Threatened Plants Plants need protection as well as birds; and
the botanists say'that there is especial danger of the complete loss of certain plants characteristic of the marsh. We have been so thoroughly polishing up the English countryside that the marshes, especially the small marshes, are disappearing altogether with the plants that were at home there. On this matter it is a subject for congratulation that Ascham Bog, which the Yorkshire Natural History Trust begins to make famous, is to have its boggy quality maintained, and it is to be hoped that the unduly small membership of this excellent Trust will increase as the Norfolk Naturalists' Trust has increased. For myself I had some fears that the loveliest of down plants, the pasque flower, was in some danger from an eradicating public, and there are down districts where it is becoming very rare. Happily there are others, I hear, where it is still legion. A Berkshire botanist assures me that he recently went out to make an estimate of the number of plants in his local patch. He reckoned there were over 1,500 plants in an area of less than an acre. What a lovely patch it must be! It happens that in the same district I once saw such a variety of orchids as I had not thought existed anywhere. The pasque flower is not the only attraction of the neigh- bourhood. It is a favourite haunt of the most tuneful of all singers, the so-called woodlark.
Previous page
