Eddie's Photographs.
The GG Team were back at an old favourite this week.....One Horse Field in Totland. The tasks involved trying to clear a large area of bracken that had grown along the NE boundary of the field and a general cut back / tidy up around the site. The bracken pulling proved to be on a par with the delightful job of Ragwort lifting (there was even some of that to do!) but good progress was made and the area looked much better for our efforts at the end of the session. (See above "before & after" pictures.) Although cloudy at times the weather held fine and we had a good turnout of the GG Team. During the morning we were filmed for a DVD release which will be all about the Island's green and voluntary working aspects......Once again we are film stars...!!!!
This week's find was some Tufted Vetch (Vicia Cracca), this conspicuous plant with a showy heads of violet-purple flowers is commonly found scrabbling through vegetation. It climbs by means of branched tendrils found on the ends of its ladder like leaves which are divided into 8-12 pairs, and can be identified as a true vetch (Vicia) by not having a winged or angled stem which would be the case were it a pea or vetchling. This plant is a perennial of hedgerows, woodland edges, rough grassland and river banks, and has a preference for reasonably fertile, damp soils but is intolerant of permanently damp sites. It has limited capacity for vegetative spread and is mainly reliant upon its large seeds for regeneration, and this coupled with its need of surrounding vegetation for support means it is rarely found in pasture or mown grassland. It can, however, become established in meadow, particularly those cut later in the season (which is the case with One Horse Field), and is pollinated by bumble bees and other large bees.
Many thanks to Carrie for the pictures and nature lesson & to Eddie for his pictures.
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