About this time of year, two sorts of pictures end up doing the rounds on social media. The first is roughly along the lines of this one, which is being shared from the BBC website:
Why are Britain's roadsides blooming? https://t.co/dEgvSH5ine
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) July 2, 2019
This sounds like a lovely, positive story of a council doing its bit for nature by sowing wild flowers on its verges. More on that shortly.
The second involves someone heartbroken that their beautiful roadside verge has been mown by their local council:
Council accidentally bulldozes roadside nature reserve: https://t.co/MaT9Y5fpDt
— BirdGuides (@BirdGuides) April 16, 2019
Most people might think that the former is a good solution to the latter: one involves a switched-on council, and the second involves a stupid one, surely? But unfortunately they are different parts of the same problem, which is that no-one seems to know what our native wild flowers actually look like.
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