Green Plan team members Roselle Chapman, Helen Marshall, and Nicola Schafer met up with new county councilor Pete Sudbury, and Richard Harding, Chair of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, to talk hedges and road verges.
Where better to meet than Britwell Road, where Nigel Adams has been planting up gaps in the hedge and there is a Road Verge Nature Reserve full of interesting plants. We saw Lady’s Bedstraw, Hedge Bedstraw, St. John’s Wort, Common Knapweed, Greater Knapweed, Field Scabious, Agrimony, Knapweed Broomrape, and Yellow Rattle, showing the great variety of species that can thrive when old road verges are managed well for biodiversity
Knapweed Broomrape is a parasitic plant, which does not contain chlorophyll, hence the absence of green pigmentation. It flowers in June and July and can be found on grassland and road verges, particularly on chalk soils. It steals its nutrients from the root system of the Greater Knapweed.