2-Aug 1999

The banks slope down to the water, steeply in parts and have been colonised by:-

1) Plants of disturbed soils, many of them annuals or biennials, that were either present as seeds in the soil, or else blew in as seeds from surrounding hedgerows etc. These include wild carrot, mugwort, spear thistle, common mallow, common vetch, dandelion, bristly oxtongue, broad-leaved dock, smooth tare, black horehound, white deadnettle, common nettle, greater plantain, prickly lettuce, perennial sow-thistle, creeping thistle, hedge bindweed, field bindweed, creeping cinquefoil, bittersweet, comfrey, hogweed, rough chervil, black medick, colt's-foot, creeping buttercup, white campion. Of these only smooth tare is at all unusual in the Biggleswade area.

2) Meadow plants introduced as part of the site landscaping. These include a few, such as kidney vetch and meadow crane's bill, + salad burnet that do not grow in the Biggleswade area. Typical local meadow plants (present at Biggleswade Common, for instance) are yarrow, ribwort plantain, birds-foot trefoil, selfheal, white clover, red clover, oxeye daisy. The most interesting meadow plants are several colonies of YELLOW RATTLE on the raw yellow clay of the east facing slope. The pond margins have a limited flora, with bulrushes covering about half the edge, a big colony of reed sweet-grass by one of the in-flows, and a few great willowherb and celery-leaved buttercup. Hard rush + soft rush form a zone above the bulrushes + sweet grass.