(^40) an environmenTal hisTory of Wildlife in england
able to grow in aerobic conditions by stimulating the development of
stolons (i.e. aerial shoots with the ability to produce adventitious roots
which may then become independent of the original plant), while at
the same time adversely affecting species unable to cope with a rapid
depletion of oxygen.^13 A range of broad-leaved plants, less nutritious for
sheep and cattle, were thus suppressed, and the inundated areas came to
be characterized by a relatively species-poor grassland community of the
kind classified by the National Vegetation Classification scheme (NVC)
as type MG11 Festuca rubra – Agrostis stolonifera – Potentilla anserine.
Some flowering plants, such as the cowslip (Primula veris), were adversely
affected by spring drowning but others such as the fritillary (Fritillaria
meleagris) flourished.^14 In winter and early spring the meadows, with their
areas of water and early growth of grass, attracted a range of mammals
and birds from the surrounding arable and downland, still often frozen
hard.^15 In addition, Marshall described how large numbers of rats took
up residence in the drains and carriers, feeding off the ‘roots and sweet
herbage’.^16 But the high stocking densities in spring – as many as 400
ewes and lambs per acre – probably ensured that water meadows were
of little use to ground-nesting birds, although they would have provided
useful feeding and wintering sites for the more common wildfowl, snipe
and thrushes.^17
fields: Woodland and Champion
In the seventeenth century, as today, large areas of the land surface were
occupied by alien crops, grown either for human consumption or to feed
livestock. Wheat and barley were the main cereals, although oats and rye
were much more widely cultivated than they are today, especially on poorer,
more acidic soils. Beans and peas were widely cultivated as field crops, and
turnips were just beginning to appear in the fields in parts of southern and
eastern England, joining the red and white clover and sainfoin (probably
grown from the sixteenth century), buckwheat, vetches and other fodder
crops. Industrial crops like coleseed, woad and hemp were also sporadically
cultivated. Seventeenth-century arable land, in terms of appearance and
conservation value, differed in a number of key ways from the chemical-
soaked, intensively cultivated fields of today.
In particular, the crops themselves would have been infested with a
phenomenal ranges of weeds and pests or – to put it another way – arable fields
would have had far higher levels of biodiversity. There were no herbicides
or pesticides, and as crops were usually sown broadcast rather than in rows
it was hard to weed effectively. Numerous plants now uncommon or rare –
such as the corn buttercup (Ranunculus arvensis), red hemp-nettle (Galeopsis
angustifolia), broad-leaved cudweed (Filago pyramidata), pheasants eye
(Adonis annua), cornflower (Centaurea cyanus), shepherd’s needle (Scandix
elle
(Elle)
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