The Devonshire Association likes to visit cemeteries – for example, a visit last year to Plymouth Orthodox Synagogue and its cemetery. The Botany Section is also interested in cemeteries – and also last year it organised a field trip to The Knapp Nature Reserve, Sidmouth – which it noted is adjacent to Sidmouth cemetery which has another hectare set aside for nature with a reduced mowing scheme.
As Ed Dolphin noted on the SVBG social media pages this week, there is a new project starting with the Devonshire Association Botany Section cataloguing the plant life of Devon’s cemeteries:
New project starting with the Devonshire Association Botany Section cataloguing the plant life of Devon’s cemeteries. Sixty minutes in our parish church registered over 70 species, most in the parts not strimmed and mown every few weeks. Even those areas are not actually grass if you take a look, mainly daisy, plantain, cat’s ear and hawkbits.
Meanwhile, again on the SVBG social media pages, there has been disappointment at the lack of biodiversity in an area managed by the council at another site – where “I was told that the bank beside the croquet lawns in Station Road was not suitable for a nature area because it was a prominent visitor site…”
..