France loses its harvest wild flowers

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/25/french-losing-wildflower-harvest-environment?intcmp=122


No shortage of poppies in a field in Touraine, but cornflowers and corncockle are less often seen. Photograph: Alamy

Some wild flowers have already vanished from the French countryside. Pheasant's eye, cornflower, corncockle and Venus's looking glass are getting rare. The environment ministry is preparing a plan to preserve these plants, whose life cycle is closely linked to the harvest.

"All over Europe the situation is the same, with these species in serious decline," says Amélie Coantic, at the ministry's wildlife department. "Out of 102 varieties identified in France, 52 are under threat and seven have already disappeared."

For thousands of years they flourished beside wheat and rye and other cereals, but they have not been able to withstand intensive farming. Although they are hardly competitive with the main crop, they have long been treated as weeds.

"Widespread use of herbicides was a turning point," says Frédéric Coulon, an agricultural engineer at Solagro, an organisation advocating sustainable farming. "To achieve the largest possible yields, farmers increased seed density and prevented these species from growing."

[dipsydoodle]

1. In the UK,

in some areas, they use borders to the fields, along the the hedge rows , where wild flowers grow. That's because we understand that wild flowers = bees.

There are however other issues with wild flowers. Some germinate with temperature increase whilst others germinate with longer daylight hours. If the former germinate earlier due to global warming the latter may cease to exist because they won't get the necessary light. That is anticipated to occur in the south east of England where hare grass germinating early will stop the bluebells from growing. It is foreseen that an avaerage temperature increase of 3 degrees would wipe them all out.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. And their gov't is DOING something about it ? Sacre bleu, what a novel idea! nt