NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

This was Downs Field this morning, from the lower, south-eastern corner. It is a big field - I don't know its acreage or hectarage I'm afraid, but I wouldn't like to have to run around its perimeter thank you very much! As you can see from the photograph above, it gently slopes up towards the west, reaching a plateau that continues for a good 200m towards a minor road. It is at this furthest point that the Night-flowering Catchfly used to be found, along with more Sharp-leaved and Round-leaved Fluellens that you could shake a stick at. In fact, this strip held a vibrant arable weed community. I could find four loafing Lapwing, but no interaction or display was observed. A further lurking Lapwing was found on 40 Acre Field South. As I have mentioned before, The Woodland Trust are going to plant this field with trees to establish their Centenary Wood. Although I have not totally given up on attempts to persuade them to spare the field from such action, I do think it high...

I couldn't help but visit Langley Vale Farm this morning to see how the fields are looking from the point-of-view of such arable gems as Red Hemp-nettle (from this very farm last summer). There is good news. The fields south of Nohome Farmhouse have been shallowly ploughed - the stubble and grass clumps from my last visit have gone. Now, I am no ecologist, and cannot possibly predict whether this in itself is enough to enable the arable flora to freely flower, but it is certainly better than the state of the fields a couple of weeks ago. This is the bottom of the field immediately east of Nohome Farmhouse, which has also had a similar treatment - the edge up against the hedgerow is where Cat-mint and Narrow-fruited Cornsalad can be found. Last year this area was swamped with grass and both were hard to find. The top of the very same field. This is very recent tree planting, which has not, so far, been stretched all that far down the field. I do hope that it will be s...

Night-flowering Catchfly at Langley Vale Farm. Not seen there since 2014. There are few greater pleasures than walking along the edge of a field and working your way through a mass of arable plants in flower. It is colourful. It holds hidden gems. It is also disappearing. I am lucky enough to live close to a marvellous site, where such species as Night-flowering Catchfly, Venus's Looking-glass, Red Hemp-nettle, Cat-mint, Narrow-fruited Cornsalad, Sharp-leaved Fluellen, Round-leaved Fluellen and Dwarf Spurge can be found. It is called Langley Vale Farm, situated on Walton Downs in Surrey. They are all in danger of being lost forever. Any regular visitor to this blog will have read my previous posts about the purchase of the farm, in 2014, by the Woodland Trust. They plan to use the site to create what will be known as Langley Vale Wood, in commemoration of the centenary of the start of the First World War. A series of environmental and ecological surveys were commissioned, ...