The Meadow Maker
Yesterday, I visited the community orchard I maintain in Plymouth's Central Park. One of my previous posts describes it in some detail. While there, it was the orchard's understory rather than trees that caught my attention. Let me rewind a bit to explain. Last summer, I stumbled across a patch of yellow rattle ( Rhinanthus minor ), on the far side of Central Park from the orchard. They are lovely flowers. I always think they look like a choir of singing parrots pointing their yellow beaks to the heavens. I returned to the spot later in the season to collect some of the dried seed heads. By the way, the species gets its name from the fact its seeds literally rattle inside these heads . I collected the seeds to spread in the orchard, which is exactly what I did. I seeded them into a little patch by cutting the grass short and raking in the seeds to ensure they made good contact with the soil. I went to all this effort because yellow rattle has the alternate name of meadow m