Local Wildlife Site

Wildlife

Much of the grassland is dominated by perennial rye-grass and other coarse meadow species. It contains a reasonable diversity of common wild flowers. There are also areas of dry acid grassland dominated by bents and red fescue, with burnet saxifrage, tormentil and bird's-foot-trefoil. Several damp hollows, probably former ponds, contain tussocky grassland of tufted hair-grass, with uncommon wild flowers such as great burnet, bog stitchwort and common marsh-bedstraw. Laurel Farm Pond is frequented by large numbers of geese and mallards, and hence has limited wetland vegetation. Scattered trees include oak, beech, horse chestnut and willows, with one particularly fine veteran oak near the school at the northern edge of the green. The woodlands also contain these species, along with sycamore, hawthorn, field maple, silver birch and hazel. There are dense thickets of blackthorn and regenerating elm. At ground-level plants in the woodland include bluebell, ramsons, lords-and-ladies and the locally-rare soft shield-fern.

Facilities

No information available