech don't spread seed easily and are usually a deliberate planting. Someone thought, "add the beech to the pig nuts and we've got a great place for pigs to forage and fatten for free"

Pig-nuts or earth-nuts are sometimes called St Anthony's nuts after the patron saint of swineherds!

Now the local pigs have a much more organised lifestyle. They still live out with their offspring in amenable surroundings but they have a diet of concentrated food pellets from hoppers to ensure a predictable end product.

There is one little day-flying moth that relies entirely on the pig-nut for food for its caterpillars. The chimney sweeper moth is black with white edges to its wings. There were none flying the day I was there but they do prefer bright sunshine, a commodity in short supply of late.

There are no pigs rooting about in the Dell now but that does leave more pignuts for the chimney sweepers

 Shakespeare must have grubbed up pig nuts as a child for he understood the difficulty of finding them at the end of the long, easily broken root

"I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow; and I with my long nails will dig thee pignuts"*

Crab apples or scrogs as the Scots would call them were also planted where the pig-nuts grew to provide food for pigs.

*  Caliban in The Tempest.