Country diary: wildflowers on the verge of recovery

The erect creamy heads of sulphur clover, a plant frequently found on clay soils in East Anglia. Photograph: Matt Shardlow

The roadside wildflowers around Ryhall are so special that in the 1980s the verges were designated as sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs). This is simultaneously a huge victory and a terrible tragedy.

To the west of Ryhall, the Tolethorpe Road verges are slender, 5 metres at the widest point, but mostly much narrower. Despite this they are rich with plants; clumps of marjoram, knapweed, salad burnet and red and white clovers abound, while goat’s-beard seedheads project upwards like giant dandelions clocks. Knapweed plants are accompanied by the thick brown blooms of knapweed broomrape, a parasitic plant that lacks energy-trapping chlorophyll; instead they sap their magnificent vigour from their hosts.

The yellow vetch-like flowers of wild liquorice. Photograph: Matt Shardlow

A low-growing plant with red stems, pinnate oval leaves and insipidly yellow vetch-like flowers is unfamiliar enough to summon the plant guide. Wild liquorice seems most likely and a nibble of a leaf leaves little doubt, a burst of liquorice followed by a lingeringly astringent taste like the most ferocious pea shoots you can imagine. More easily recognised, but just as unexpected, are the erect creamy heads of sulphur clover, a plant frequently found on clay soils in East Anglia.

68% of all sulphur clover sites are road verges – indeed a recent Plantlife report revealed that 91 road-verge inhabiting flowers are now threatened species.

‘They have become plants on the verge, clinging on despite the constant threat of nitrogen pollution from cars.’ Photograph: Matt Shardlow

To the north of Ryhall, the Little Warren road verges have their own character. The hedges are set back several metres from the road, a clear indication that this was once a drover’s lane where great flocks of sheep were driven between pastures. Now that the landscape is almost exclusively arable, the bladder campion, pyramidal orchids, yellow rattle, rest harrow, meadow cranesbill and meadow vetchling are not meadow plants at all, they have become plants on the verge, clinging on despite the constant threat of nitrogen pollution from cars and ammonia from the fields.

Despite the fragmentation of their habitats there is hope here, the SSSIs are being managed and the plants are hanging on. Perhaps the advent of the electric car will give them more breathing space, and one day they will be able to spread back into newly restored meadows.