Bruce Langridge, the Wax cap expert from the National Botanic Gardens who talked to our autumn meeting, has kindly passed on a survey which readers might like to take part in. It is being organised by Plantlife Cymru and is designed to gauge interest in a scheme to train people in grassland fungi identification.

Click here to access the survey, which only takes a couple of minutes to complete.Many thanks to Andrew and Helen Martin for the above lovely images of mushrooms from their meadows at Ffos y Broga.

(Ragged Robin, Lychnis flos-cuculi, above)

Isabel has also passed on details about National Meadows Day 2016, which aims to build on the first such day held last year, and is designed to raise awareness of our flower rich meadows. Anyone is welcome to host an event on this particular day, which has been planned for Saturday July 2nd 2016.  

Events can be anything that takes the interest of the owner, such as a walk through the meadow identifying plants, a picnic in a meadow, storey-telling and last year some meadow owners even had well being and meditation events, so there is a huge variety of meadow related activities which could be considered. 

Anyone who’d like to take part can send information to me, (grumpyhobbit@gmail.com) and I’ll put it up on the blog, and also if you email it to Fiona Perez (fiona.perez@plantlife.org.uk), then the event would be publicised via Plant Life, who are promoting the day nationally.

(Common Centaury, Centaurium erythraea, above)

Finally as the rain continues to fall, (at least it has with amazing persistence up here!), I’m very grateful for the lovely meadow flower pictures accompanying this blog post, which were sent to me back in November by Lynne Sharpe, taken in her meadows at Maes y Haul.

(Helleborine Orchid,?Epipactis helleborine, above)

Thank you to Lynne for brightening up the website with these reminders of the delights awaiting us in 2016, and also thanks to those of you who have already replied in detail to the meadows questionnaire. I hope to start adding some of this information to the gallery pages very shortly.

Thanks for reading.