This drought year it’s arrived. It is my crop especially at field margins.
I’m re-reading the chapter of Isabella Tree’s book Wilding. She writes well, and captures the public and private debate around ragwort – her first had experience is not unlike my own. She cites Professor Michael Crawley of Imperial College (3R’s Ragowort, Rabbits and something else I forget)
“Ragwort control is sometimes attempted by hand-pulling of the flowering stems. This removes the tap root but leaves a ring of five to ten broken lateral roots in the soil, each of which is capable of sprouting a new vegetative bud that will form a rosette in the following year. The result of this human herbivory, therefore, is to increase ragwort density five to tenfold, rather than to reduce it, as intended.”
Shit. I’ve been pulling along with strimming – with help from MJ and Jo
The chapter is headed ‘Living with the Yellow Peril. She traces it’s history, from John Clare extolling its beauty, to the letters they received of this injuurious weed. ‘The loudest accusation of all is that it is a killer of livestock. It contains purrolizidine alkaloids, toxins that when eaten in large quantities by mammals cause liver failure and death. But grazing animals have lived with it for tens of thousands of years. In a field, they avoid it. The problem comes when ragwort is cut into silage or hay and animals are unable to detect and avoid it.’
I first met Ragwort at Holton Hall Park, where it was introduced to me by Joan Sutherland who was assiduous at pulling ragwort on the meadow that was cut each year by a farmer for hay.
The Ragwort Control act of 2003 has done little to clarify the situation, despite a Code of Practice under the Wildlife and Countryside ink which states that common ragwort species are native to the British Isles and are therefore and inherent part of our flora and fauna. The Code promotes a strategic approach to control its spread.
Ragwort is only one of a considerable number of plants that can be fatal if eaten by horse and other livestock: foxglove, ivy, bryony, bracken, elder, spindle and yew. All are avoided by the animals and have been for years.
Friends of the earth myth busting
From Wynd: Ready for a quick legal lesson? The laws on ragwort do not require ragwort to be automatically removed. The Weeds Act 1959 and the Ragwort Control Act 2003 are routinely misquoted.
Under the 1959 Act a landowner or occupier may be ordered to control the spread of ragwort. The 2003 Act allows for the creation of a code of practice. Neither Act makes ragwort control compulsory in the absence of an order. In short, there’s no compulsion on landowners to remove ragwort.
Never the less, I continue to pull it each year. But best of all, has been sowing the land with Phacelia and mustard, which have effectively challenged the ragwort. Where they are no ragwort grows. I learn.
If, as a naturalist, I could add any subject to the old adage ‘never talk about religion or politics’ – it would be ragwort.
A divisive subject unlike any in our sphere, it really does get heated – and fast!
I am also not much for rules. So here it is in all its brazen glory – my tuppence worth.
Ragwort is a common wildflower, nothing very special to look at, though in numbers it does cheer up an embankment or roadside. It is also hated, due to its toxicity to livestock, and an enormous amount of hearsay and hyperbole that has grown around it like legend as a result.
The truth is, that it is toxic to livestock. But that doesn’t make it an automatic cartoon villain of a plant. It is an issue for livestock almost exclusively when it is dried into hay, because they no longer recognise it, but when fresh and growing, they do, and they avoid it. In fact on many of my regular walking routes here in Sussex there are fields with horses (including those with young foals), or cattle, living quite happily alongside the cheerful yellow ragwort spires – towering untouched and pristine above all of the other neatly grazed vegetation. I absolutely understand that this sort of husbandry may feel like too big a risk, and that owners may prefer to clear their grazing fields anyway – BUT – that is where the pulling, and cutting, and strimming needs to end – and here’s why.
Ragwort is also one of the most prolific producers of nectar that we have. If you pay attention on a walk, day or night, you will find it a buzzing metropolis of insect life – often far more so than anything surrounding it.
A study was undertaken in 2022 on several wildflowers often known as ‘injurious weeds’ – including ragwort. It found that they attract twice the number and twice the variety of pollinators – *and* had a whopping four times the amount of nectar than flowers sold and commonly planted as food for our native pollinators… than the things literally grown and packaged and sold to us to support the pollinators we know are so huge and important a part of our ecosystem – on who we depend – when the very plants we are routinely ripping out of the ground have them beaten hands down!
We went for a night walk recently, to set a moth trap, and checking every plant on the way down we discovered that every single ragwort plant was teeming. Familiar moths, new ones, earwigs, beetles, you name it – and that was just at night! In the daytime we see them jostling with cinnabar moth caterpillars, a perch for dragon and damsel flies, and buzzing with a variety of different bees and hoverflies, and once you notice just how prolific they are, you can’t stop seeing them!
So in defense – no, celebration of ragwort and its noxious pals – I want to share with you some pictures my partner took, and some phone snaps of mine. To encourage you to really look at the unloved and nondescript ‘weeds’. To protect them with all you’re worth. Because they are so much more than just themselves… and we can’t replace them with nicely sanitised packets of ‘butterfly wildflower mix’.
Iona Fraser
Kaliwood 