Now that summer is here, our "meadow" is really coming into its own. Calling our relatively tiny patch of tall grass a meadow is a bit of a stretch, but the mix of gracefully swaying grasses with wildflowers nestled among their stems is delightful to look at — and we're finding lots of small invertebrates thriving there, including some that are in serious decline across most of Britain. The lovely pink grass flowers pictured here are Yorkshire Fog (Holcus lanatus), which flowers from June to September in Britain. It's widespread across the country as it can tolerate a wide range of soil types; it can become a problem in cereal crop fields and drier pastures, where its resulting hairiness makes it less palatable to livestock. This perennial forms tufts and can crowd out other species, reducing species diversity, so we'll have to keep an eye on it to make sure that doesn't happen in our garden. Right now though, we're enjoying the "fog"!
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