Page 22 - Wildlife News December 2015
P. 22
Meadow comeback
Since 2013 the Coronation Meadows project has created 62 locally-seeded wildflower meadows.
Cumbria Wildlife Trust It’s a warm summer evening and you’re maintained the traditional pattern of hay It’s these precious fragments, these
doing something you’ve not done making, cutting the grass in late summer jewels in the landscape, that contain hope
since you were a child – lying down in once the flowers have set seed, and then for the future. The Coronation Meadows
a flower-rich meadow. All around you grazing hard with livestock until late project, launched by HRH The Prince of
grasshoppers are chirping, bees are winter. Although these fields are small – Wales to celebrate the 60th anniversary
bumbling and overhead the song of the about two hectares on average – their long of the Queen’s Coronation, aims to halt
skylark rises and falls. The air is warm with history of continual management means the tide of continuing meadow loss by
the scent of flowers: sweet floral tones they are exceptionally rich in wildlife. realising the Prince’s vision to create new
from clover and vanilla from the orchids. Every meadow is different, though. meadows in every county of the UK.
Butterflies flit between the blooms, a soft Each species of flower is a thread The idea is that donor Coronation
mist of buttercups punctuated by pink and the tapestry they weave is as Meadows provide seed to create or
ragged-robin. multicoloured and diverse as any fabric. restore receptor meadows in the same
But this scene is now incredibly This is really what makes these ancient county. This is done by taking a crop of
rare. Over 97% of wildflower meadows meadows so special, giving them local green hay, or seed collected using a brush
have been lost since the 1930s – nearly character and identity. It’s what makes a harvester, and scattering it on specially
7.5 million acres – and with them have Carmarthenshire meadow, with butterfly prepared ground.
gone our experiences of what these orchids and whorled caraway, different The process is slightly tricky – you have
astonishing places are like. from an Oxfordshire meadow with snake’s- to juggle the weather, the hay cut and
Fortunately, tiny fragments of ancient head fritillaries and cowslips, or an Argyll transporting the seed to the receptor site
wildflower meadow survive. Scattered meadow with frog orchids and wood- immediately so that it doesn’t heat up and
across Britain, a few farmers have bitter vetch. cook the seed – but it works beautifully.
It’s these precious fragments,
the jewels in the landscape,
that contain hope for the future
Trevor Dines Wildlife news: national
Plantlife’s Botanical
Specialist has been
finding and
mapping wild
plants for more
than 30 years.
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