Upwood Meadows is a 6 hectare biological

Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle of ...

west of

Upwood Upwood is a village in the non-metropolitan district and historic counties of England, historic county of Huntingdonshire, England, although in the administrative county of Cambridgeshire. Upwood lies approximately north of Huntingdon, near Bury ...

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and North ...

. It is also a National Nature Reserve and a Grade I

Nature Conservation Review ''A Nature Conservation Review'' is a two-volume work by Derek Ratcliffe, published by Cambridge University Press in 1977. It set out to identify the most important places for nature conservation in Great Britain. It is often known by the initial ...

site. It is managed by the

Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire The Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire (WTBCN) is a registered charity which manages 126 nature reserves covering . It has over 35,000 members, and 95% of people in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshi ...

. The site has three fields on calcareous clay with poor drainage, a type of pasture now very rare, and was described by

Derek Ratcliffe Derek Almey Ratcliffe (9 July 1929 – 23 May 2005) was one of the most significant British nature conservationists of the 20th century. He was Chief Scientist for the Nature Conservancy Council at the Monks Wood Experimental Station, Abbots Ript ...

as having "an outstandingly rich and diverse flora". Other habitats are mature hedgerows, ponds and scrub. One of the fields is agriculturally unimproved, and the evidence of medieval

ridge and furrow Ridge and furrow is an archaeological pattern of ridges (Medieval Latin: ''sliones'') and troughs created by a system of ploughing used in Europe during the Middle Ages, typical of the open-field system. It is also known as rig (or rigg) and fu ...

still survives. Flowering plants include

pepper saxifrage ''Silaum silaus'', commonly known as pepper-saxifrage, is a perennial plant in the family Apiaceae (Umbelliferae) (the carrot family) found across south-eastern, central, and western Europe, including the British Isles. It grows in damp grasslan ...

and

green-winged orchid ''Anacamptis morio'', the green-winged orchid or green-veined orchid ( synonym ''Orchis morio''), is a flowering plant of the orchid family, Orchidaceae. It usually has purple flowers, and is found in Europe and the Middle East. Description It f ...

. There is access by a footpath from Bentley Close in Upwood.

References

{{Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire reserves Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Cambridgeshire National nature reserves in England Nature Conservation Review sites

See also

References