Life on the Verge and Thousands and Thousands!

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Over the last couple days away from work I been doing some plant surveys for the Life on the Verge(check the link) project in the east of the county and also checked out the A42 roundabout (former Lount opencast pit operations) site.
With the surveys most of the verges I covered were of a poor quality for Limestone flora, but however I did find a good section not far from Saltby village along the ancient walkway "The Drift" with the highlight here being good numbers of Viper's Bugloss and 12 different plants species which indicates good Limestone flora.
Over the next few weeks I will be doing more surveys for this excellent project and will update regular on what I see and find?

Changing the subject slightly following my previous visit to A42 Lount former opencast site, I had a better look at this site. As I had said previously this site contains thousands and thousands of Orchids and this time I made a rough count of maybe up to 20,000 spikes on this site!! Talking to Andrew Allen about this site via the phone it does sound that this site might be a conservation issue in the making as Leicestershire County Council are suing UK Coal to return this site to its former self. Maybe I'm a bit biased but I wouldn't want this site returning to its former self and I believe that this site needs saving for the people of Leicestershire!?
Any way I will step down from my soap box and if I heard any more about this site I will let you know?

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