... and more meadows ...

Highlights from last week's meadow surveys. Surveyed 10 meadows on a farm in Westgate, Weardale and Alchemilla acutiloba was abundant in 8 of them! The leaf lobes didn't look as distinctive as I expected so I actually recorded it as Alchemilla xanthochlora in the first field and only realised what it was half way through the second field.

Recorded Euphrasia rostkoviana in 2 fields near Wynch Bridge in Teesdale where Margaret Bradshaw's Upper Teesdale Botany Group also found it a couple of weeks ago. In one of the fields it was quite abundant throughout the field.

The absolute highlight of the week was visiting a meadow near Garrigil in South Tynedale with a very large and varied and very species-rich bank in the middle. I didn't have my camera with me so no photos I'm afraid. Linda Robinson discovered the site last year and introduced us to it. We saw 2 spikes of small white orchid which is a very nice plant (for an orchid), also a few Gymnadenia conopsea ssp. borealis. The bank also has Crepis mollis which wasn't flowering and we couldn't find it. We also could not find Alchemilla glomerulans where it was growing last year at the edge of the meadow. Most bizarrely of all was the Vulpia bromoides growing along the top of the bank, probably many miles away from its next nearest site.

Here are some pictures,

John

A typical MG3 community growing on a strem bank within a SSSI meadow in Allendale

Meadow foxtail flowering

rare hay meadow plants

My day-job is working on an upland hay meadow restoration project for the North Pennines AONB. This involves surveying lots of hay meadows between the last week of May and the first week of July. Last year in 133 meadows I didn't find any real rarities, but this year I've already found two in the first week!
I have not attempted to identify Euphrasias up to now but decided to give it a go this year as there are some species that are very good indicators of unimproved meadows. The first Euphrasia I found this year turned out to be E. rostkoviana subsp. montana. Check this link for a distribution map http://www.bsbiatlas.org.uk/map_page.php?spid=797&sppname=Euphrasia%20rostkoviana%20subsp.%20montana&commname=Eyebright. I found this in a meadow near Slaggyford in South Tynedale.
Yesterday while surveying in Allendale I found an Alchemilla with hairs on the upper surface of the leaves, which didn't look right for A. filicaulis. The sinus was almost closed and the bottom lobes pointed upwards - characters typical of A. subcrenata. On closer inspection some of the hairs in the stem and petioles were deflexed and Margaret Bradshaw (the BSBI Alchemilla referee) confirmed that she thought it was A. subcrenata. It had not been found outside of Teesdale and Weardale before so this is a new record for Northumberland. Margaret was the first person to find this species in Britain in 1951 and she is still going strong!

John