The Meadow Makers' Network Forum

A collection of online references to culm:
Descriptions - Management - Open Access Culm - Culm Flowers

Descriptions

"Acid grassland communities occur on soils with a pH lower than 5.5. Species-rich acid grassland have grasses, rushes and sedges, but usually fewer flowers compared with neutral and calcareous grasslands. Grassland grading into mires and bogs are not considered [below] as they fall into wetlands. ........

Culm grassland / Rhôs pasture
Purple moor-grass and rush pasture is wetland acid grassland. It is called culm grassland in Devon and north Cornwall, rhôs pasture in Wales, and rough ground in Northern Ireland. It is flower rich with ragged-robin, wavy St John’s-wort, three-lobed water-crowfoot, greater and lesser butterfly orchids, flowering
rush and purple moor-grass..................... Rush pasture does not fit any single NVC category and is a mosaic of M16 cross-leaved heath–sphagnum moss wet heath, M23 soft-rush-blunt-flowered rush-marsh-bedstraw rush pasture, M24 purple
moor-grass-meadow thistle fen-meadow, M25 purple moor-grass-tormentil and M27 meadowsweet-wild angelica mire
http://www.magnificentmeadows.org.uk/as ... slands.pdf

How to identify moor grass


Woodland plants identification Conservation Communities (many of these occur in grassland) DWT Apr 21


Ditches - From Buglife - a series of 5 pdf sheets concerning marshy ditches
Sheet 1 - An important habitat for invertebrates - description of the invertebrate species
Sheet 2 - Creation and restoration for invertebrates - new ditches
Sheet 3 - Management (ref link below)
Sheet 4 - Agri-environment schemes in England
Sheet 5 - Coastal realignment for invertebrates

Management

Natural England: Illustrated Guide to Purple Moor Grass and Rush Pasture
This guide illustrates what the sward should look like in the spring, in the early summer and in autumn.
http://publications.naturalengland.org. ... tion/30003

Buglife recommendations for purple moor grass and rush pastures/culm
https://www.buglife.org.uk/resources/ha ... -cornwall/

Butterfly Conservation - connecting the culm
https://butterfly-conservation.org/site ... eaflet.pdf

Working wetlands restoring culm grasslands 2015 by Devon Wildlife Trust


A new flora of Devon pages 93 - 98 historical management of culm, different types of culm
https://devonassoc.org.uk/devon-flora/p093/

Culm Grassland: An assessment of Recent Historic Change, 2014 Devon WT
https://www.devonwildlifetrust.org/site ... r-2014.pdf

Working Wetlands 3 years of achievement 2016 Devon WT


Water catchment
https://www.devonwildlifetrust.org/site ... r-2014.pdf

Management of marshy ditches - from Buglife
https://cdn.buglife.org.uk/2019/08/Ditc ... uglife.pdf

And - for similar wet land management - there are many interesting youtube videos from the Carmarthenshire Meadows Group, and the Herefordshire Meadows Group.

Culm Reserves - open access

Greena Moor in Cornwall
the largest culm grassland reserve in Cornwall.
It’s an excellent example of culm grassland. Confusingly this has nothing to do with the flowering stems of grasses called “culms”, but refers instead to the rocks underneath the clay soil of the reserve. These culm measures are a kind of rock from the Carboniferous era that contains thin bands of impure anthracite or “culm”, found only in Cornwall, Devon, the New Forest and South Wales.
https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/nature- ... reena-moor

Dunsdon Nature Reserve - A coronation meadow
https://www.devonwildlifetrust.org/natu ... es/dunsdon
https://coronationmeadows.org.uk/meadow ... holsworthy


and just for some silly fun:
Did you know your land was worth so much - count your £10 pots:
https://www.knollgardens.co.uk/product- ... s/molinia/

Some culm flowers reappearing when all year round grazing stopped:

The podcast has now vanished but see comments below (Farming Today Podcast on 29 Dec 21 Culm Grassland available on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0012s90 13 minutes)

Featuring Meshaw Moor near Witheridge, Devon.
https://www.devonwildlifetrust.org/natu ... eshaw-moor

Peter Burgess and Simon Berry of DWT contribute.

"Sarah Swadling goes in search of one of the UK’s rarest farmland habitats, Culm Grassland. Around 90% of Culm has been lost to drainage, reseeding of pastures, and forestry. Its heartland is North Devon and North Cornwall, where farmers and conservationists are working together to preserve and restore the special blend of plants which makes Culm Grassland unique, and a haven for wildlife."

And Plantlife's Greena Moor - Sarah Shuttleworth contributes.
https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/nature- ... reena-moor

Do you have the rare plants mentioned?

Three lobed water crowsfoot
https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/discove ... r-crowfoot and https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/blog/ca ... reena-moor

Whorled caraway
https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/discove ... ed-caraway

Wood bitter-vetch
https://bsbi.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm ... ccount.pdf

Devil's bit scabious and purple loose strife

Short, c. 5 minute, Irish videos covering ID, pollination, and briefly, traditional uses. Well worth watching for the details of the flower structure which you might not otherwise notice, and the glorious backgrounds. For me, the videos illustrate how very deprived most of the Devon landscapes are. The presenter is Dr John Feehan, a top geologist and botanist.

Devil's bit scabious =

(Personal observations on this scabious - seed I sowed in trays, and left outside all winter, only germinated the following early summer - so don't throw your apparently barren trays out too soon. Planting out devil's bit scabious plugs - avoid waterlogged land - the scabious in my natural seedbank has appeared on permanently damp but not waterlogged land. None has appeared in the natural peat bog which is waterlogged for a large part of the year. When walking over Dunsdon reserve, I observed that the scabious was growing on moor grass tumps and bare tumps above the water level and above the cattle tracks in between the tumps. I've also seen a great mass of it on a raised ie relatively well drained, flat, road-side verge, on the edge of Exmoor, so it can be happy with good drainage in an area of heavy rainfall.

For grassy areas with a lot of late flowering plants such as devil's bit scabious, common fleabane, sneezewort, marsh woundwort - it might be worth mowing in June*, not low, but just enough to top the grass, so that these late flowers are not swamped in late August/September by grass which has grown on since last autumn.
(*Correction Nov 22 re marsh woundwort): There is a study
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley ... 11.01849.x) that describes marsh woundwort and refers to another study saying it cannot put up with regular mowing (I suppose that's obvious as it does not have a rosette of leaves), and that its shoots appear in March, and there is full growth, a peak in June, with flowers from July-Sept. The first shoots don't appear with me until at least mid June, but I'm noting this study for others who might have plants which appear earlier, and hence wouldn't want to cut their marsh woundwort in June and inadvertantly suppress the production of flowers which are brilliant for solitary bees and bumblebees.)

Cross ref - Sue Everett's post of 13 June 22 re collecting local devil's bit scabious seed on viewtopic.php?f=23&t=55&start=10

Purple loose strife = - fascinating details of flower structure, beautifully illustrated by Mr Darwin.

Mints - inc water mint:

Heather - summer flowering - Calluna


The series, 'Wild flowers of Offaly' contains short videos on 50 species - including coltsfoot, eyebright, himalayan balsam, daisy, hogweed, wild garlic, violet, red deadnettle, and elder. The ones I've seen are informative and delightful. Engineers will enjoy the technical brilliance of the Dandelion. If you like a nice twist at the end, have a look at the one on Blackthorn, and if you like a slightly spooky ending, have a look at the one on Redshank and Knotgrass.