Buttercups

This buttercup meadow is just outside Arnside, and I'm ashamed to admit I had never looked in it until this year. As well as the field buttercups (Ranunculus acris), it is also full of yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor). Otherwise it is not enormously species rich, but it is a beautiful sight at this time of the year nevertheless. Most of the grasslands in this area are used for silage and are heavily fertilised, and the fields are bright green and grass dominated. Although this field has been silaged in the past, it looks this year as if it to be cut for hay.

Brokenbanjo and I had a walk to the river at lunchtime, and I tried and failed to get the picture I wanted using my new tripod of water flowing over the weir. The mistake I made was not taking the remote control. We learn from our mistakes.

And speaking of mistakes, Kate from the Bishop Wilton Local History Society corrected my facts about the village Poor Lands reported in last Saturday's blip. The Poor Lands were actually given to the Parish as a charitable gesture, to be rented out and the money used for the Poor of the Parish. I had thought that they were used by landless villagers to make hay for a cow or sheep. I suspect this was the infirmity of my memory, rather than that of my father-in-law. Anyway, the good thing was that whoever rented the fields did not improve them agriculturally, and they remain as an oasis of biodiversity in an intensively farmed landscape.