Grass Porn and Peduncles, report by Philippa Wood
A whole new
look at the flora of the granite tramway.
I have
joined a number of walks organised by Granite Elements, the Parishscape
Project, to uncover the fascinating landscape of the tramway, from art to birds
to land management. This one on flora
led by the extremely erudite Albert from Natural England made us all look very
carefully at the tiny plants we walk on and the grasses we ignore. We spent
time peering at the sexual habits of grasses, the Bents, Fescues and Yorkshire
Fog - and was there one called Stripey Pyjamas or was that my overheated
imagination?
We started on moorland near Haytor on a bright
day with pods of rain drifting across the marvellous view of an English
landscape that many visitors come to see. We slowly travelled down the hillside
noting that the moorland with its hard pressed vegetation and outcrops of gorse
(and I now know the difference between Western Gorse and European Gorse!) started turning into pioneer woodland with
Birch, Rowan and Holly and the bramble thickets that are a good habitat for
birds. We peered under the bracken to
see the violets that feed the Fritillaries and then moved on down to the rich
woodland with its great oak trees - and identified the peduncles on Quercus Robur and the lack of them in the
Sessile oak. On the woodland floor the
bilberries were dripping with fruit and the fragile Cow Wheat was a haze of
gold. As one of the group said - we
would never be able to go on a fast walk again
