28 June 2024
What is a meadow?
They form a key part of Britain’s biodiversity and are disappearing at an alarming rate. Discover the variety within these incredible ecosystems.
What do you think of when you think of a meadow?
Probably an open field, full of grass and flowers gently blowing in the breeze.
But there’s so much more than just their beauty. Meadows of all types are critical to our ecosystems, and have a role to play in the fight against climate change.
The makings of a meadow
Today, a meadow is often used to describe any largely unmanaged natural area with a proliferation of grasses and flowers. More traditionally though, it refers to a field that is allowed to grow naturally until the late summer, when it is then harvested for hay. before it is grazed by animals in winter, then allowed to grow back throughout spring and summer again.
This repeated annual cycle of cutting back and regrowing makes the hay meadow a unique environment, shaped by the impact of human agriculture as it stops the succession of plants, which would lead to shrub growth, and eventually the formation of woodland.
While some meadows occur naturally, like prairie grasslands that are periodically stripped back by wildfires, the majority of meadows are the result of humans maintaining the land regularly across the seasons.
We often think of our impact on nature as a purely negative one, but meadows are a perfect example of living in harmony with a thriving natural ecosystem.
The myriad of meadows
Meadows are rich with species of flora, fauna and funga. Over 700 species of flowering plants call meadows home and, below the soil, multiple species of fungus form the mycorrhizal network that stores tonnes of carbon.
But meadows are not a monolith, and location is everything, so it might not be a shock to learn that the contents of a meadow are vastly different depending on the environmental conditions.
If you picture a classic flower-filled meadow, you’re most likely thinking of a neutral lowland meadow, which has soil that’s well drainedand not particularly acidic or alkaline. This is where you’ll find species like clovers (Trifolium), oxeye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) and even some native UK orchids, like the common spotted orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsia).
But if our meadow has wetter or less acidic soil, we’ll find a different array of life.
Soils that sit on chalk or limestone tend to have less acidic and more alkaline soils. These meadows, often called chalk meadows, are jam-packed with species like fairy flax (Linum catharticum), meadow clary (Salvia pratensis) and bird’s-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus). You might even spot some of the UK’s rarer orchids, like red helleborine (Cephalanthera rubra) in these areas.
Found in the northern parts of the UK, upland hay meadows have a diverse mix of grasses along with species like daisies (Bellis), yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor) and great burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis).
If the meadow is near a water source that regularly floods during the winter months, the resulting floodplain meadow may well be home to reeds and rushes, along with marsh orchids (Dactylorhiza) and marsh-marigold (Caltha palustris).
Why meadows matter
Along with being home to many rare plants, meadows also play a crucial role in our wider ecosystem.
Numerous pollinators, like bees, butterflies and other invertebrates, rely on meadows for food and shelter. In turn, large animals, like bats, hedgehogs and birds feed on these insects. And larger animals, like deer, squirrels and other mammals use the cover that a rich meadow can provide to escape predators.
As well as providing a habitat, meadows also are a huge carbon sink. Globally, soil stores more carbon than the atmosphere and vegetation combined, and grasslands, including meadows play a key role maintaining these stores.
That’s why it’s so stark to hear that over the last 70 years, an estimated 97% of the UK’s meadows have been lost.
Combined with other impacts of climate change, like rising temperatures, pollinators such as bees are beginning to disappear too. Losing these insects has a dramatic knock-on impact, affecting crop production and food security.
What’s behind these vanishing meadows? As farming intensifies, fewer fields are being given the opportunity to grow back wild before being cut for hay. Heavier grazing or replacing entire fields with cereals like wheat and barley is seeing hay meadows become increasingly rare too, both in the UK and across the world.
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Back from the brink
So, what’s to be done about these missing meadows?
Here at Kew, we’re working to learn more about our meadows, help protect those under threat and restore those that have already gone.
At the Millennium Seed Bank in Wakehurst, we’ve conserved 98% of the UK’s bankable plants, including those increasingly rarely found in meadows. Not only does this protect these species from future extinction, but it also allows us to provide high quality seeds to meadow restoration projects.
As part of the Millennium Seed Bank’s work, we launched the UK Native Seed Hub. This was a multi-year project providing seed, plants, expertise and training to land managers to support the conservation of species and habitats in meadows and grasslands.
Also at Wakehurst, the Coronation Meadow was created to both celebrate these crucial ecosystems by allowing visitors to enjoy a meadow up-close and to act as a research site to help our scientists understand seed harvest and germination.
Kew also supports anyone who would like to create their own meadow. Through our outreach program Grow Wild, we provide seed kits to help you start your own wildflower meadows and advice on how best to look after them.
