Friend or foe?

Country folk have always known to rip up ragwort whenever and wherever it appears, but this native perennial supports a host of species, finds Ian Morton

- Ian Morton

AS a Gloucestershire country lad, I was taught to rip up ragwort wherever I saw it. Shallow rooted, it came up quite easily. Everyone knew that it poisoned cattle and horses, so should be destroyed whenever and wherever it appeared. The world I then knew was preoccupied with war, with the aftermath of war-my parental generation had been through that business twice-with getting the boys back home and returning to normality. Throughout the nation, farm and garden production was still a prime concern. The niceties and needs the natural countryside were not much recognised: Nature would, after all, take care of herself.

Biodiversity as an objective in its own right had not yet been invented. The term didn't even appear until 1988, when it was coined by Raymond F. Dasmann, professor of ecology at the University of California. He had published a textbook, Environmental Conservation, as long ago as 1959, a farsighted work in the movement that is now the concern of the whole civilised world.

Nasty old ragwort, it has since emerged, is a biodiversity player with an essential role in an extensive entomological structure. According to studies by English Nature and others, the native biennial Senecio jacobaea provides a home and a food source for at least 77 insect species and a significant portion of the diet of 122 others. A further 117, mainly solitary bees, hoverflies, moths and butterflies, including the small copper, drop in for sustenance between their principal feeding and breeding sites. The plant is seventh on the UK Insect Pollinators Initiative list of top nectar producers, drawn up under the AgriLand project.