The 2002 AGM address. The changing flora of the Essex countryside
CHARLES WATSON
18 Thorley Park Road, Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire CM23 3NQ
The title of this presentation may suggest that the flora of Essex has suddenly begun to alter. This is
certainly not the case, as change has always been taking place. The herbivorous dinosaurs of 150
million years ago certainly did not consume the vegetation we know today. But although natural and
climatic change has always been taking place it is only in more recent times that human influence
has begun to make a difference. We cannot be sure how the Essex landscape would have appeared
5000 years ago. Perhaps it was mostly forest and scrub, with areas of open grassland and extensive
marsh and carr in the low lying areas. About this time land began to be cleared to cultivate the first
crops and one wonders what arable weeds these early growers had to contend with. In the Middle
Ages much of Essex was sheep country, evidenced by the great wool churches. By the 16th and 17th
centuries the increasing population and better communications brought many hundreds of thousands
of cattle, driven from Scotland and Northern England, to be fattened on Essex grassland before
slaughter in London. By the 18th century much of the county was pasture with increasing areas of
arable land, and reduced woodland, although parkland was becoming fashionable. By the 20th century
the Essex landscape we know today had been laid out. All the land was enclosed, hedges bounded
the fields and most of the marshland had been drained. The pace of change had been steady but was
about to increase dramatically over the next 100 years.
Perhaps the greatest pressure on our countryside has come from agriculture. Mechanisation has
enabled more land to be cultivated by fewer farm workers. Using more fertiliser, subsidised crops
can be produced on marginal land. Wild plants are eradicated from the crops by the application of
modern selective herbicides. The practice of spraying the headlands of fields with total herbicide
leads to impoverishment of the hedgerow flora. Arable weeds which were common in Essex 50
years ago have now become rarities. Some examples of these are Shepherds Needle Scandix pecten-
veneris, Night-flowering Catchfly Silene noctiflora and Henbane Hyoscymus niger. There is surely
less livestock in Essex today than in former times. Much of our grassland has been ploughed up to
grow cereal crops and almost all of the remaining areas have been agriculturally improved by the
application of selective herbicides which kill all broad leaved plants. Subsequent dressing with
nitrogen fertilisers to encourage growth inhibits finer grasses and results in a coarse lush pasture of
little botanical interest. Many of our well known grassland plants have declined and some can now
only be found on nature reserves. Meadow Saxifrage Saxifraga granulata (plate 1) and Green-
winged Orchid Orchis morio are examples, but many more could be offered.
Most woodland in Essex is presently suffering from neglect. Decline in demand for firewood and
local timber means that it does not pay landowners to manage their woods properly As a result many
woods are densely overgrown and retained only for hunting and shooting. I suspect that if it were not
for the fox and the pheasant most of the Essex woods in arable areas would have been removed long
ago. Woodland plants in decline include the Primrose Primula vulgaris, Oxlip Primula elatior (see
cover photograph) and Violet Helleborine Epipactis purpurata, the latter two suffering heavy
predation by deer.
One benefit from agriculture has been the increasing number of large farm reservoirs being created.
Our aquatic flora is beginning to benefit from this much needed boost following the infilling of so
many small farm ponds in recent years. Many of our streams suffer from low flows and abstraction.
Essex Naturalist (New Series) 19 (2002)
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