Barton news

Do please read this book, if you haven't already.  It is well written and easy to read and describes the development of the Knepp estate rewilding project.  It also has some critically important messages that need to be spread far and wide.  Some 20 years ago, I visited the controversial Oostvaardersplassen grazing project in the Netherlands and I must now get to Knepp, as soon as the Covid-19 virus allows.  I've known about Knepp for some years and have been meaning to visit, but it hasn't happened yet.  Having read the book, I have a much clearer idea of how it came about and the struggles to achieve what is a critical initiative amongst the UK rewilding projects.  As a scientist that spent much of my career looking at farmland ecology and ways of maintaining biodiversity, particularly with field margins and hedgerows, this book challenges a host of underlying assumptions.  That is the key importance of the book for me.  However, ...

I've spent the morning on this lovely sunny day up on the Mendips above Barton.  I was making a botanical inventory on three of the seven plots I look after as part of the National Plant Monitoring Scheme - see:  https://www.npms.org.uk/   This recording scheme started a few years ago and has three levels of recording - wildflowers, selected indicator species or inventory - so anyone can have a grid square and can have a go.  My phone app tells me I was out for nearly 3 hours and covered 4.7 km, so that is good exercise for today.  It is amazingly dry on the limestone, so some plants seem advanced, while others, notably the grasses seem delayed.  It all looks very Mediterranean up there. I was lucky enough to re-find two nationally rare species in one of my plots - honewort ( Trinia glauca )  https://www.brc.ac.uk/plantatlas/plant/trinia-glauca  and Somerset hair-grass ( Koeleria  vallesiana)  https://www.brc.ac.uk/plantatlas/plant/koele...