Yellow Rattle Seed For Sale | Gloucestershire | Herefordshire | Worcestershire

Ecohab Wildflower yellow rattle seed is hand harvested from local meadows to ensure Gloucester provenance and to provide the best quality seed for your meadow restoration and enhancement projects.  For advice on using yellow rattle for your project don’t hesitate to get in contact with our wildflower experts.

Yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor) is often referred to as the meadow maker as it reduces competition from grasses. Yellow rattle is a hemi-parasite (it does still photosynthesise as it has chlorophyll in it’s leaves) on the roots of most native grass species thereby reducing their vigour and allowing desirable wildflowers to establish.

Yellow rattle seed must be sown in early autumn in order to overcome dormancy by exposing the seed to cold conditions (below 5⁰c for 3 months).  Yellow rattle is an annual and therefore must be allowed to set seed each year into an open sward in order for the plant to persist or be re-sown each year.

Yellow rattle does have its limitations and is unlikely to become established where aggressive grasses dominate such as perennial rye grass or coarse tussocky grasses such as cock’s-foot, false oat grass and tufted hair grass.  It will also not thrive in high fertility soils or in strongly acidic or wet soils.  There are other species that parasitize grasses in wet acidic conditions such as common lousewort (Pedicularis sylvatica).

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