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This is a grass flower head at the moment of flowering. Grasses are wind-pollinated, so they have no need for bright petals or nectar. Instead, their anthers hang out on fine threads to release pollen into the breeze, while feathery stigmas spread out to catch pollen drifting from other plants. For a few days, a familiar grass head becomes this delicate, unexpected structure.
On restored colliery sites, grasses are often among the first plants to cover bare spoil, binding loose ground with their roots and building organic matter in thin soils. The grasslands that develop support butterflies and moths whose caterpillars feed on grasses, along with grasshoppers, small mammals and seed-eating birds.
Grass once had a direct link to the pits. From 1750, when ponies were first recorded working underground in the Durham coalfield, pit ponies were fed largely on hay, and many saw open grassland only during the miners' annual holiday, when they were brought up to graze.
There is a link with deep time here too. The coal beneath these sites formed around 300 million years ago from swamp forests of giant clubmosses, horsetails and ferns. Grasses did not yet exist; they evolved far later. Today they cover the ground above those ancient forests, part of a much younger landscape.
This is a grass flower head at the moment of flowering. Grasses are wind-pollinated, so they have no need for bright petals or nectar. Instead, their anthers hang out on fine threads to release pollen into the breeze, while feathery stigmas spread out to catch pollen drifting from other plants. For a few days, a familiar grass head becomes this delicate, unexpected structure.
On restored colliery sites, grasses are often among the first plants to cover bare spoil, binding loose ground with their roots and building organic matter in thin soils. The grasslands that develop support butterflies and moths whose caterpillars feed on grasses, along with grasshoppers, small mammals and seed-eating birds.
Grass once had a direct link to the pits. From 1750, when ponies were first recorded working underground in the Durham coalfield, pit ponies were fed largely on hay, and many saw open grassland only during the miners' annual holiday, when they were brought up to graze.
There is a link with deep time here too. The coal beneath these sites formed around 300 million years ago from swamp forests of giant clubmosses, horsetails and ferns. Grasses did not yet exist; they evolved far later. Today they cover the ground above those ancient forests, part of a much younger landscape.