rotationally. Most of the grassland is cut once a year for a late hay crop, but some
small areas are mown more frequently as well as some grazed by Canada Geese.
Some of the lakes are used for fishing, and there arc margins with plenty of reeds for
birds. Much of the land is prone to bogginess, or is even under water, in the winter
months, and in 2000 the wet conditions continued into June. There is, therefore, a
diversity of habitats for plant and animal life, constrained, and added to, by the many
visitors.
The present project was started a year ago, when I retired and contacted Tony Bovis,
the Senior Ranger, and asked if he could use an amateur botanist. He immediately
said that he would like to have a list of every plant that grows in the various habitats
within the Park, with frequency information, to inform management and in order to
improve biodiversity in the Park. Essex County Council supplied large-scale maps
and I bought some more text-books. Tony and I sorted out the 28 compartments for
recording and a few other people, mainly from the local members of the BSBI, joined
in. So far, we have over 2000 records, covering over 330 taxa of green plants, and
well over 100 larger fungi. A friend accompanies me for one whole day every week,
and I make other shorter visits most weeks as well. Others are tackling grasses, and
lower plants like mosses and lichens. I am looking forward to the Fungus Foray on
30th September to add to the fungus records. The whole project will take at least
another two or three years to complete, if a task like this can ever be considered
complete!
We have had our moments of excitement. The first was when we found a large (about
5000 plants) and hitherto undiscovered colony of Yellow Vetchling Lathyrus aphaca
in Bumstead Meadow South. In early June there were suddenly hundreds of
flowering plants, including hybrid swarms, of pink Orchids in the Sunken Wetland
area: Southern Marsh-orchid Dactylorhiza praetermissa, Coimnon Spollcd-orchid D.
fuchsii and Heath Spotted-orchid D. maculata, the last of which is apparently unusual
now in the London area. Another was when we found Lesser Swine-cress Coronopus
didymus in the car park, not rare but I had never seen it before, and the same applied
to our find of Three-nerved Sandwort Moehringia trinervia in some of the woods. A
disappointing moment was when we found that the only Cudweed in the park had
been obliterated by the wheel of a tractor turning in the mud before we could identify
it. Luckily, three months later and in a different area, we found another, which we are
watching very carefully. Our greatest puzzle so far was finding a mass of Nostoc, the
blue-green alga or Cyanobacterium, and working out what it was (we needed help
from Dr Peter Roberts at Kew for that one). We were pleased to see the return this
year of Dittander Lepidium latifolium on the ditch-bank by the Car park after an
absence of a few years, and we were hoping that the high spring rainfall would allow
Water-violet Hottonia palustris to flower again in the ephemeral pond in Running
Water Wood South, but at the time of writing in early July the pond is almost dry
again.
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 33, September 2000
16