The fields are an amazing bright yellow colour with it now !

There seems to be an abundance of this agricultural crop dotted along the roadside grass verges in North Shropshire currently I cant work out why! Any Ideas? It can even be seen when there are no crops close by!

I can only assume that the seeds spread well and far.

Well yes, they do germinate well. We have none in the garden though and in neighbouring fields. They just seem to be on the roadside verges close to the roadside.

I think there's a favourable grant or something available at the moment for planting rape as an energy crop. I could be completely wrong, but that's my understanding.

A quick Google shows that feral oilseed rape is largely spread by harvested seeds being dropped by the roadside accidentally by lorries, and that the seeds can lie dormant for many years.

I noticed that the verges of the Welshpool Road were very yellow with it this evening between Ford and Gains Park.

Thanks for that TW. Ive never seen so much of the stuff on the roadside in all my life. It is very colourful though!

I think that there is so much more being grown this year due to the sugar factory at Allscott closing down.

Oilseed rape grows in similar soil to sugar beet but the soil may require extra irrigation.

Allscott has closed down due to the E.U. reducing sugar quotas so the nearest factory to us is now at Newark.

s.g.d.

I used to have a seasonal job in my student years at Allscott SQD. I used to bag up the dried beet pulp in hessian sacks that weighed one and a half hundredweight. Hard work, well paid though and it kept you fit !

A disaster all round that it's closed down, really.

Looking again at the Welshpool Road tonight, the distribution of oilseed rape groing wild is very interesting - it's only growing on one side of the road (the towards Shrewsbury side). There's a large clump of it by the layby opposite Churncote Farm, then a line of plants along the same side of the road all the way to the A5 island. Only the narrow strip of grass next to the road has any plants - there's none growing in the grass verge next to the hedge.

I wonder if a lorry carrying the seeds in the Shrewsbury direction stopped at the layby, where the driver inadvertently spilled some of it while adjusting the load, then sped away with the load still not fully secure.

Now I realise that I should have been concentrating on the road instead of having a Cadfael moment, but there's not really a huge amount to look out for (apart from the odd phantom hitch-hiker) along that stretch of road.

Worrying however how easily this plant germinates and if in the future it could become a pesty type flower. It really seems to be in places where there is no oil seed rape in the fields and me being a ''country boy'', straw in mouth can confidentally say ive never seen this before.

I think that's a distinct possibility - it seems to respond well to our new-look mild winters and warm springs - perhaps oilseed rape is the new Oxford ragwort / Himalayan balsam.

Another issue is that GM rape could easily escape by this mechanism out of field trials. While the accidental spread not going to have much of an effect on us as humans, the spread of an invasive plants that is perhaps genetically modified to be pest-resistant will mean that the stuff will be able to spread uncontrolled and perhaps out-compete rarer plants.

Completely different question now, but as a straw-chewing country boy, you're a good person to ask...

There's hardly a single daffodil in flower any more around Shrewsbury. The flowers are all withered and dead. But this is only the third week in April. Surely this can't be normal?

Well TW I can tell you we still have daffodils although they are starting to wither now. I would put it down perhaps to a hard frost Shrewsbury had recently that perhaps North Shropshire didnt. Daffodils have flowered very early this year also from mid march this end of the county

ah, is that what it is!
It's all the way down the sides of the A49 from Shrewsbury to Craven Arms.

View from Earl's Hill earlier today. Lots of yellow!

the everchanging face of the countryside TW. I'm making a film about this currently great picture