A military training ground with tanks charging around, explosions and gunfire hardly seems a haven for wild plants, but the Ministry of Defence’s Salisbury Plain site is exceptional.
The training ground is the largest remaining area of semi-natural chalk grassland left in north-west Europe, an area of 150 sq miles (380 sq km), the size of the Isle of Wight. It is home to rare plants unique to chalkland and one of the richest ecosystems for plant diversity in Europe.
The military have been using Salisbury Plain for more than 100 years, so the land has escaped the ravages of intensive agriculture, including fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and ploughing. Perhaps most surprising is how tanks churning up the ground helps to create diverse habitats, especially where bare chalk is exposed and becomes colonised by specialised plants, such as kidney vetch and small scabious.
It is a hotspot for the critically endangered pink flowering red hemp nettle, which grows along the edges of the tank paths, and the viper’s bugloss which, with its deep blue flowers, thrives where the ground has been roughed up and the plant’s seeds dispersed by the vehicles.
