20th June 2021: Long Mead hay meadow at Swinford
Leader: Catrioa Bass, Owner
A terrific turn-out of 24 Abingdon Naturalists Society members were joined by 3 visitors from local conservation group, ‘Wild about Kennington’, for a very interesting visit to Long Mead, a lovely species-rich hay meadow near Eynsham. Our host was Catriona Bass, who bought Long Mead about 20 years ago, and has continued to manage it in the way it has been managed for probably 1000 years or more.
Hay is cut in mid-July each year and left to dry on the ground for 24 – 48 hours. This enables some seed to fall to the ground, which is important for ensuring the continuity of annual species such as Yellow Rattle. After being turned several times, the hay is then baled and removed. The plant regrowth (the ‘aftermaths’) is then grazed off by a local farmers’ sheep or cattle until the ground becomes too wet in the late autumn. Their hoof prints create little areas of bare soil in which seeds will be able to germinate. The cycle begins again the following spring, when Long Mead is again ‘shut for hay’.
Catriona Bass (right) speaking to the group.Before being taken out into her meadow, Catriona told us about the Thames Valley Wildflower Meadow Restoration Project that she has set up in partnership with the Floodplain Meadows Partnership (based at the Open University), and our local Wildlife Trust (BBOWT). This project aims to restore wildflower meadows using species-rich ‘green hay’ to introduce the seed from wildflowers and a range of hay meadow grasses into currently species-poor grass fields. When it’s completed, this ambitious project will create a corridor of wildflower meadows in the River Thames floodplain connecting Long Mead upstream to Chimney Meadows SSSI, and downstream to the internationally important meadows of Yarnton Mead, Pixey Mead and Cassington Mead near Oxford. Catriona has already made contact with a number of farmers along this route, as well as with the head gardeners at Merton College and Christ Church, who are interested in restoring some of their meadows.
Identifying wildflowers and grasses in Long Mead. Great Burnet is the plant with the deep maroon flowers.After her talk, we walked in a very orderly single file through Long Mead, keeping our ‘social distance’ from each other, while looking at the amazing diversity of wildflowers and grasses in this ancient meadow. Great burnet, which is a key species of this type of hay meadow, grows in abundance along with other typical hay meadow species such as oxeye daisy, black knapweed, ladies bedstraw, yellow rattle, common bird’sfoot trefoil, meadow vetchling and many different grass species.
Meadows such as Long Mead are nowadays very rare in the UK. We have lost around 97% of the species-rich traditional meadows that were present before World War 2. These meadows have disappeared largely as a result of agricultural intensification. Many have been ploughed up for arable cropping, or drained and reseeded to create highly productive monocultures of perennial ryegrass for silage or grazing, or ‘improved’ by heavy use of fertilisers, which encourage grass growth but at the expense of wildflower diversity.
We were very privileged to be able to spend a morning in the company of Catriona, and to see a very beautiful and rare habitat in full bloom. And it didn’t even rain!
Report: Alison Muldal