Fox-and-cubs

Out surveying part of Stanground Wash today - a nature reserve owned by the Cambridgeshire Wildlife Trust - located on the eastern edge of Peterborough and forming part of the internationally important Nene Washes SSSI. Although most of the site is washland - a mix of grassland and ditches which is allowed to flood during times of high river flow to ensure that surrounding areas of arable land and housing are not flooded - there is also an area of railway embankment which supports superb species-rich grassland developed over free-draining clinker. This grassland is very similar to a rare type of grassland that occurs naturally in the Brecklands of Norfolk and Suffolk, and which has a high proportion of Cladonia lichens and spring-flowering annuals. I managed to record eight quadrats before looming grey clouds and a rumbling stomach persuaded me to head home.

Railway land often supports species which have colonised the UK relatively recently, and there is a particularly thriving population of orange hawkweed or fox-and-cubs Pilosella aurantiaca, an attractive addition to our flora which originates from Central Europe. It was being grown in gardens by 1629 and was first recorded in the wild by 1793. It has also naturalised in the USA, Canada Australia and New Zealand, and is classified as a noxious weed in some areas.