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Greena Moor Nature Reserve

Location: Week St. Mary, Cornwall
OS: SX 234963
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Habitat: Culm grassland

Yellow tall flowers - Bog Asphodel in a grassland
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The Reserve

Greena Moor is an excellent example of culm grassland where ‘culm’ refers to the rocks underneath the clay soil.

Always sparse, culm grassland suffered a catastrophic decline through agricultural ‘improvements’. The reserve is a fragment of what was once an extensive moorland and mire system, including large areas of culm grassland. It is fringed by wet woodland of alder and willows.

The nationally scarce Wavy St-John’s-wort Hypericum undulatum and Three-lobed Water Crowfoot Ranunculus tripartitus can be found here. Devil’s-bit Scabious Succisa pratensis is an important food plant for the Marsh Fritillary butterfly which are active on the reserve.

Purchase of the reserve was made possible by Unilever. Managed in partnership with Cornwall Wildlife Trust.

Habitat

Culm measures are a kind of rock from the Carboniferous era that contains thin bands of impure anthracite or culm, found only in Cornwall, Devon, the New Forest and South Wales

Always sparse, culm grassland suffered a catastrophic decline through agricultural “improvements”. The reserve is a fragment of what was once an extensive moorland and mire system, including large areas of culm grassland. It is fringed by wet woodland of alder and willows.

Species to look out for

  • Petty Whin Genista anglica -May-June
  • Meadow Thistle Cirsium dissectum – June-Aug
  • Whorled Caraway Carum verticillatum – July-Aug

Visit

Location map of where Greena Moor nature reserve is

Directions

Follow the B3254 south towards Launceston and turn right to Week St Mary. 

At the southern end of the village take the minor road signposted to  Launceston, and turn right just beyond the Green Inn. The reserve is about a mile further on the left.

 

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