Threatened and rare plants such as harebell and
birds-foot trefoil are being crowded out by "nitrogen-guzzlers" including brambles and stinging nettles, which thrive in the unnatural conditions, a report from Plantlife has warned.
They can be spotted on anything from gorse bushes to
birds-foot trefoil.
FIELDS IN JUNE SUNSHINE: wandering through green lanes and along wild flower verges, stitchwort glows white alongside red campion, viper's bugloss splashes the paths with blue, butter-yellow
birds-foot trefoil peeps through long grasses.
The caterpillar, although conspicuous with its greenish-yellow and black markings when it is feeding on
Birds-foot Trefoil, its favoured food plant, is seldom very obvious to the casual observer.
The recent work in Fenny Compton with British Waterways has seen a series of "butterfly banks" created along the Oxford Canal, with kidney vetch and
birds-foot trefoil providing the perfect living and breeding conditions for the butterflies.
They are very much dependent on
birds-foot trefoil as a food plant for their caterpillars, which has been found growing near by.
Ox-eye daisy, yarrow, bugle, selfheal, goats beard, cuckooflower, meadow buttercup, agrimony,
birds-foot trefoil, perforate St John's wort.