THE WILTSHIRE WILDLIFE TRUST’S VERA JEANS NATURE RESERVE 265 
Of the Wiltshire rarities, as well as Common 
Cotton-grass EF. angustifolium which also grows in 
Jones Mill Mead, there are five others found in only 
2% or fewer of the kilometre squares in Wiltshire. 
The beautiful littke Bog Pimpernel Anagallis 
tenella forms two patches, each about a metre 
across, that are bright pink when the flowers come 
in late June. This plant was found in only thirteen 
of the kilometre squares, which is less than 1% of 
them. Even rarer in Wiltshire is the Flea Sedge 
Carex pulicaris. Stace (1992, 978) describes its 
habitat as ‘bogs, fens and flushes, usually base 
rich’ so the plants growing here at Jones’s Mill are 
behaving normally. In Wiltshire it is catholic in its 
tastes, growing in mesotrophic to eutrophic 
Water Avens 
conditions and in mires or on dry chalky 
grassland, but even so in only seven kilometre 
squares. Purple Moor-grass Molinia caerulea has 
been found in only twenty-nine kilometre squares 
— fewer than 1% — and almost all of these are 
concentrated on the New Forest heaths in the 
south-east corner of the county. The remaining 
two species rare in Wiltshire but found in this 
enclosure are Heath Wood-rush Luzula multiflora 
and Brown Sedge C. disticha. 
The soil is acidic peat and the tussocky nature 
of the terrain has some of it bathed in alkaline 
ground-water while other parts stand proud. The 
calcifuges Common Cotton-grass, Bog Pimpernel, 
Heath Wood-rush and Purple Moor-grass, all 
mentioned above, as well as Tormentil Potentilla 
erecta, Carnation Sedge C. panicea and Common 
Sedge C. nigra grow side-by-side with the calcicoles 
Common Spotted-orchid D. fuchsi and Quaking 
Grass Briza media. 
Two other plants from this small, botanically 
rich patch are worthy of note: Water Avens 
G. rivale, seen already in the carr but more 
abundant here, and Devil’s-bit Scabious Succisa 
pratensis, the food plant of the caterpillars of the 
Marsh Fritillary, Eurodryas aurinia, referred to 
below. 
Fields on the Valley Slopes 
The Northern Fields 
These meadows [J, K and L] were bougnt by the 
Trust in 1995 as a buffer zone and to provide winter 
grazing for the Belted Galloways. They are also 
grazed during the summer with his own cattle by 
the contract farmer who looks after the Belties. 
The western fields are improved grassland of 
little botanical interest, but the eastern one [L] —- 
the one which has medieval ridge and furrow — is 
only semi-improved and has much more diversity. 
There are several plants of Pignut Conopodium 
majus in the drier part at the top of the field and 
lower down many of the fenland plants, including 
several Common Spotted-orchids D. fuchsi and 
Bottle Sedge C. rostrata, which has only just 
colonised this part. Since the Trust has owned them 
none of the fields have been treated with fertilizer 
or pesticide and nor, of course, will they be in the 
future. 
There are isolated oaks Q. robur — one of them 
developing a ‘stag’s head’ of dead branches — and 
some fine standard oaks in the hedgerows. Cuttings 
of the native Black-poplar Populus nigra have been 
planted. These were taken from one of several male 
trees a few miles downstream. 
The wet flushes in all these fields have not yet 
been studied properly, but may well be of great 
interest for the many invertebrates that rely on 
seepages. Although small in area, as they are 
geological features they are likely to have existed a 
very long time, possibly thousands of years. It is 
this continuity which could make them of great 
ecological significance. Soldier flies often breed in 
