BROOM is one plant which rather likes the sandy conditions we find in and around Wyre Forest district.
Like other members of the pea family, it has the ability to fix nitrogen from the air, meaning it can thrive in otherwise nutrient poor soils. This has led to the plant becoming rather well established on some of the district's heathlands.
Broom is an important heathland plant as its dense evergreen foliage provides excellent cover for a host of birds and small mammals. Its flowers are mostly a brilliant sunshine colour and appear in vast amounts in spring.
Some plants can show a variation on this and have even more beautiful deep red and yellow flowers. Both these flowers greatly contribute to the springtime nectar supply that fuels the insect level of the heathland's ecosystems.
It is obvious that broom is an important part of the heath's ecology but it is also the case that you can get too much of a good thing which is certainly the situation at the moment, particularly on the Rifle Range part of the Devil's Spittleful nature reserve.
Given the right circumstances, broom can have a very high growth rate and on Rifle Range a broom plant, from seed, can reach a height of two metres or more in the space of three years.
This level of growth far exceeds other heathland plants, allowing broom to dominate at other plants' expense. This, combined with the fact that broom plants can produce prolific amounts of seed, can prove to be a problem. Each of the hundreds of flowers, when fertilised, produces a seed pod which looks like mini versions of pea pods.
These pods start off green but soon ripen into a black colour. Then, following a succession of sunny days, the pods dry out and dramatically burst open spraying out the six or seven seeds contained within over some considerable distance. If you walk in an area of broom on a sunny day you frequently hear pops and rattles as the pods explode all round you.
Another problem with the control of broom is that the cattle that graze the Rifle Range far from favour the broom, just nibbling the odd piece of new growth at best.
Mowing is having some effect. This reduces the plant's stature in areas where it is not wanted but it also does the same for plants that are wanted such as heather. It would seem likely that a new approach is going to be needed to keep it in check.
A few trial spots are going to be created to test out a selection of methods and these will be studied to look at both their effectiveness in limiting it and insuring that there is little or no damage to the other wildlife of the reserve.
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