Cromwell Bottom

Saturday 20^th July 2019

Leader: Andrew Kafel

A wonderfully unique site that takes in a stretch of the river Rother, the Calderdale canal and the Cromwell bottom nature reserve including a range of habitats of woodland, scrub, meadow and aquatic margins.

We found out the reserve is managed by a dedicated group of volunteers, some of which joined us for the walk and we discovered the history of the site as it was an old power station, whereby now a large area of the site is covered in impermeable fly ash piles and waste tips. The volunteers have done some amazing work in just a few short years by planting trees, managing scrub, creating ponds, building hides and paths.

We started along the river Rother where the adventure began straight away with some steep banks down to the river in order to discover great wood rush, soft shield fern, wood sage in flower and fodder burnet, similar to salad burnet in appearance but with closer inspection the toothed leaves are obvious. Many of us chose to watch from the top of the banks whereby Andrew shouted names of plants to us and brought us back samples including hybrid monkey flower with red spots on the flower instead of the pure yellow of monkey flower. Other river bank species identified included marsh cress, the bitter water pepper, lesser swine cress, sticky groundsel and wild turnip.

A selection of grasses were identified to jog our memory of quick id features including the tall ligule and rough stem of rough meadow grass, the large ligule of reed canary grass, the hairy ligule of common reed and the hairy nodule or 'hairy knees' of creeping soft grass.

As we left the river and entered into the nature reserve we came across beautiful displays of meadow vetchling, tufted vetch, red clover, common knapweed and marsh woundwort all at the peak of their summer flowering, and the marsh woundwort a welcome and not unpleasant smell like its relative the hedge woundwort. We discovered the two would hybridise and produce a plant with a short petiole to aid identification. Further species identified in the meadow mix included the beautiful knodding heads of quaking grass, crested dog's tail and red bartsia along with common spotted orchid. We were informed by the nature reserve volunteers that the glade used to be known as the orchid glade and contained over 200 orchids at one time, sadly we only discovered a few flowers on our visit and a debate continued as to why the numbers had reduced, possibly from scrub encroachment or enrichment of the soil.

We continued to the top meadow to catch the last single flowering remnants of grass vetchling, which was common on this site but just going over at this time of year so we were lucky to find a single delicate pink pea flower on the end of a long stem unlike its relative the showy meadow vetchling.

We did well to avoid the rain throughout the day with only a short shower in the morning and we ploughed on until lunch with a lovely shady spot for a break at the Nature reserves' bird feeders whereby we had a display of great tits, dunnock, robin and bullfinch.

The weather improved in the afternoon with a sunny display and walk around the lagoon and canal habitats, with the butterflies out including ringlets and gatekeepers. Along the wooded paths we were treated to scaly male fern, tall mellick, common twayblade, zigzag clover and the dusty pink flower heads of the broad-leaved helleborine.

A further adventure after lunch led us down a steep bank into a wet woodland hollow on the search of the star of the day and we weren't disappointed with the display of round-leaved wintergreen as many flowers of the delicate little plant were out and showed a wonderful white speckled carpeting of the woodland floor. We then walked along the reedbed lagoon and canal in search of our last rare treasure, the yellow birds nest, an easily miss-able tiny parasitic plant that feeds off fungi decomposing in the leaf litter, courtesy of one of our nature reserve guides, Steve who could recall the exact position he had seen them previously and treated us to a delicate display.

Text by Rozanna

Photographs by Rozanna and Jill