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The Joans Hill Farm reserve has been celebrated as a Coronation Meadow, but did you know it’s also home to royalty? The rare Noble Chafer beetle!
Find out how our work restoring orchards is helping to save this beetle from extinction.
The Wye Valley AONB Partnership are running a project aimed at reversing the decline of the Noble Chafer beetle. Despite extensive surveying on suitable habitat in summer 2022, the beetle was found at only 2 sites in the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, with one of them being the old orchard at Plantlife’s Joan’s Hill Farm nature reserve.
Fruit trees may live for roughly 100 years and provide decaying wood habitat during the last third of their lives. It’s important that we plant regular replacements and manage our older trees to prolong their lives, ensuring a variation in age and the continued presence of wood-decay habitats.
Last week we were delighted to receive 10 young plum and damson trees for Joan’s Hill Farm, thanks to the Wye Valley AONB Partnership. Not only that, but 2 AONB staff helped our Reserve Manager to plant them and to build substantial guards which will protect them from cattle. Although plums and damsons are some of the fastest species to produce decaying wood, it may be 60 years before they become suitable for beetle colonisation. In the meantime, we will be putting up some artificial ‘beetle boxes’, filled with wood compost, to increase the available habitat, and to act as stepping stones between the two orchard areas at Joan’s Hill Farm.
The Noble Chafer Gnorimus nobilis is a beetle about 20mm long with a metallic green body, speckled with white. The whole body displays a brilliant iridescence which can flash copper, gold and even violet. The adults emerge in June or July and feed on pollen and nectar from a variety of umbellifers, before laying their eggs in the decaying trunks of old trees. The larvae feed on the decaying wood, emerging after 2 to 3 years.
The beetle’s numbers have declined in parallel with the loss of veteran trees and traditional orchards, and it is now classed as Nationally Scarce.
Noble Chafer beetle found at Joan’s Hill Farm by Ellie Baggett – Wye Valley AONB
Only 3.2% of England’s land and sea is protected. This is why nature reserves are so important.
They are protected havens for wild plants and wildlife. Will you help keep them flourishing?
We hear from Plantlife Nature Reserves Manager, Andrew Kearsey, on how work is progressing to protect the reserve from ash dieback, and grazing using ponies.
The Joans Hill Farm reserve has been celebrated as a Coronation Meadow, but did you know it’s also home to royalty? The Noble Chafer beetle!
Spring is an exciting time to be on our nature reserves. This is the season when the meadows really burst into life, with lush growth and seasonal flowers.
Nature Reserve Diary
Our Augill Pasture reserve is a shining example of mountain hay meadow habitat in Cumbria which needs careful year round management by the Plantlife and Cumbria Wildlife Trusts team. We hear from Nature Reserves Manager Andrew Kearsey about how we’ve been working to protect the reserve this winter.
One of the biggest issues facing our nature reserves is the ongoing management of Ash trees suffering from dieback – Augill is no different as the woodland there is about 10% Ash. Some of the ash trees were identified through our tree safety surveys as being diseased and close to footpaths and the car park.
Two of the diseased trees were overhanging the Augill Smelt Mill. Any limb shedding would cause further damage to this structure, which is on the Historic England Scheduled Monument At-Risk register.
We made the decision to employ a local firm of tree surgeons to remove both these trees and several other ash trees around the car park. This work was delivered working with our tenant for the reserve; Cumbria Wildlife Trust.
The trees were removed in Mid-January and I went recently to check on their progress. When I arrived they had cordoned off the car park and footpaths and had their climber in the larger of the two trees removing the higher limbs. By the time I left about 2 hours later, they had removed the majority of the limbs, while the ground crew had processed the brash and timber into log piles and brash windrows
Pony grazed meadows at Augill Pasture Nature Reserve. Image by Andrew Kearsey Andrew
The grassland at Augill Pasture is managed by grazing and unusually for our reserves it is grazed by ponies. Two small ponies were put on the reserve in October and were taken off recently, as the weather became very cold at the beginning of January. This grazing will have controlled the growth of the grass species, allowing the forb species enough space to grow as the weather turns warmer.”
Plantife’s Meadows Hub has everything you need to help you manage your meadow or grassland including practical step by step advice, resources, links to training days and expert knowledge
Saving the endangered Three-lobed Water Crowfoot plant, which is considered as an aquatic buttercup species.
New pools are being created at Greena Moor, a secluded Cornish nature reserve, for the endangered Three-lobed Water Crowfoot Ranunculus tripartitus.
The work was funded by Natural England through their Species Recovery Programme and charitable trusts including the Stuart Heath Charitable Settlement. Nature Reserves Manager Jonathan Stone have been working to protect the ‘star’ of Greena Moor.
Three-lobed Water Crowfoot is an aquatic member of the buttercup family, the plant has small, white, starry flowers. Like most crowfoots, it has two kinds of leaves; the surface leaves are three-lobed and broad, but the underwater leaves – rarely seen with this species but seen here in this photo – are finely divided and feathery.
In March 2020, Three-lobed Crowfoot occupied only two small pools near the ford, covering an area of just 7m2, and it was clear that a lack of suitable shallow water bodies was preventing further spread of the species at Greena.
Grazing also plays an important role, helping to control competing vegetation and distributing seed. The cattle grazing at Greena appears ideal, and on the Cornish Lizard heaths Three-lobed Crowfoot has become far more common under similar management conditions.
The nature reserves management team have created 10 new pools to encourage more Three-lobed Crowfoot plant. We are very hopeful to seeing similar increases of this beautiful endangered plant over the coming years.
Plantlife’s Artist in Residence, shares her summer journey across our reserves and some top tips for aspiring botanical artists.
How Plantlife is moving one of the most endangered wildflowers in Europe off the Red Data list for Great Britain.
Some of our plants in Wales are threatened by extinction, but here are 3 species that are being brought back from the brink of extinction.
Did you know some of our plants are threatened by extinction? Here are 3 species that are endangered in Scotland and the work that’s being done to bring them back.
Plantlife’s Cairngorms Project Manager Sam Jones reveals how a tiny flower in Scotland is fighting back against extinction in the UK.
In the UK we have over 45 species of orchid – which might be more than you thought! Learn more about this wild and wonderful family of plants with Plantlife wildflower expert Sarah Shuttleworth.
Plantlife’s Vascular Plants Officer Robbie Blackhall-Miles finds an exciting new plant species for Wales.
Dave Lamacraft, Plantlife’s Lichen and Bryophyte Specialist, heads out to discover a wealth of extraordinary lichens which call Wales’ rainforests home.
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