BioImages: The Virtual Field-Guide (UK)

Rhinanthus minor L. (Yellow-rattle)

Wildlife Gardening An excellent plant for a wildlife lawn. As well as providing colour, its parasitic action keeps the grass and other vigorous plants short so enables smaller plants to flower and reduces the need for mowing.

Can be hard to establish, especially if the grass is lush, but once established will keep the grass under control.

It took about 8 years to establish on our lawn/meadow. Each year we'd get two or three plants. It's not related to quantity of seed (I put a lot of seed on in the first couple of years), it doesn't build up a seed bank nor does it live underground for a few years as an invisible parasite like many orchids (it's said that heavy sheep grazing can eradicate the plant in one season). It wasn't until the drought knocked the other plants back in summer 06 and spring 07 that it really got away.

Images

macro-photographs macro-photographs
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Sets of Photographs

These relate to individual finds ("biological records") of the organism.

Taxon Summary # images # photos # macrophotos Date Vice-county Country
Rhinanthus minor Plant 2 2 9 Jul 1971 East Sussex England
Rhinanthus minor In flower 1 1 19 Jun 2005 Berks England
Rhinanthus minor Plant 1 1 14 Jun 1997 Berks England

Subtaxa

Rank Taxon #photos #macrophotos

Suggested Literature

Identification Works

Westbury, B.D. & Davies, A., 2005 (Colour photograph) Yellow Rattle - its natural history and use in grassland diversification

Rhinanthus minor may also be covered by literature listed under:

BIOTA
(living things)
Eukaryota
(eukaryotes)
PLANTAE
(plants)
SPERMATOPHYTA
(vascular plants)
MAGNOLIOPSIDA
(flowering plants)

BioInfo BioInfo (www.bioinfo.org.uk) has 4 feeding and other relationships of Rhinanthus minor (Yellow-rattle)

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Unless otherwise expressly stated, all original material on the BioImages website by Malcolm Storey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License .