Bracken is rapidly changing colour. On many hillsides, long swaths of it are already pale brown in the sunshine, turning darker in the rain. However, there are patches where the fronds are still orange and purple, or even green, and in the middle of a brown stretch, bright jade-green nettles often break through. At the edge of the bracken there may be a line of tall stems of rosebay willowherb, all fluffy with seed. The dead bracken will form roofs under which wrens will live in the winter.
Male fern is still mostly green. (This is the plant’s name, not its gender — there is also a lady fern to which the same applies.) Its long, narrow fronds spring up side by side and spread out like a fountain. Sometimes a woodland bank is covered with these fountains, all a little way apart. Some fronds are yellowing and beginning to topple, but many of them will be sprawling about, still green, when the new ones shoot up in the spring.