GOD’S ACRE NATURE

As many of you will know, I am not religious, but that does not mean I don’t appreciate the wonderful architecture of so many of our religious buildings, but even more importantly for me, is the exceptional value for our dwindling nature of graveyards and cemeteries. Gravestones, of course, are famous for their lichens, particularly because the age and growth rate of these fascinating and often beautiful organisms can be accurately calculated because the headstones on which they grow are dated with the lives of the deceased. This gives a date when lichen colonisation would have started.

There is more to this, though, and a charitable conservation organisation called Caring for God’s Acre[1] has recently mapped over 20,000 UK cemeteries in which they with their volunteers recorded over 10,000 species of wildlife. What is particularly remarkable is that over eighty of the species found are Red Listed, i.e. they are threatened, vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. These included the hazel dormouse Muscardinus avellanarius (L.), the white-letter hairstreak butterfly Satyrium w-album (Knoch), the dingy skipper butterfly Erynnis tages (L.), the umbellifer known as shepherd’s-needle or Venus’ comb Scandix pecten-veneris L. and the foliose lichen Anaptychia ciliaris (L.) Körb. ex A. Massal., sometimes called the eagle’s claw.

Other notable/interesting species recorded include the forest bug Pentatoma rufipes (L.), graveyard beetle Rhizophagus parallelocollis Gyllenhal, several bats and other butterflies including the wall Lasiommata megera (L.) and small heath Coenonympha pamphilus (L.).

Betts Ecology don’t manage any churchyards amongst our sites, but we favour the conservation of all natural and semi-natural greenspace. We encourage everyone interested in wildlife to visit their local churchyard and support Caring for God’s Acre in their recording and conservation work.

[1] https://www.caringforgodsacre.org.uk/. This organisation also produces a guide to lichens in burial grounds.