"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Stephen Howard wrote:
On Tue, 6 May 2003 17:33:28 +0000 (UTC), "Essjay001"
wrote:

And as wild flowers surely they are protected.

As part of the Wildlife & Country Act ( blah, blah, etc. ) they'd at
least be protected from being dug up without the permission of the
landowner.

It is illegal to do so. Whether that counts as protection is a
very different matter.

The act further specifies a number of rare plants that may not be
picked etc. Ramsons aren't on that list.
Picking the leaves won't worry the Ramsons too much - I've seen whole
stands get obliterated under a tractor's wheel, and yet they're back
the next year as pungent as ever.

Nor will removing a domestic quantity of bulbs. The law is an
extension of the enclosure acts and game laws, and has little to
do with conservation.

So with 60 odd million people and gawd knows how many houses, how many
Bluebells should we allow people to dig up, purely for domestic reasons.
Sorry, but the law was really introduced to prevent the comercial
explotation of wild resources, which was rife in the past. Whole areas of
woodland were dug up and every trace of the bulbs were removed, and thus
they never ever recovered.
Duncan



Regards,
Nick Maclaren.