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Neutral grassland community

This usually occurs where the soils are of a neutral pH value. It is often where the soils are too deep to be affected by the parent rock material below. It can be found throughout the Peak District and is the most common type of grassland community. Typical species include meadow vetchling, meadow clover, ox-eye daisy and hay rattle.

Wildflower species:

Ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare)

Ox-eye daisy is a perennial herb also known as moon-daisy or dog-daisy. It has large daisy-like flowers and transforms hay meadows into graceful carpets of white and gold during the summer.

Its seeds are set as early as June right through to August. Ungrazed plants can produce as many as 4000 seeds, making it a good coloniser of bare ground. However, it does not like nutrient rich soils and so numbers have decreased on improved (fertilised) land.

In olden days, an extract from the flowers was used as a herbal remedy to cure diseases of the liver and chest. Juice from the stems was used as drops for runny eyes.

Hay rattle (Rhinanthus minor)

Another name for this golden yellow flower is ‘rattle box’ because of the sound produced by the ripe seeds rattling around inside the seed capsule. In days gone by, this was taken as a signal that the time for haymaking had come.

The shape of the petal tube resembles a witch’s hooked nose and gave rise to its Latin name Rhinanthus, which comes from two Greek words meaning ‘nose’ and ‘flower’.

Hay rattle is semi-parasitic, fixing its roots on to the root system of an adjoining plant, thereby extracting nutrients from it.

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