Cyue Parc, photo by Gethin Elias
I have grown up around Llanuwchllyn with not a meadow in site, yet I have found myself to have a passion for hay meadows. Is it because they are full of colour, that they sing a lulling hum on a perfect summers day, or that the smell of many species of flower reminds me of a perfect pot of honey. In the UK we have lost 98% of our wild flower meadows since the war, this fact is a good reason for me to have a passion for meadows. Secondly in Iolo Williams speech on the state of nature (if you have never seen this speech, please watch it, it is very powerful), he once said that there wasn’t a single meadow left in Llanwddyn where he grew up. This is no longer true. There are at least 11 hay meadows around the lake, they are all a working progress and their diversity will improve over time with the right management. Cae mawr, photo by Gethin Elias Most of the fields have been ploughed and reseeded with either rye grass or a clover lay, farmers do this to improve the field for stock, having only a few species of grass and clover means that more stock can graze in a field as the nutrition value is greater than it would be in a hay meadow, the yield is also greater with less competition. An interesting thing is happening at Lake Vyrnwy, that I hadn’t come across before. The fields are reverting into hay meadows. It was such a long time ago when they were ploughed and thank god probably not sprayed with glyphosate that the seed is still in the ground, allowing the fields to slowly come alive again.
Tower fields photo by Gethin Elias
These fields have plants such as tufted vetch, the flowers are a wonderful blue colour and is in the pea family. Eyebright’s, there are 22 species of these in the UK and quite difficult to identify and it doesn’t help that they hybridise. Betony, a dark purple flower which stands on square stalks. Blue bells that we all know, deliciously scented in a haze of blue on mass. Meadow sweet, likes to grow in damper corners and grows tall with creamier white flowers. Yellow rattle, a parasite of grasses and is an important plant in a meadow, it makes sure the grasses don’t get to dominating. It rattles when the seed heads are dry and blooms yellow. There is one field on the reserve that has never been ploughed, only neglected for a few years. This field has a similar plant diversity to the others but it is the only one to have Heath spotted orchid, Common spotted orchid and Greater butterfly orchid. The most likely cause for this field to have kept its orchids over the others is that the mycelium strands, the fungus network, has never been destroyed. Mycelium has an interesting way of sharing nutrition between plants, it is said that a lot of orchids need this network in the soil. A few years ago a researcher in the USA described how conifers would help deciduous trees in the winter and deciduous trees would help the conifers in the summer making these trees less likely to get diseases and grow stronger. This was all done through the mycelium network. 
Fruiting bodies from the mycelium network below ground. Photo by Gethin Elias (Don’t get to exited this photo was not taken on reserve!)
Our meadows are grazed in the winter until early spring. The stock is then taken off allowing the flowers to bloom, bees to buzz and butterflies to flutter. Once the seed has fallen or dried it’s time to cut for hay, if the weather holds. From an entomologist’s point of view a meadow is always better grazed at the end of the year, allowing the insects a better chance of survival. This is always an option if the weather turns. I hear you say, why don’t we do that all the time? At the moment, none of our meadows are in perfect condition whatever that may be. But by taking a hay crop we are taking nutrition away from the field and giving the stock food for the winter. Meadows don’t like good soil and fertiliser as this makes grass growth become to dominant. Each year we take a grass crop and flower seeds get scattered a bit more, the more this happens the better the meadow will be in years to come. Come and see our meadows next year and enjoy them for yourself.
Gethin Elias, Assistant Warden
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