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Living World

Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

The Living World

Getting up close and personal with wild nature in Britain and beyond.

Intimate encounters and extraordinary observations of wild nature in Britain and beyond.

Living World: The Pasqueflower

The Pasqueflower

BBC Radio 4 - Living World, The Pasqueflower

Joanna Pinnock visits a display of one of Britain's most beautiful wild flowers.

Joanna Pinnock visits a nature reserve in Cambridgeshire, developed on a former ancient quarry site, to see one of the largest remaining colonies of pasqueflowers in the country.

The beautiful purple pasqueflower with its distinctive yellow anthers is one of the few Spring flowers to be in bloom around Easter.  Once found across most chalk and limestone grasslands in Britain the flower declined severely from the late 1700s when these grasslands were ploughed so that crops could be grown.  
Joanna Pinnock joins a botanist and reserve manager at one of the largest remaining colonies in Cambridgeshire to find out more about the fascinating history and botany of the pasqueflower and how colonies are being helped back from the brink with grazing - as it needs short grass in order to be able to thrive - and other conservation methods. (First broadcast in 2012 )

Producer: Sheena Duncan
Editor: Julian Hector

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