plants that can grow up through the tarmac
blanket from the remnant vegetation below -
but ultimately Cow Parsley seems to be the
climax vegetation -- just about the worst
result from a roadman's point of view.
For over a decade the Essex Naturalists'
Trust Ltd. has been attempting to conserve
some of the best verges by agreeing manage-
ment plans for certain 'special verges'.
Initially there was no intention that all
the rest of our verges would be written off
as fair game dumping grounds for rotted
tarmac. The idea was rather that the
'special verges' would be managed as
'nature reserves' to show off the best of
our verges at their respective flowering
times. Not only has the marking of these
sites been slow, in the meantime, in practice,
management of the remaining verges has shown
little consideration for conservation of the
verge floras, and within a few years the so-
called 'special verges' are likely to be the
only ones left with anything other than the
ubiquitous Cow Parsley. In some areas it
has been possible to persuade farmers to cut
their local verges early and late, to avoid
the disasters of a summer-time cut, but
numerous other farmers and local householders
cut their adjacent verges incessantly through-
out the growing season, or use them as dumping
grounds for building waste and footings spoil.
In 1984 we became so alarmed by these modern
trends that a roadside verge survey was
organised in the most vulnerable sector of
the county - the north-west - to check out
the distribution of key indicator species.
Our Essex verge floras are of several
distinct types. In the south we have, in