Latest blog entry ragwort-hysteria.blogspot.com/2025/08/ragw... Comments and excerpts from a podcast which is a brilliant explanation and debunk of ragwort hysteria featuring an expert with co-owner of the Knepp Rewilding Project. Please read and repost. Do please also listen to linked podcast.
A marmalade #hoverfly having a whale of a time amongst the ragwort 😍
Squalidus in this sense actually means rough or stiff and remember the name was given by Linnaeus who was not a native English speaker. As for the seeds remaining suspended there must have been a current of air from a window or something supporting them as they are heavier than air.
Latest blog entry ragwort-hysteria.blogspot.com/2025/08/ragw... Comments and excerpts from a podcast which is a brilliant explanation and debunk of ragwort hysteria featuring an expert with co-owner of the Knepp Rewilding Project. Please read and repost. Do please also listen to linked podcast.
I know how that happened, The keyboard I was using at the time had a problem with the Y key! ChatGPT is good at ignoring typos. I copied & pasted straight from the output just highlighting the questions with numbers. Working on a debunk of British Horse Soc article at present will post when done.
Thanks Nick! I should look in here more often. The issue is that it is all like this, if time is taken to do the analyses. I sometimes have to sort of pinch myself at the awfulness of the ragwort bashing arguments.`See www.ragwortfacts.com/professor-de... about the man who supplied the statistics
Text: Ravishing ragwort Sir, In his Notebook (Aug 6) Matthew Parris describes ragwort as “poisonous to animals” and congratulates our King for having a ragwort plant removed after it was spotted near his swimming pool. Ragwort is a native wildflower, with colourful flowers that attract a host of insects including bees and butterflies. It is poisonous, but no more so than foxglove, yew or numerous other native plants that we do not revile. Grazing animals such as horses avoid it unless it is dried and served up to them in hay. It is a shame the King did not leave this lovely plant to flower. Dave Goulson Professor of biology, Sussex University Sir, Ragwort may indeed be noxious to animals but it is also the favoured food source of the jolly yellow and black-striped caterpillars of the cinnabar moth, which munch the plant down to its bare stem, pupate underground for the winter and emerge in the spring as elegant black and red beauties — which is why I deliberately grow ragwort in my (animal-free) garden. Jane Field West Malling, Kent
Letters in Times today
A black and yellow caterpillar on a ragwort plant and an Ichneumon wasp
This is cool! A cinnabar moth caterpillar is on the left and the big parasitic wasp is Barylypa propugnator who will lay her eggs inside the caterpillar!!
The little wasp larvae are clever cos they eat the least vital organs of the caterpillar first, so they remain fresh for longer!
Grows well from seed. Biennial of course so you'll need to sow next year as well. It will also grow from root cuttings but it is against the law to pull up wildflowers without permission on another's land. Root cutting have been used by researchers to produce clones for experiments. Hope it helps
There are several plants in several genera that are called ragworts including Packera, Senecio and Jacobaea
There isn't any question about it. They can't eat knapweed. The female moths need Pyrrolizidine Alkaloids in the plants to be stimulated to la eggs and the caterpillars need them to be stimulated to feed. Knapweed doesn't have those chemicals so won't work as a larval foodplant.
What an AI makes of DEFRA's ragwort risk advice in its Code of Practice. ragwort-hysteria.blogspot.com/2025/06/what... An independent look at it is rather judgemental. In fact it is scathing about the bad science and statistics. Please repost! DEFRA's junk affects lots of important wildlife sites.
I can functional illiteracy is thought to be about 20% of the population in extent. Which ties in with it.
Th8s is a beautiful and rare Pearl-Bordered Fritillary butterfly.
This is an actual felony
Hello @rewildingbritain.org.uk I see that there is a campaign to persuade Defra to act and do more rewilding. As a Welsh speaking Welshman I hear the Welsh word "deffra" with 2fs which is identical in pronunciation. It is a command. It means "Wake up!" and I do think that Defra needs to do that!
Thank you for mentioning my website. I picked up the story on the council's website I was wondering if it was an April Fool I couldn't see any signs. This is a dreadful idea and a little googling shows that he council is peddling incorrect information about the law on weeds as advice.
Here is a debunk of the government guidance which came about as a result. It is a complete pile of horse manure. ragwortfacts.com/defra-ragwor... AT one point DEFRA even told people that native common ragwort was on a list of dangerous foreign invasive species. Incompetence abounds with them!
Indeed as has been said it is the British Horse Society. This is a debunk of one of their prominent members talking utter nonsense in an article. www.ragwortfacts.com/professor-de... Unfortunately his professorial title got him the ear of government. Most of what he says is outside his subject.
I consider it highly likely that this is what has happened. It is RagWEED that has the problem pollen.
DWP often ridiculed in Wales as "yr adran DWP" ( the STUPID department in Welsh, really!) is to stop letting landowners take money from tenants' bank accounts without question. About time too! Monstrously unfair! Some gauleiter needs sacking for starting this! www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
Please repost this report alleging Trump was recruited by the KGB decades ago. Attempts are being made to scrub it from the Internet.
“Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.”
- Bertolt Brecht
Superstorm Sandy. Hurricane Harvey. Katrina. The Canadian wildfires. The many and increasing "rain bomb" events all over the planet, with disastrous flash flooding. Lahaina. The Palisades. California floods and droughts. 2024 warmest on record. Past 10 years ALL in top 10.
#LooksLikeItsGonnaTakeA2ndFlush
#2025Resolution
Elon Musk’s AI turns on him, labels him ‘one of the most significant spreaders of misinformation on X’
fortune.com/2024/11/14/g...
Should have gone to Specsavers.
This is hilarious!
