Purple Milk-vetch

My morning was spent visiting a nearby SSSI with three other botanists. It was a bit of a trip back in time for me, because I'd last visited over twenty-five years ago when I worked for the Nature Conservancy Council. I'm pleased to say it was looking in much better condition thanks to a variety of financial incentives which have supported a sympathetic grazing regime.

Our purpose was to hunt for some of the rarer species that hadn't been recorded recently, including this Purple Milk-vetch, which is now considered to be Endangered in the UK. We found lots of it, together with plenty of Horseshoe Vetch and Dyer's Greenweed, which are both locally rare and a couple of Man Orchids. Sadly, two of the rarest species, Pasqueflower and Spotted Cat's-ear seem to have gone, but in each case, when I last saw them in the late 1980's, there were only a very few plants remaining, so this isn't very surprising.