By ecology-trained consultant Julie Bygraves, of Wild Bourne
It’s hard to express how special a chalk grassland is – you just have to go to see one. It’s also hard to explain what it is: in genetic terms it’s an assemblage of rare plants on chalk!
But the constituent species can vary enormously depending on the history of the site, gradient, aspect, and management approach.
Many chalk grasslands within the South Downs National Park, are spectacularly diverse, with a huge range of wildflowers. They’re very beautiful, to say the least, but is also scientifically fascinating to think about how such a huge range of plants can be found within a small geographic area, and the abundance of rare plants is also remarkable.
How we can work with nature
Walking the Downs is fantastic for human residents, for our mental and physical wellbeing. Many chalk grassland sites have been restored to their current state, meaning that parts had been cultivated or encroached by a young (and very species-poor) woodland.
This gives us hope because it demonstrates what nature can do, if humans undertake sympathetic rewilding which involves an annual mow or conservation grazing. And it also serves as a reminder of just how much we are losing if we abandon sites, grazed extensively by animals, for millennia.
Rewilding doesn’t mean abandonment: rewilding champions at places like Knepp Castle Estate, near Horsham, still do intervene to help species diversity, introducing large herbivores like Tamworth pigs or Mangalitza pigs. This is just the way the landscape has evolved with low-intensity farming, a human and animal landscape which has existed for millennia.
Just some of the species surveyed on chalk grassland include chalk fragrant orchids, burnt tip orchids, pyramidal orchids, common milkwort and common centaury (which aren’t common!), field scabious, small scabious, restharrow, meadow vetchling, squinancywort, perforate St. John’s wort, eyebright, black medick, hop trefoil, and the Sussex flower: round-headed rampion.
I have an ecology background but a chalk grassland makes a great botanist of anyone!
I would encourage anyone to go on a voyage of discovery and find their own local patch of chalk grassland within the South Downs National Park.
:: Julie joined the Eastbourne Reporter on a downland walk to look at scrub encroachment. Read the full story here.
