Saving wildlife with fields of peas and beans

Dr Trevor Dines
Plantlife Botanical Specialist

It’s not often that I’m rendered utterly speechless by Defra, but last week I struggled to make sense of what I was reading. I genuinely checked that the date wasn’t April 1st. Defra has announced that farmers can now receive public money, originally intended to conserve farm wildlife, for growing crops of peas and beans. The idea is that this will help pollinators.

As I read Roger Harrabins BBC article it got worse. While acknowledging the lack of biodiversity compared to pasture, the National Farmers Union actually provided the following quote: “Anyone with broad beans in their garden will see they are full of pollinators at the moment. Wildflower meadows tend to have quite a limited flowering season but some legumes are flowering from April to June, and others much later in summer. We think including this measure is very positive for the environment."

We think Defra and NFU need to visit a wildflower meadow. This decision clearly demonstrates the lack of understanding that Defra and NFU have of farmland wildlife, a disconnect with the reality of nature and ecology. Just to put the record straight:

• Many wildflower meadows begin their provision of nectar and pollen in February and March with flowers such as primroses, violets and celandines . The supply peaks in June and July and continues into September and beyond with late-flowering knapweed (Centaurea nigra), betony (Stachys officinalis) and devil’s-bit scabious (Succisa pratensis). I’d call it a good and varied diet over a very long season indeed. 
• Research indicates that not many pollinators will actually benefit from peas and beans. In her excellent blog on nectar provision by legumes, Lynn Dicks shows that while bumblebees might benefit from beans for a short period, solitary bees are unable to feed from the chunky flowers. For peas, there is less evidence, but some studies show that solitary bees don’t find related clover and alfalfa crops particularly attractive either.
• A meadow sustains a wide range of important pollinators, such as butterflies and moths, beetles, wasps, hoverflies and other flies. Despite the focus of attention at the moment, it’s not just all about the bees. This is a simple ecological lesson; maybe Defra and NFU should study Buglife’s Pollinator Identification Chart.
• It’s also about plants providing food for invertebrates. A field of peas or beans will support just over 40 invertebrate species. A meadow with just nine of the most common meadow flowers, like bird’s-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus), red clover (Trifolium pratense), knapweed and Yorkshire fog (Holcus lanatus), can support over ten times this number (422 in total). And remember, all these inverts are what farmland birds feed on; it’s about sustaining the complete food chain from the roots up. 
• With no restrictions on the use of pesticides and fertilizers on these crops, these chemicals can be freely applied with consequent effects on wildlife.  So even those 40 invertebrate species are likely to be wiped out, while the fertilizer will scupper any chance for cornfield flowers, like nectar and pollen rich poppies and dead nettles, to grow amongst the crop, further reducing benefits to wildlife. 

The Government's own biodiversity strategy is about the multiple benefits that intact, semi-natural habitats can bring in providing a range of 'ecosystem services'. But Defra are failing to appreciate these benefits. Instead, they seem to be focusing solely on pollinating bumblebees and providing them with a quick, cheap, sugar rush. A bee will feed on a bean flower in the same way that you and I might occasionally eat a MacDonalds, but that’s not a healthy, long-term solution to declining farmland wildlife. And, of course, it does nothing at all for Britain’s declining wild flowers.

The decision also turns back the clock to the headage payments and crop subsidies of yesteryear, something that the government is meant to be moving away from. Since peas and beans are a crop, taxpayers money will directly supplement farm income, rather than supporting wildlife in the public good.

In order to get maximum value from public money, Defra must place the focus of CAP reform back on to semi-natural habitats with their constituent species and the diversity of these habitats in the farmed landscape. This aim should be underpinned with good, evidence-based habitat management. Habitat restoration can’t be rushed, there are no quick fixes, and it should be done with the wild in mind; naturally regenerating set-aside fields can have three times as many nesting bee species as clover fields and arable field margins come from soil seed banks, not from seed packets.  

How any right thinking person can accept that an intensively farmed crop is as good for wildlife as a meadow bursting with wild flowers and alive with all of its attendant birds, butterflies and bees is a bit scary.  There are many alternative and ecologically rigorous measures that could be put in place, perhaps as part of a National Certification Scheme, including ecological set-aside, creation of "buffer zones" for high nature value areas, management of uncultivated strips and field margins and conversion of arable land into extensive low-input grassland. All of these will allow our wild plants to do their thing, bringing colour back to the countryside and ultimately providing food and shelter for all our other farmland wildlife.

We ask that Defra reconsider this decision.

Why Our Road Verge Wildflowers are Worth Saving for Wildlife

Andy Byfield
Landscape Conservation Manager





For a few short weeks in May, the great outdoors turns a vibrant, almost claustrophobic green.  Oak, beech and sycamore are in fresh young leaf, whilst the grasses of pastureland and arable field alike seemingly burgeon before our very eyes.  With so much herbage all around, the environment should be in fine fettle, yet so often those same green fields are largely devoid of wildlife, save for a fine sward of ryegrass, and the occasional weed in a gateway.  Their former life and colour has literally been swamped by the repeated dosing of fertilisers and weedkillers.

At the same time, our best road verges give an inkling of just how colourful our countryside used to be. Down here in the south-west of England, a ‘technicolour dreamcoat’ of bluebell, red campion, greater stitchwort, buttercup and early purple orchid are at their glorious best as I write these words, and as the season progresses, so these will be replaced in turn by marsh orchid, ox-eye daisy and much else.  In fact, our verges can be seen as a microcosm of Britain’s hugely varied habitats and landscapes, providing dry and wet rocky outcrop, fine turf,heath, scrub and woodland, often in surprisingly short succession.

Thus verges in Hampshire harbour gleaming long-leaved helleborines and other woodlanders, mimicking the vegetation of nearby woodland; in East Anglia, the likes of rarities such as field wormwood, grape hyacinth and perennial knawel on Breckland verges are a reminder of the summer-dry continental climate of this peculiar corner of England; whilst globeflower, melancholy thistle and wood cranesbill crammed verges of northern England and Scotland are a glimpse of the former glory of our lost upland haymeadows. Apparently, roughly two-thirds of our flowering plants crop up somewhere or other along a wayside.  Its a sad fact, but as the wider countryside has lost its meadows and heathlands, so our verges become an ever more important haven for plants and animals, the unofficial nature reserves of cliché.

Of course, in the distant past – before my time even! – wayside verges were grazed by livestock and doubtless cut as a bonus crop of hay, yet in the sixties and seventies, I remember when the exuberant May-time verge-side herbage were routinely ‘dampened’ with a liberal dose of weedkiller.  In more enlightened times, the sprays have largely gone and the conservation movement has been effective in identifying special stretches as protected verges, perhaps to conserve some rare butterfly or orchid, or a particularly flowery grassland.  These latter efforts have unquestionably saved some of our finest surviving verge habitat, but it seems to me that the time has come to make sure that all verges are managed sympathetically, not just the best.  After all, the 2013 State of Nature report showed that 60% of our rarer plants and animals continue to decline, confirming the findings of Defra’s 2010 review of England’s wildlife sites, Making space for nature.

In it, the panel’s chair, Professor Sir John Lawton, commented that there “is compelling evidence that England’s collection of wildlife sites are generally too small and too isolated, leading to declines in many of England’s characteristic species”. According to Lawton, the solution lies in ‘bigger, better and more joined-up’ habitats for biodiversity, recognising the real benefits that ecological corridors could have in allowing nature to thrive.  I cannot think of any way of linking our landscapes together, than bringing good management to our stock of road verges.

The area of vergeland habitat in Britain is equivalent to the area of the Public Forest Estate in England – a thrillingly large resource if managed properly.  And there is plenty of evidence that with good management, verges can rapidly develop stunning, flower-rich habitats, with a bounty of insect life in tow, in a surprisingly short time under such management.

True, the budgets available to our highways authorities – the Highways Agency and the county councils – is more restricted than ever before, but sympathetic management could involve as little as shifting the mowing dates by just a few weeks.  It is great that Plantlife is relaunching its road verge campaign this month – and we’d love it if you join our campaign, alongside our generous celebrities, in encouraging our councils to cherish this invaluable wildlife resource.

Useful links:

• Plantlife Road Verge Campaign

Save Our Magnificent Meadows

Posted by Nicola Hutchinson, Head of Conservation Programmes, England and Wales.

If you happen to see fireworks around the Plantlife HQ it isn’t just because of we like to celebrate the Chinese New Year – it’s because the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has this past week agreed to fund a grassland programme of unrivalled scale.  It is the first time that the HLF's UK committee has considered a natural heritage bid - usually environment projects are decided on by HLF at regional level - so this is totally new territory for the HLF, and for Plantlife, and a resounding achievement for the hard work over several years that goes into submitting a bid of this ambition.

Save Our Magnificent Meadows is a £3million programme of meadow and other grassland conservation, with community and people engagement at its heart, to be delivered across the UK.  It is headed up by Plantlife, with the following partners: Ulster Wildlife Trust, RSPB Scotland, Scottish Wildlife Trust, Northumberland Wildlife Trust, National Trust in Wales, Cotswolds Conservation Board, Somerset Wildlife Trust, RSPB in Wiltshire, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, and the Medway Valley Countryside Partnership (Kent CC). The project partners are a mighty bunch who have worked long and hard to work out the best approach to the most important grassland needs in their areas, and we are all thrilled.  For the conservation of grassland plants and other wildlife this is incredible news. It is an amazing opportunity for our grassland wildlife, so often the 'Cinderellas of the conservation world' - talked about in terms of extreme loss and decline but often overlooked in the wake of higher profile habitats such as woodlands and wetlands. This time they have a chance to go to the Ball!

The key to Save our Magnificent Meadows is that it isn't simply a series of independent local projects, rather there is a strong nationwide programme of activities to link local activities and to take the message as wide as possible.  The project has received £2.1million from the HLF and will begin in Spring 2014 for three years.  We will work with landowners to restore and create wildlife-rich grasslands; we will directly safeguard over 3000 ha of our most vulnerable grassland habitats and influence the management of a further 3000 ha. Crucially, the project will foster greater understanding of the values of meadows and grasslands by landowners, communities and wider society with over 550,000 people expected to participate.

I've spent the past few days spreading the news and thanking the many people who have helped bring this incredible opportunity to life.  My hope is that one day the sights and sounds of wildlife-rich meadows and grasslands will again be a familiar summer experience for the many and not just the few as it sadly is today.

We’ll keep you updated of events as they happen via this blog, our website, Facebook and Twitter.

WILD PLANT OF THE WEEK: Mistletoe.

Commonly sighted at Christmas parties at this time of year, mistletoe can also be seen growing in dense clumps, high up in the branches of trees particularly in orchards and in species like poplar and lime. 

It had a reputation as a magical plant long before Christianity came to the British Isles, however - most famously as a plant favoured by druids whose reverence during the winter solstice was described by Pliny and Caesar. 

• Mistletoe fact page on the Plantlife website
• How to grow your own mistletoe 

LICHEN OF THE WEEK: Cladonia floerkeana

Also known as Redcoats, British Soldier and Devil's Matchstick.

This flamboyant lichen has a fondness for dead wood so rotting logs and fence posts are a good place to look for it. It also grows on well drained soils with lots of organic matter such as those found on heaths and moorland.

More information here.

Image by Ilja Knutman under Creative Commons licence.

Nature Check: Where is Defra The Defender?

Posted by Nicola Hutchinson, Head of Conservation Programmes, England and Wales.

Wildlife and Countryside Link and its members, including Plantlife, today launched its third annual report on the Government's progress against its initial claim to be "the greenest government ever".

In previous years the score card had a distinctly "could do better" feel.  Unfortunately there have been few signs of improvement and indeed in some keys areas, such as the England biodiversity strategy, the situation needs urgent attention.

Biodiversity 2020 was launched as the Government's new wildlife strategy in 2011, yet two years on progress with taking real action is achingly slow.  Defra niftily handed responsibility for 'delivering the strategy' to Natural England and it showed in Lord de Mauley's speech at the Nature Check launch; Defra clearly sees itself at a distance from actual delivery as all the biodiversity progress mentioned was in the form of Agency action.  Yet despite the best efforts of Natural England & Co it is too often the case that the barrier to progress is down to a combination of Government departments, Government resources and Government policy.  So it begs the question what positive strides will Defra itself take in the near future to make a contribution to improving species, habitats and ecosystems?

Nature Check asks for strong leadership and this is where Defra must start.  The Government Department with environment in its title should be an environmental champion.  It should have conserving and enhancing wildlife and the environment as its core purpose. Its programmes and projects should lead by example and put increased wildlife at the heart.  It should draw red lines on environmental matters which will not be crossed (yes, even by you, Treasury).  It should not be an apology for wildlife and the environment.  It should be Defra The Defender.  Have you got what it takes?

A Bumper Year for Blackberries

Posted by Richard Moyse, Ranscombe Farm Reserve Manager

At Plantlife's Ranscombe Farm Reserve, the wood-edges and path-sides are fat with blackberries as the summer draws towards its close. The first fruits are already temptingly glossy and black, while behind them the mass of tight, green unripe berries suggests a bumper harvest yet to come.

It looks like it's going to be a great year for our favourite wild fruit. Perhaps it's just the pleasure of a classic British summer showing us everything through rose-tinted glasses, but I think not. The last year's dullness and wet may have made for poor flowering and fruit production, but it provided good growing conditions for a whole range of wild plants. As a result, when the good weather arrived, there was plenty of energy to put into making flowers.

Earlier in the year, Ranscombe's woodlands were a mass of living colour, as orchids and other flowers had a jamboree. That the brambles were also fit and vigorous was obvious in midsummer, as their prickly, arching stems romped across paths and tracks, making it necessary to be out with the strimmer much earlier than in most years. Brambles are nothing if not mobile: questing stems spread out from the centre of the plant, and, where the stem-tips touch the ground, they root to eventually form a tangled, impenetrable mass.

Impenetrable to us, that is, for the dense, thorny cover is a great place for nesting birds such as wrens and long-tailed tits, as well as for small mammals. Young trees, too, if not completely swamped, can grow up through the bramble patch, safely protected from the predations of deer.

The other key to the mobility of brambles is, of course, the thing we love most about them: blackberries. The sweet, juicy berries (more accurately, a blackberry isn't technically a berry, but an aggregrate of many small fruits called drupelets, each with a single seed) are eaten by blackbirds, thrushes and other birds, which unwittingly carry and eventually pop out the seeds some at distance from the parent plant. The droppings in badger latrine pits are often stained dark at this time of year, as the animals fill themselves with as many blackberries as they can find, and the fruit is also popular with foxes, voles, mice and dormice. Even insects like butterflies and wasps will come to damaged fruit to sip at the juices.

It's known that Neolithic people ate blackberries around 5000 years ago, so going blackberrying to make jam, or blackberry vinegar or (a personal favourite) blackberry and apple pie is continuing a tradition as old - if not older - than any other. Brambles are so widespread in countryside and town that they are available to almost anyone for the price of a pleasant hour and a few scratches. So why not grab a bag or plastic tub and head out to your nearest bramble patch and play a small part in an ancient association between people and an indomitable wild plant?

Counting Orchids in North Wales

Posted by Dr Trevor Dines, Plantlife Cymru Conservation Manager

Last Saturday we held a little event in partnership with

the North Wales Wildlife Trust (NWWT) in the village hall at Clynnog Fawr, just below our Caeau Tan y Bwlch reserve in Gwynedd. The idea was to raise the profile of the reserve amongst the local community. I gave a talk about meadows in general, looking at their sad demise and the species we’ve lost, such as Globeflower, as a result. As Caeau Tan y Bwlch is the Coronation Meadow for Gwynedd I showed some slides from the launch of this project at Highgrove and went on to illustrate the botanical interest at the reserve. Rob Booth from NWWT then gave a talk about management of the reserve, which was followed by tea, cake and sandwiches. We had a great turn-out from the local community, many of whom didn’t know about the reserve. There were also Plantlife members, NWWT members, and we made a few new members too.

In the afternoon, we made our way up to the “fields below the mountain pass” (the translation of the reserve name) for the annual count of Greater Butterfly Orchid (Platanthera chlorantha), the main feature of the reserve. Rob and I were not quite sure how to organise so many volunteers – 26 in total – we’d never had so many before! We started out with a tour of the fields, where I pointed out the main flowers to be found. There were Meadow Buttercups, Heath Spotted Orchids, Yellow Rattle, Northern Marsh Orchid, Eyebrights of various types and Lady’s-mantle. I love the latin name for this last one, Alchemilla, as it means “little alchemist” and was named for the pure water that collects in the leaves, used by alchemists in their attempts to turn base metals into gold.  We also looked at meadow grasses such as Crested Dog’s-tail, Yorkshire Fog and Sweet Vernal Grass, which gives hay its sweet scent.

For the orchid count I organised everyone along the edge of each field an equal distance apart and, with a rather military approach, got them all to “sweep” the meadow in one line, tallying up orchids as they went. It’s always slightly hap-hazard, with some parts of the line getting ahead of the others and some people veering off towards their neighbours. It’s amazing how territorial people get about the orchids they’re meant to count and good-natured arguments always break out.

After a lot of counting and tallying-up, and a bit of bickering, we reached a grand total of 1,982 Greater Butterfly Orchids in all – 450 more than last year. 

I love the way it varies each year. There are eight fields with Butterfly Orchids and each has a different character; some have shorter grass and more orchids, others are damper with more marsh orchids, others have longer grass and fewer flowers. Two fields had more than twice as many Butterfly orchids than last year, another had nearly half as many. The reasons are inexplicable, the wonderful mystery of orchids. 

It was a great day and a big success, especially in getting the local community more involved at the reserve. We need to tackle bracken encroachment within some of the fields, so hopefully we can get some more volunteers to help out with this too.

Trevor

Flowers on the Edge: The Cutting Edge

Its been three weeks since we launched our 'Flowers on the Edge' campaign to help save our road verges and the wildlife they support and the response has been immense.

We've received almost two and a half thousand signatures on our petition so far and it seems your voice has been heard - councils have been contacting us, asking for guidance on how to improve their mowing practices and help conserve our road verge wildlife.

Thank you also for all your stories and photos. We've received too many to print here, but we can provide a taste. First of all, a classic example of what we've been campaigning against. Responding to our call for 'Before' and 'After' photos, Andy Williams of Monmouthshire tweeted us the following:

@andy_tyfelin: @Love_plants Maybe you can help me persuade Monmouthshire CC. This taken today: hundreds of kms treated like this:

Attached was a couple of photos of the B 4293 nr Little Cophill Farm, Chepstow. One before...

And one after...

The difference is stark.

That said, it wasn't all bad news. As we're keen to point out, some councils do an exemplary job and many are now contacting us to find out how things can be improved. Here's a few positive posts we received on Twitter:

@sysengshep: Swindon BC have just NOT mowed the bit of verge near my house that I've been trying to let flower:

@leighbgbf: @BridgendCBC (Bridgend Council) Thank you for not mowing all the roadside verges & letting the beautiful wildflowers flourish

@SebInTransition: This verge in #Stroud was left while others were mowndown:

As you can see, we can make a difference! If you've not already done so, please visit our Road Verge Campaign site here and sign the petition and please keep your photos coming!

We'll have another Flowers on the Edge: The Cutting Edge update this time next week.

Flowers on the edge

Road verges are close to many peoples’ hearts. In fact, Plantlife receives more enquiries about them than anything else, from both our members and non-members frustrated and upset when their favourite local flower-rich verge is mown to within an inch of its life.

In response we felt moved to launch our 'Flowers on the Edge' campaign. Road verges are the bank we should all be investing in. They give so much pleasure: we pass them every day, colourful slivers of countryside in towns, or vital sanctuaries for wildlife in an intensively farmed countryside. Whilst there are only 85,000 hectares of flower-rich grassland left, there are about 238,000 hectares of road verge in Great Britain. They are literally on our doorstep.

A road verge in North Wales. Photo by Pierino Algieri.

Yet so often, this vital habitat is mismanaged and under attack; cut too early when still in flower, sprayed off with poisons as ‘weeds’ and smothered with cuttings so leading to the loss of diversity as nettles, coarse grasses and cow parsley take over. As the floral diversity disappears, so both its value for wildlife and its beauty vanishes.

So please help us do something about it. Visit our campaign page here and sign our petition, send an email to your council, rate your local verges or simply send us a lovely photo. Together we can change things for the better - for our wildflowers and the wildlife they support.

• Visit our road verge campaign website