Well I never thought..........
M.W. Hanson 3 Church Cottages, Church Road, Boreham, Essex CM3 3EG
This article has been prompted by the discovery of a huge flowering population of
Meadow Saxifrage on one of the Chelmer and Blackwater 'meads' at Boreham in May
this year. I first found a small population, about 90 plants last year as an addition to an
already known population at the eastern end of the mead, but one which has dwindled
over the years. In 1999 I counted c.350 plants at the latter site but only 14 plants in 2005
and so welcomed the finding of the 90 odd plants in the new area.
I decided to see if there were any further plants at the new site in 2006 and noticing three
rather scummy white looking patches on the far side of the mead. I decided to investigate
and to my delight these all turned out to be areas of Meadow Saxifrage (see Plate 4).
Initially I estimated eight to nine hundred plants but as more plants came into flower this
estimation grew and when the site was soon after visited by Tony Boniface and Ken
Adams and Peter Allen it was agreed that a closer estimate would be around 2,000 plus
individuals. For me it was one of the most spectacular botanical sights I have ever seen
in the county and this must be one of the biggest populations of Meadow Saxifrage in
Essex and probably the UK. With all the destruction of ancient meadowland in the
county, I never thought the day would come that I would see some 2,000 Meadow
Saxifrage in the county. This total is also remarkable for the simple reason that the mead
was regularly cropped since being ploughed up in the mid 1990s until set-aside a couple
of years ago, it. I can only think that either buried seed or the little bulbils this species
produces have enabled the survival of the plant. It currently has a burgeoning population
of Skylarks and has been 'colonised', if that is the right word to use, by among other
plants Ragged Robin - also an increasingly rare sight in the county.
I am unsure of the future of the site since it presumably depends on the long-term
continuation of any grant to keep it going as set-aside (the site is also quite sizeable
covering many tens of hectares and would be expensive to manage) and there is also a
planning proposal to create a farm reservoir for agricultural irrigation on the site. My
own idea would be for the best areas of the 'meadow' to be kept as such and if it were
possible to have a deep reservoir constructed that had a huge reed bed in it (c.l0+
hectares) to create the largest inland reed bed in Essex and then use this with the help of
sluices to help filter water from the Chelmer and Blackwater (which now has treated
water from a sewage works upstream in it) and ultimately returned to the river.
May 2006 brought another amazing sight to me.... my first Essex Red Kite sighting. I
was driving up to look at some of the open gardens in Little Baddow and one of these
spectacular birds flew fairly low flying in the direction of the Chelmer and Blackwater.
With the success of the UK re-introduction programme it is not surprising that we are
seeing more and more examples of this bird in Essex (7 in 2000 & 22 in 2003). It really
8 Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 51, September 2006