HWD is Hemlock Water Dropwort. It’s a very tall and vigorous plant, and the meadows is home to vast patches of it.
It also grows all along the path alongside the marsh, which has a couple of impacts. As it matures it falls over, blocking the path and smothering other less vigorous plants.
Normally about now the council would come along and mow the path all in one go. That would mean everything would get cut down. Including the rare plants like Meadow Rue.
Which is an uncommon plant and as far as we know only grows in a couple of places in all of Reading.
Then there’s Marsh Bedstraw
Not so rare but it would be nice to see more of it.
So a small group of us spent the afternoon focusing on the HWD and cut it all down, piling it up in heaps. As the heaps rot down they’ll provide refuges for all sorts of life, hibernating amphibians and reptiles for example.
Here’s the path when we started
And here’s us getting stuck in
And here’s the finished result.
After a couple of hours the whole path was much more open. Now there are wildflowers and grasses growing all along the path, so not only is it usable to walk along, but it’s a place of interest in its own right. Lots of different plants, lots of butterflies and bees and hoverflies.
We all learnt a bit more about what lives there and how to care for it, and had a laugh at the same time.
We’ll revisit it again in the next few weeks to keep it clear and keep it interesting.
Rural Reading 