Dyrham Park can get very busy – especially in the school holidays – I took a picture of the car park before lunchtime today just to give some idea of how crowded it can be with hundreds of visitors walking down the steep approach towards the house. But there’s one part of the grounds where you can pretty well guarantee a bit of peace and quiet. Today we spent over an hour there plant hunting and we didn’t see a soul.
White Field is a wildflower meadow where, in the late spring and early summer, you can find three species of orchid growing without leaving the mown paths. To be fair, it’s not particularly easy to find, tucked away behind the car park and technically outside the grounds behind a high deer fence, but it’s a lovely spot in which to learn to identify many of our most attractive wildflowers. But don’t leave your visit much beyond mid July because it’s mown off and the hay baled and taken away as part of a management programme. These wildflowers actually prefer poor soil and a single dose of artificial fertilizer could cause irreparable harm allowing rank weeds and grasses to choke out their more delicate cousins.
This was the first place we saw Marbled White butterflies and they really are very beautiful; but why here and not, for example on any old grass verge? The food plant – the one which the caterpillars feed on – is a group of grass species collectively called Red Fescue – which is common across the whole country but there are several other food plants as well. So it’s not the food plant alone but some other factor too. The butterflies display a preference for purple flowers and the distribution maps suggest that unimproved grassland is one important factor. So White Field fits the bill perfectly; unimproved grassland on Cotswold limestone with masses of purple flowers; not least Knapweed, Clover, Meadow Cranesbill, Selfheal and lots of orchids. The sad truth is that the butterfly is as rare as unimproved grassland and we’ve ploughed up and poisoned over 90% of our wildflower meadows in the last fifty years. Anyway, they were there on White Field in abundance today and they were a joy to find.
The field which on our last visit was golden and white with Rough Hawksbeard and Oxeye Daisies looked more brown and shriveled today, but if you looked between the straw coloured mature grasses there were hundreds of Pyramidal Orchids, Oxeye daisies, a few Rough Hawksbeard clinging on, Knapweed, Selfheal and Meadow Cranesbill plants at the edges as well as Birdsfoot, Clovers, Hogweed and Ragwort. Lots to look at and enjoy including Ribwort Plantain, Red Fescues, Timothy grass, Cocksfoot and loads of other grasses I’ve never got to grips with. Altogether a rewarding end of season walk with fabulous views out towards the River Severn and down as far as the Mendip hills.
