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pfm Picture A Week (PAW) 2021

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This evening I removed half a dozen or so ragwort plants from my meadows. I have patrolled these meadows for the past 45 years. Only one of the plants I removed this evening was within 2 metres of a parent plant found within those 45 years. I pull early, before the flowers have gone to seed. I also noted the positions of several 1st year 'rosettes'. DEFRA suggest that the plant should be removed if found between 50m and 100m of land that is grazed by cattle, sheep, pigs and horses.

There is no bare ground in my meadows, just grasses and wildflowers. Lots of yellow loosetrife, self-heal and white and red clover at the moment. Too much knapweed in some places, which is a problem which seems to stem from overgrazing by horses over several years a while back. Some paddocks have been turned over to sheep in the past year, which appears to be solving the problem.
 
How I hate ragwort, the destroyer of hay meadows. We have horses, and I obsessively walk the fields at this time of year, pulling up and burning every plant before it can spread its thousands of seeds.

A nasty plant in any fodder crop, causes severe damage to the livers of any animal eating it. If it gets into a conserved fodder crop, hay, silage, or haylage the damage to animals eating it is often fatal or causes the animals such poor health that they have to be put down.

As a seedling it is not very competitive and in our high fertility soils it wasn't too much of a problem. Winter grazing by sheep virtually eliminated it in our situation they nibble away at the rosette weakening the plant. As a local agricultural advisor once put it, " the best thing for ragwort is auld yowes (ewes), preferably somebody else's yowes". Sheep seem to tolerate it better than other animals, they generally also have shorter lives than cattle or sheep so liver damage may not be noticeable. Horses are particularly susceptible.

The Scots loyal to the Jacobite cause named it the Stinking Willie after William IV the English chose to name the Sweet William after him.
 
Caterpillar of a cinnabar moth

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I'm enjoying these images so much - please keep posting them! I have a real interest in social history, and find this stuff fascinating. Whilst doing the 'Wainwright' Coast to Coast back in 1999, we walked through the lead mines of Swaledale and would love to go back, purely to do some photography. Amazing places.
 
I'm enjoying these images so much - please keep posting them! I have a real interest in social history, and find this stuff fascinating. Whilst doing the 'Wainwright' Coast to Coast back in 1999, we walked through the lead mines of Swaledale and would love to go back, purely to do some photography. Amazing places.
Thanks! I'm sure there will be one or two more...:)
 
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