Morning. Here are some of the assurances the new Environment Secretary gave in a pre-election don’t worry, you’re safe with us piece in the Guardian (of course) a few months ago:
“The next Labour government will fully commit to restoring and protecting nature. …… Nature will be central to each of the missions that will define Keir Starmer’s Labour government…..We will halt the decline of British species by 2030.”
The five Environment Secretaries under the last administration were not quite as outspoken as Steve Reed, and there is some optimism about his plans, if they survive the scrutiny of the new Chancellor. Liz Ballard, CEO of Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust gives us some early thoughts in today’s post.
We also have a short introduction to grasses to learn why they are very worthy of our attention, along with our latest suite of Secret Seating for mystery recreational viewpoint fans, and a quick visit to one of my favourite local farms to talk about apples, moths and insects.
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Grass Routes
The Bole Hills recreation ground at Crookes is one of those multifaceted Sheffield green spaces serving everyone from teenage dog walkers to grey haired BMX enthusiasts. Today, I’m going on a grass hunt with ace botanical detective Gerry Firkins. There’s lots of it here, obviously.
I pass by the sweeping meadows with grasses as tall as me thinking Gerry will be in his element, and meet him by a cropped verge next to the bowling greens. I imagine we’ll head straight to the meadows, but he asks me to look down and consider the tufty verge instead.
There are three different grasses here, he says, bending reverently towards the slightly differing shapes and shades of green, and so my new enthusiasm for the incredible plants we walk over every day begins. (And once I’ve checked a few more details with Gerry, I’ll be posting a longer feature for full subscribers so you can all tell your bent grasses from your fescues).
Grasses make up something like 89% of the energy intake of the humans on planet Earth, he tells me. Rice, wheat and maize are all types of grasses, providing food for humans or, for some of us, second hand energy through animals that eat those grasses for us first.
He asks me to consider how people cut grass lawns and playing fields, and how that couldn’t work if grass grew how we might imagine, from its ends. Grass grows from its base, he explains. So if we cut the top off, it keeps growing, so we can have green growing grass even if we chop it down all the time.
We wander along finding incredible new species of grass every few feet. Perennial Rye Grass, for example, tough and durable, so we use it for sports playing fields. I’m baffled by the intricacies of identification within minutes, but pick up on the fact that the texture or leaves and stems, and the colour and glossiness of leaves, and how flat or bendy they appear, are all part of our grass identification journey. And then Gerry introduces ligules, and a hand lens, and I take a deep breath.
A ligule is a strange protuberance you can just about see where the stem joins a new leaf, and its shape often helps you work out what grass you’re looking at. Then there are awns, the fine hairs or spikes you can find on some species. Which are pretty spectacular. But not quite as impressive as anthesis.
Gerry directs me to several species which appear fluffier than normal, mostly growing under a metal fence. Anthesis is flowering, he tells me, and we can see these fluffier specimens just now because it’s dryish and warmish. Many grasses can suddenly produce flowers, in less than an hour in some cases, he says, because they want to take advantage of changing weather to spread their pollen as efficiently as possible.
“They don’t want to miss their chance,” he explains.
We head over to the BMX track. He spurns the tall jungle-like sections on this occasion: these docks and nettles and taller muscular grasses tend to grow on more nutritious soil, he says. These are often places where humans and animals have urinated or defecated or died in the past, thus feeding the soil.
The sandy BMX track however, is very poor soil, and presumably has no former cesspits or burial sites, so all manner of wild flowers and grasses are making a go of it here. We find Creeping Bent Grass desperately trying to extend itself over the inhospitable rocky patches to somewhere it can gain a foothold.
As an aside, Gerry tells me Bents Green is named after an area of land in the distant past full of members of the Bent Grass family. Further on we find a more traditional meadow, with Timothy Grass, Crested Dogs Tail in glorious flower (see header photo) and Red Fescue, used on fine lawns and bowling greens, he says.
Meadows like this, as mentioned in last week’s post, have to be mown every now and then to thrive as meadows, so the less muscular grasses and wildflowers can grow in the poorer soil they like. And in that variety of grasses, insects make their home.
“Most grasses are hollow in the centre, and that space is used by some insects to lay eggs into,” says Gerry. The young insect then grows protected by the grass until it can emerge as an adult. “So grasses are part of the ecosystem. No grasses, no full proper ecosystem.”
If you do get yourself a hand lens, try and pick out some of the 165 or so species of grass that grow in the UK, and their awns, and ligules, and the tiny flowers that wait for a warm summer breeze to burst out in an hour, and be amazed. And maybe we can all persuade a few more landowners to relax the mowing so those flowers can actually see the light of day.
“We saw a classic example this spring,” says Gerry. “We were admiring a front garden of somebody who had decided to leave it for nature, and it was chock -a -block with orchids. Then two doors down there was a lady with tightly mown grass going around with a weed killer spraying every individual dandelion.”
The lady with the glyphosate was very elderly, he adds, and was probably brought up to expect her grass to be short and pristine.
“But the two side by side were a great demonstration of the way people consider things. You could have a big green square looking very formal. But we don't need it. We need the insects.”
Gerry is hosting plant walks and tours all over the place just now (see our listings service) and his book Life Amid The Stones has just been published in support of Sheffield General Cemetery.
The Nature Of Politics
Behind the headlines, the politicians who now hold the reins of power have been saying, and even promising, some pretty positive things about the natural world. We posted a year ago the promises from Labour about replicating access rights to wild places similar to those in Scotland, for example. And the new Environment Secretary, Steve Reed, does at least understand the issues at stake, I hear. So I asked Liz Ballard, the CEO of Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust, for her early thoughts:
“Nature is our life support system. We rely on the natural environment around us to provide us with clean air, water, good food and to support our health and wellbeing,” she said.
“The new government must prioritise nature recovery to both support our quality of life and respond to the nature and climate emergencies.
“We ask the new government to set out a clear programme for agriculture that supports food production through nature friendly farming. We also need them to ensure the planning system works for people and nature. This means building high quality affordable homes that include wildlife friendly practices from the outset - swift bricks, sustainable drainage schemes and green spaces - as well as delivering off-site biodiversity gain. We ask the government to invest in species recovery to support wildlife such as our locally threatened water vole and white-clawed crayfish and allow the release of beavers to help restore our beleaguered river systems and manage flood risk. We also call on the new Government to put in place regulations to fundamentally improve how our local moorlands are managed for people, nature and climate.
“These actions can help us start to turn around the nature emergency as well as improve the quality of life for our local community.”
Although the current and previous government seem to have committed to 30% of land and water being ‘good for nature’ by 2030, Liz also notes that in Sheffield and Rotherham she believes we might be as low as 7% by some measures, and she wants a commitment for “an abundance of wildlife everywhere.”
I’ll be doing my best to learn how government plans match up to these aims in future, and I’ll also be doing a long piece for our friends at The Sheffield Tribune soon, about Sheffield’s Nature Recovery plans .
Farm Labour
Huw Evans from Sheffield Organic Growers, is wearing a brimmed hat and long trousers, as he does when he walks round his orchard in the summer. It’s looking like a good year for apples, he tells me calmly and cheerfully, just as last year was looking pretty terrible.
“We had 9,000 kilos two years ago, then just 1,600 kilos last year,” he says. “I think we’re getting into that good year, bad year cycle.”
It’s partly weather, he says, noting our wettish spring this year, and partly because the trees get exhausted then take a rest every now and then.
He and his colleagues from the seven enterprises on the plots just off Hazlehurst Lane, near Gleadless, are holding an Open Day on the 25th August, and I hope to call in to find out a bit more about how a small farm or orchard can make such a happy living alongside a plethora of wildlife, including the insects that many other farms might try and spray to oblivion.
The first apples, the Discoveries, should be ready in about six weeks time, Huw tells me, followed by a long list of varieties one after the other, like James Grieves, Lord Lambournes, Ashmead’s Kernels and Adam’s Pearmains.
A few weeks ago, he and colleague Beth Robinson spent a few hours looking for moth larvae encased in nests of greyish fibrous webs. Moth caterpillars of different kinds will attack and spoil apples if you’re not vigilant.
“If you looked carefully, as soon as you tried to get them, you’d see three or four of them abseiling out of the nest. I think it must be an escape strategy, and they thought we were birds.”
Then last week, he had to navigate the perils of a vast swarm of bees that had descended onto an apple tree trunk one morning. The beekeeper arrived within an hour, and she casually encouraged thousands of swarming bees into a kind of bucket, Huw recalls with admiration, then took them away, hopefully with the queen in the middle, to start a new hive.
There are nest boxes to encourage birds like Great Tits, which keep moth numbers down, but in the scheme of things insects are needed to help pollinate the various crops on the 20 acre site. As we walk around, there are plenty of them, and this is why Huw always wears long trousers in the summer, to avoid being bitten every day.
Many people had told me there seemed to be fewer than ever insects around this year, maybe a sign of their alarming decline over recent decades. But I hear it may also be due to the colder and wetter weather: insects can delay their emergence into flying adulthood to some degree, and so we might start seeing a few more of them now.
There were certainly plenty at Huw’s orchard, alongside the burgeoning Adam’s Pearmains and skeletal former moth nests.
More info on the SOG open day will be at: https://www.sheffieldorganicgrowers.co.uk
What’s On Out There (a selection from Sunday 7th July)
Our huge monthly, regularly updated, What’s On Out There post (here) now includes a news update service, as well as outdoorsy things to do pretty much every day.
Despite many hours of work every month, I’m keeping this service open to all for the moment so lots of people can access it. Your pocket money contribution would be very welcome, though, so I can pay the bills and put in the time to keep it going. And please share with your mates too.
Sun 7th - Plants Tour of Sheffield General Cemetery with Gerry Firkins (£5)
Mon 8th - Six Inches of Soil film at Greenhill Library, 7pm - book / more info greenergreenhill@gmail.com
Mon 8th - SRWT Volunteering - Centenary Riverside, Rotherham
Tues 9th- Sheffield Ramblers Walk - Low Bradfield (5m - Meet Sheffield Interchange)
Tues 9th - SRWT Volunteering - Carbrook Ravine
Weds 10th - Social Walk from Longshaw (5m)
Thurs 11th - Friends of Porter Valley work morning
Thurs 11th - Graves Park Digging Deeper For All - Notable trees walk (please book)
Fri 12th - History Walk in Burbage Valley (£5 - 3 miles)
Sun 14th - Archaeological Discoveries in Ecclesall Woods open day
Secret Seating (6)
This quiz has been far too easy so far, with answers from some Secret Seating fans arriving within minutes. So, we have a double header this time, one easily missed seating spot on a popular route (thanks to reader Ellen for this one), the other almost impossible to find, and probably temporary too.
Post your answers in the comments below, as usual, and well done Fredi Tobler and Judith Rutnam for their quick answers last time.
Thanks again to all the full members of this social enterprise for helping to bring this post to all of you. And thanks to you for reading. Remember: F.F.S!
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Great article about grasses. Gerry is a real expert on all things botanical and a real enthusiast. It's a great shame he was lost to the Sheffield botany world for many years through work commitments but he is really going for it now he's retired.