Snake's-head on the village green

An excellent day out with the South L:incs Flora Group, recording a couple of tetrads in the north of the county. We spent the morning at Hill Holt wood, an area which is not classified as ancient woodland by Natural England, but has a fine assemblage of ancient woodland indicator species including sheets of wood anemones and primroses, bluebells, moschatel, sweet woodruff, yellow archangel, barren strawberry and hairy woodrush. 

In the afternoon we botanised in Stapleford village. The village green had been lost under scrub, and the villages recently set about restoring it, a project which has involved sowing a meadow mix and creating a pond. Such schemes can easily fail, but careful management has produced a species-rich sward, mostly populated by appropriate plants, though the naturalised snake's-head fritillary was a bit of a surprise!