Yellow Rattle, the beautiful wildflower, is now in bloom. This delightful little plant is a semi-parasitic grassland annual. It looks beautiful along the verges, but wouldn't be a flower that would be welcomed on farm land due to its ability to drastically reduce a grass crop, being said to reduce a hay yield by up to 50 percent. It is to be welcomed though where wildflower diversity is sought, as it opens up the sward and leaves gaps for new seeds when it dies back at the end of the season.
The individual flowers always make me think of a screaming parrot, and when the plant is looked at from a distance, it does have the look of individual birds stuffed into sacks with just their heads peaking out, perhaps giving them something to scream about!
It derives its name from the noise made by the seed heads when ripened: the green 'bladder' behind the flower becomes paper like, and the seeds rattle around inside. This tends to happen around the middle of July onwards. When this plant used to be common on farm land it also had the name of Hay Rattle, as it gave warning to a farmer that the hay was ready to cut. Sadly, gone are the days of wild flower hay, and now we see mainly monocultures of ryegrass. Though these monocultures might give better yields, they are disastrous for wildlife, and also are not good for the health of stock, as the mixed herbs were beneficial to the health of the animals that grazed them. We hear so much now about TB in cattle, and have in the not too distant past had the terrible tragedy of Foot and Mouth, a tragedy of the governments making. For over a hundred years now farmers have been campaigning for better understanding of disease in farm animals, and some of those farmers showed just what could be achieved solely with good diet and herbs. If you are interested in getting a better understanding of these subjects, then it is well worth reading the books by F Newman Turner, Albert Howard and Robert Elliot. The following website has Elliot's and Howard's books available as a free download: http://www.soilandhealth.org Turner's books have now gone back into print, so are no longer available there, but his work carried on from Elliot's and he dedicated his time to curing cattle that would otherwise have only been fit for slaughter, including TB cattle.
A view from my bedroom window this morning.
A view from my bedroom window this morning.
The mist gets thicker!! But all is not lost because I just heard a Cuckoo: wonderful!!! I had given up hope of them arriving here this year.
And glancing through the window again, the sun is trying to show his face.
The sun has got his hat on! Hip, hip, hip hooray! The sun has got his hat on and he's coming out to play! I had better go and find the sun tan lotion! :-)
Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
