Ragwort - friend or foe?

Ragwort is a plant that provokes strong reactions amongst a certain group of people. We'll come back to that, though. First of all, ragwort is not a single, plant; it's a group of related species, all members of the genus Senecio. Common ragwort (Senecio jacobaea) is a widespread plant of grassland, meadows and road verges throughout Britain. Its close relatives - hoary ragwort, Oxford ragwort, marsh ragwort and fen ragwort - are less common but very similar in appearance.

Hoverfly and cricket feeding on ragwort

Oxford ragwort is a non-native invasive species which was originally introduced to Britain from Sicily in the early 18th century. It found the clinker of railway tracks very similar to the volcanic slopes of its homeland, jumped the wall from Oxford University Botanic Garden and began to spread along railway lines. Fen ragwort, conversely, is native but extremely rare, being confined to a single ditch near Ely.

Pair of mating red soldier beetles

But let us return to the common ragwort and its problems. It has the unfortunate property of being poisonous to horses and other livestock, causing liver damage or death. Whilst they might avoid it as a living, green plant, once cut and dried as hay it becomes more likely to be ingested. This effect on the pampered mounts of the chattering classes has led to common ragwort being vilified and persecuted. It was listed on the 1959 Weeds Act (yes, there is a Weeds Act), which can require a landowner with ragwort on their property to take action to control it.

Bumble bee nectaring on the flowers of ragwort

 

Dr Karin Alton examining a range of pollinators on Ragwort

Which is a shame, because it's a really good pollinator plant. It flowers abundantly, it is visited by a wide range of insects, and it is even the host of a particular species of moth, the cinnabar, whose distinctive striped caterpillars are found nowhere else (I recently heard them referred to as ragworms, a word I am going to use from now on). And it really is only a problem where horses or other livestock are likely to graze. So let's leave the poor plant alone on road verges and waste ground, and long may it support its ragworms!

Burnet moth

 

Cinnabar moth caterpillar

All photos copyright: Karin Alton

God's Acre

An area of land, open to the public, protected from development, with a long history of management as, usually, grassland with scattered trees. 

Nature reserve? No – churchyard!  

 

Photo: Mark Patterson

Above shows one of the 7 lost cemeteries of  London, now no longer a working cemetery, but a local nature reserve, with grave stones overgrown with red valerian, giant squil, catchfly and ox-eye daisy.

 

St Wilfred's Church in Haywards Heath.

Many of our churchyards are havens for wildlife, having had the continuity of management that many nature reserves can only dream of. Many of them are incredibly old – ancient churchyard yew trees often pre-date the church itself, marking pre-Christian sites of worship – and they are often undisturbed, particularly if contemporary burials are taking place elsewhere. This long history of steady management means that species have time to colonise, and some churchyards support a high diversity of plants, insects and – on the gravestones – lichens. 

The rare Black headed cardinal beetle found by Mark Patterson at Tower Hamlets cemetery. A new species for London.

Churchyards do suffer, however, from the blight that afflicts many public spaces – over-tidiness. Especially in areas that are still actively visited by relatives, there is an expectation to see the grass mown short and the weeds eliminated. And that is fine, but as is so often the case, there is almost always space for a little wildness.

In the old, unvisited corners of churchyards, many more enlightened churchwardens allow the vegetation to grow up in the summer, effectively managing it as a meadow. Sometimes they do this in the face of criticism from their parishioners, but surely – in God’s acre – there is room for all creatures great and small?