Pupils help beat flower's decline

Henry Doubleday first recognised the Oxlip as a true species

A project to help save a rare spring flower found only in a part of East Anglia has got under way.

Children from the primary school at Great Bardfield in Essex have started planting 400 oxlips at Pipers Meadow next to the River Pant.

A total of 4,000 are to be reintroduced into selected meadow sites in the parish over the next three years, where only 100 now remain.

The flower is limited to an area of north west Essex, Suffolk and Cambs.

Essex Wildlife Trust will train the residents of the village to manage the meadows in order to sustain the plants.

'True species'

Ray Tabor, chairman of Essex Wildlife Trust, said: "This is our first phase of planting oxlips at Pipers Meadow in Great Bardfield, we are really excited they should produce a fantastic yellow bloom in the Spring."

Writtle College are growing 5,000 plants from seeds taken from the last remaining plants at Great Bardfield.

The plant - now known as the Bardfield oxlip - has a historic connection with Great Bardfield.

In 1842 the Victorian botanist Henry Doubleday described the oxlips in Bardfield as "growing by the thousands" .

He first recognised it as a true species and not simply the result of chance hybridity between Primroses and Cowslips.

He sent samples of the plants to Charles Darwin who carried out a number of cross-pollination experiments.

Charles Darwin reported in 1869: "It is manifest that Oxlip Primula elatior is not a hybrid and that it differs fundamentally from the Common Oxlip (the Primrose / Cowslip hybrid)".

Oxlip Primula elatior's distribution is mainly confined to an area of boulder clay deposits in Essex, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire where the plants used to thrive.