Low Moor Banks

Wednesday 23^rd June 2021

Leader: Martyn Priestley

Martyn led us around this interesting raised area of rough grassland and scrub on the outskirts of an industrial area of Bradford for this evening field meeting. We were fortunate in having dry weather. We accessed the site from Dealburn Road, which forms the northern boundary of the site. Martyn was keen to point out that this is a separate site to the near-by Raw Nook Nature Reserve and Toad Holes Beck reserve, which we had an indoor talk about in Feb 2020. Martyn told us how the former tip had been capped about 30 years ago, but not having been capped to a high standard, it’s not suitable for most development and Martyn hopes it can be left as a home for wildlife and green space for people, as it is currently.

We saw large areas of tall grasses mixed with numerous other species such as abundant Soft Lady’s-mantle and Pendulous Sedge. A stout plant near the entrance, not yet in flower, was pointed out as Dittander, a native plant found at the edges of salt marshes but also known to naturalise on waste ground, as in this case. Shrubby Cinquefoil was also well established and management may be required to stop this garden escape getting the upper hand. Other shrubs included Sweet-briar, Hairy Dog-rose, Bullate Cotoneaster and Dogwood.

An interesting-looking sedge was pondered over and later confirmed as a subspecies of Grey Sedge (Carex divulsa ssp. leersii). It was found at more than one location at this site. This is a sedge not commonly found in this region, so it was an excellent find. It was good to see Southern Marsh-orchid and Bee Orchid too.

We saw numerous burnet moths which Martyn informed us were the rare Narrow-bordered Five-spot Burnet (Zygaena lonicerae). These strikingly coloured red and black day flying moths were hard to miss against the yellow grass, although to the untrained eye they look very similar to the more common Five-spot Burnet. We also saw their paper-like cocoons on grass flower stems. The Butterfly Conservation website states that the caterpillar food plants for this species include Meadow Vetchling, Red Clover and Greater Bird's-foot-trefoil, all of which we found growing here.

It was also interesting to see Alder, Grey Alder and their hybrid all growing in close proximity. In this enjoyable evening stroll we managed a plant list of 129 taxa, hopefully adding some more species to the site list.

Text by Susan

Photographs by Tom & Susan