SOWING WILD SEEDS

These diverse objectives can be more easily achieved by trying to understand how wild plant communities, species and individual plants respond to their surroundings.

Wild vegetation is constantly changing in response to selection pressures, and the process of change is by recruitment and loss of plants. Recruitment and loss is a concept that can help us to understand the consequences of sowing seeds in the countryside, both in the past and into the future.

Recruitment and loss in agricultural grassland communities over time has very much been a response to farming methods. Before 1940 most agricultural grasslands were a rich mixture of native wild species. These evolved in response to, and were sustained by, traditional farming practices. In particular, the trade between farms in seed rich July-cut hay was a very important route by which wild species were dispersed. Also, farmers regularly traded in barn-thrashed hay seeds for laying down new meadows after corn, selecting the best meadows as a seed source. These traditional practices led to widespread recruitment, ensuring that the attractive species of hay meadows were widely dispersed and common.

Since 1940, agricultural improvement of grasslands, made possible by improved mechanisation and agrochemicals, has produced a net loss of native wild grasslands in lowland areas of 95-97%. During the same period, the dispersal and recruitment of species from the remaining native grasslands has mostly ceased. This has been largely due to a preference for May-cut silage over July-cut hay.

The sowing of wild native seeds has an important role to play in the present day, and future, recruitment of new native grasslands. It is, after all, not unlike the traditional farming practice of using barn threshed hay seeds to lay down new meadows.

Emorsgate Wild Seeds
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Wild Grass Seed
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