Will yellow rattle ever grow in wet meadows?.
I have read that yellow rattle will rot off in wet areas and prefers the finer grasses and the legumes and does not use coarse grasses for a host.
It prefers dry meadows:
https://www.goren.co.uk/pages/sowing-yellow-rattle-seed
https://www.caringforgodsacre.org.uk/yellow-rattle/
Update: Whoops! I found 2 pdfs https://moormeadows.org.uk/information/ ... downloads/ and the Yellow Rattle – ecology & establishment requirements one says it is found on wet ground. I remain sceptical but will be pleased to be wrong.
2nd Update: I've now learned a little about common and marsh lousewort, red bartsia and common cow wheat - and added a post in the Exmoor group.
Any alternative to yellow rattle for wet meadows and tufted grasses?
Re: Any alternative to yellow rattle for wet meadows and tufted grasses?
I haven't seen yellow rattle appear in the wetter parts of my meadow, but here it is never visible until May or even June. So don't give up yet!
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Amy
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Re: Any alternative to yellow rattle for wet meadows and tufted grasses?
To answer my own question. At Lethytep there is, what the owners call, a wet meadow, with abundant yellow rattle growing in it amongst the soft rush and flag iris - but, from what I could see, the yellow rattle is only growing where the area is cut and cleared each year, and it seemed to me, that that meadow was unlikely to be waterlogged in winter, so it is a damp area without frequent standing surface water. It must be sufficiently dry in late summer for the owners to bring equipment on to cut and clear, unless they do this by hand. I could not see any rattle in the uncut wet areas.
There was a notice stating that red and yellow bartsia grew there (but the notice did not mention eyebright).
Walking around the other, drier, Lethytep meadows, there was further proof that yellow rattle will only thrive in the cut and cleared areas. In the other meadows, the rattle was so amazingly dense as to appear to my eyes to outnumber the grass and other plants, and there was a great deal of eyebright there too, but, on the other side of a 1 1/2 m mown track, in the long field edges, there were just a few sparse rattle plants on the nearest edges in the shorter grass, and no rattle further back, and no eyebright. I guess that the rattle seeds could not find enough bare ground to germinate amongst the thicker longer competing vegetation. I conclude that there's no point in hoping that rattle will weaken rank grasses unless you are prepared to keep those grasses short, cut, and cleared.
I noticed that there was a little cocksfoot in amongst the plants in the drier densely-rattled meadows, but it did not appear to be tussocky and I put the lack of tussocks down to the annual haycut. In the middle of a huge sea of yellow rattle, there were cocksfoot tussocks immediately surrounding a pylon and its stays, obviously where the machinery could not go. I draw the conclusion that the cocksfoot is controlled more by the annual cutting and clearing than by the rattle.
First pic shows the notice listing many of the species in the wet meadow, second pic shows the (greener) cocksfoot tussocks untroubled by rattle, around a pylon, in the midst of a sea of rattle and other wild flowers.
There was a notice stating that red and yellow bartsia grew there (but the notice did not mention eyebright).
Walking around the other, drier, Lethytep meadows, there was further proof that yellow rattle will only thrive in the cut and cleared areas. In the other meadows, the rattle was so amazingly dense as to appear to my eyes to outnumber the grass and other plants, and there was a great deal of eyebright there too, but, on the other side of a 1 1/2 m mown track, in the long field edges, there were just a few sparse rattle plants on the nearest edges in the shorter grass, and no rattle further back, and no eyebright. I guess that the rattle seeds could not find enough bare ground to germinate amongst the thicker longer competing vegetation. I conclude that there's no point in hoping that rattle will weaken rank grasses unless you are prepared to keep those grasses short, cut, and cleared.
I noticed that there was a little cocksfoot in amongst the plants in the drier densely-rattled meadows, but it did not appear to be tussocky and I put the lack of tussocks down to the annual haycut. In the middle of a huge sea of yellow rattle, there were cocksfoot tussocks immediately surrounding a pylon and its stays, obviously where the machinery could not go. I draw the conclusion that the cocksfoot is controlled more by the annual cutting and clearing than by the rattle.
First pic shows the notice listing many of the species in the wet meadow, second pic shows the (greener) cocksfoot tussocks untroubled by rattle, around a pylon, in the midst of a sea of rattle and other wild flowers.
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