Making a run for it between the weather, it was to head south to Catshawhill yesterday, a tiny area of species rich grassland that grades into a pocket-hankie sized, basin fen. Small it maybe, but perfectly formed, as they say. Grading from grassland dominated by Sweet Vernal-grass and Crested Dog’s-tail, mixed with mire communities of Purple Moor-grass and Rushes, with large clumps of the yellow flowering Tormentil. The slope then grade through various blue-green Sedge flushes and patches of Meadowsweet to the Schwingmoor basin fen, formed mainly of Bottle Sedge and Water Horsetail, with many heads of Lesser Tussock Sedge and floating rafts of Bog Bean.
Catshawhill – 29 June 2012 (Copyright Carol Jones)
This is a little gem of a site, surrounded as it is on almost all sides by improved fields and highly enriched arable land. This year, following large amounts of rain, the sward is long and a rich mixture of greens, varying from the grey green of the Rushes, through the dark green of the Meadowsweet, to the rich almost golden green of the Sweet Vernal-grass. Standing, looking down across the site, with the wind swaying the tall lengths of grass, it almost feels as though the sward is alive, like a large shoal of fish, swimming this way and that in the current.
Though the weather is not rapidly moving towards summer, the march of the season continues relentlessly onwards as the vegetation matures and comes into flower. Yesterday, the site was enlivened by the appearance of flowers and decidedly in summer by the flowering of a range of Orchids. Yesterday’s were mainly Common Spotted Orchids (Dactylorhiza fuchsii), in a whole range of colours from the very pale almost white, through various shades of pink, to the dark almost a fuchsia pink coloured. Mixed with a number of Northern Marsh Orchids (D. purpurella), with their rich purple flowers carefully streaked with crimson.
Do have to say the favourite of the visit was related to the central Schwingmoor fen, where above the swaying Sedges and Water Horsetails, and the rafts of Bog Bean, with the occasional white flower remaining, there sprouted the delicate pink flowers of the Ragged Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi). Ragged Robin have petals that are divided into four thin segments, which give the flowers a distinctively tatty look, and from where the common name obviously comes. Strangely within the fen at Catshawhill, though scattered widely across the place, they were decidedly concentrated within one area in the centre, surrounded by a small circle of Willows.
Schingmoor Fen and Ragged Robin – 29 June (Copyright Carol Jones)
Then when finally leaving the site, there was one more surprise to be had. On walking back across, what I have always assumed was an improved field, this field gave up one final secret that it still retained elements of its original composition. The sward was dominated by Sweet Vernal-grass, Crested Dog’s-tail and Yorkshire Fog, then the surprise, every few paces there was a Common Spotted Orchid, and quite often a several in a cluster. To be honest I should have suspected, for an early look at some of the wet areas around the edge of the field, that had revealed both Ragged Robin and a number of Sedge species, but somehow this still came as a surprise.
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