Ash

Another day of fieldwork, this time along a stretch of the River Witham in Lincolnshire. The Environment Agency have done a lot of very positive work along the river, trying to restore a more varied and natural watercourse, after decades of mismanagement. This survey was to inform their latest proposals, which aims to restore both the river and the associated area of floodplain grassland.

I finished fairly early so dropped in to Tortoiseshell Wood and Porter's Lodge Meadows NR on my way home. The hay meadows had been mown, and the wood was looking rather dry and sad, but I managed to find a few species of interest, the most exciting of which was a patch of Dyer's Greenweed. This is a very local species in South Lincolnshire, strongly associated with unimproved neutral grassland. Despite the fact that the site is a Trust reserve and SSSI, this was the first ever record, so a really good find!