Devon: 24th June to 1st July 2016
Today (24th June) we drove from the New Forest to another remote rural cottage outside the tiny Devon village of Romansleigh. We arrived early and explored the country lanes around the property - eventually finding the Devon Wildlife Trust reserve of Meshaw Moor. This is an area of CULM GRASSLAND (see box). The reserve consists of a series of flower-rich meadows. On a warm sunny day this would be full of insects - but this June seems to be rather lacking in warm sunny days.
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CULM GRASSLAND
Culm grassland is the name given to damp unimproved grasslands that have developed above a geological formation known as the Culm Measures laid down in the Carboniferous period (about 300 million years ago) in north-west Devon and north-east Cornwall. The name comes from the occasional presence of a soft, sooty coal, known in Devon as culm. The majority of the formation consists of shales and thin sandstones although there are also areas of slate, limestone and chert. The geology of the Culm Measures has given rise to acidic, clay soils that are poorly drained. In addition, the relatively high rainfall experienced in south-west England makes the soil very damp, circumstances that persist even through the driest of summers. The only similar areas elsewhere in the UK are in south Wales, where the term Rhôs pasture is used — Welsh for wet pasture — and in south-west Scotland. Some 92% of Culm grassland has been lost in the past 100 years, with 48% disappearing between 1984 and 1991 alone. The chief causes have been agricultural improvement of land by drainage, ploughing, reseeding and fertiliser application; afforestation; abandonment and neglect; management inappropriate for conservation purposes (e.g. over-grazing); and habitat fragmentation. Several attempts have been implemented to halt the decline including those by DWT, Butterfly Conservation, and Natural England. The Northern Devon NIA contains approximately 35% of the remaining Culm grassland resource in the UK. |