Fritillary

On my walk a few weks ago, I came across a field filled with these beautiful flowers.

Do you know what they are and why they are so important in the ecosystem?

They are fritillaries, a bulb which only grows in grassy flood meadows that are free from pollution and fertilisers.

A patch of these means your land is in good condition, and everything is as nature intended.  If they disappear something is wrong.

Quite often these flowers are disappearing from nature as intensive farming techniques and excess use of chemicals is becoming the norm.  They are considered an endangered species nowdays.

We are quite lucky to have fields with literally hundreds of them.  A testiment to the farming techniques which have been practiced here since the beginning of settlement ( going back a few thousand years on this particular spot!).