Queensbury Triangle

Saturday 27^th June 2018

Leader: Jesse Tregale

The nature reserve at Queensbury Triangle stands on the site of the railway station, which saw its last regular passenger trains in 1955. Its closure pre-dated the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, its downfall partly the result of its remoteness from the town it purported to serve. Fourteen of us made our way, on foot or carefully in cars, down the steep, rutted half-mile road linking town and station, losing several hundred feet in height in the process. It was a hot sunny evening as we began our walk at the eastern end of the site, where the Great Northern Railway Trail cycleway heads off in the direction of Thornton.

We started in the centre of the triangle, an area of grassland, which looked very dry after the prolonged sunny weather of May and June. Despite the drought, large clumps of soft lady’s-mantle, a garden escape, were everywhere, looking quite magnificent. At the far end of this area was a large patch of the evening’s star attraction, the wood vetch, which seems to be spreading around the area. The racemes of white flowers with dark purple veins looked stunning in the evening light.

Descending into a hollow, which once carried a colliery tramway down to Brook Lane, we turned right and ended in a shaded area, once crossed by a small viaduct on the Keighley-Bradford side of the station. More wood vetch was scattered around this area, with a couple of good stands of bladder campion, now fully in bloom. There was what appeared to be pale lady’s-mantle here, although others considered it insufficiently hairy and much discussion resulted, without a definite conclusion. Also here was an interesting verticillate form of broad-leaved willowherb, its leaves in whorls of three, rather than opposite pairs of two up the stem. The first flowers of wild mignonette were an unexpected bonus as was a fine clump of common spotted-orchid, with unusually dark flowers.

Botanical discussion led to the definite identification of spiked sedge. We looked at the differences between zigzag clover, abundant on the site, and red clover, particularly the narrower leaflets, more vividly-coloured flowers and absence of leafy bract immediately below the heads of the zigzag clover, which also tends to form large patches, being rhizomatous. Heath wood-rush was identified by its elongated seeds, those of the similar field wood-rush being spherical. A colony of the annual alien Indian balsam was looking heavily attenuated by the drought, although the adjacent, equally invasive, perennial alien, Japanese knotweed looked unaffected by the lack of rainfall.

We climbed out of the hollow and made our way to the northern apex of the triangle, before heading south towards the abandoned tunnel on the former Halifax line. Ambitious plans to reopen this 1½-mile subterranean passage as a cycleway appear to have stalled, cost no doubt a major concern. The damp cutting was festooned with ferns, notably golden-scaled male-fern and Borrer’s male-fern, along with the more common hart’s-tongue, male fern, lady fern and broad buckler-fern. The almost grass-like stems of greater stitchwort were given away by the remains of their flowers.

Jesse identified the hybrid between Japanese and giant knotweed as we reemerged from the cutting, its large leaves and apparent hybrid vigour catching the eye. The aristate (awned) form of common couch grass was noted before it was time to return to the cars, their drivers kindly offering to give the few pedestrians a lift back up the dusty, rutted road to Queensbury.

Text by Andrew

Photographs by Ian, Steve, Susan and Tom