Little Wood Local Nature Reserve
About the Site
Little Wood is a small pocket of Magnesian Limestone grassland on the eastern edge of Quarrington Hill. This type of grassland is home to a rich and distinctive group of plants and insects, and is one of the UK’s rarest habitats. Such grassland has been fragmented due to agricultural intensification and quarrying activities.
Blue moor-grass is dominant throughout the grassland with quaking-grass, sheep’s fescue, crested hair-grass and meadow oat-grass. Glaucous sedge forms a significant part of the plant community.
A profusion of broad leaved herbs can be found, with common bird’s-foot-trefoil, hare bell, rockrose, fairy flax, burnet saxifrage, small scabious, cowslip, salad burnet and wild thyme all prominent. Burnet saxifrage is named from the Latin saxum, stone and frango, break. The name refers to the use of this plant in traditional medicine, to treat kidney and bladder stones. Less commonly occurring species include common milkwort, hairy violet, wild carrot and felwort. The scarce dark-red helleborine occurs on the site too, as does basil thyme, a plant generally found in the south of England.
The Northern brown argus butterfly, a species which occurs only on Magnesian Limestone grasslands of County Durham and Tyne and Wear, occurs on the site. This is a notable and declining butterfly, with a reported 35 % decrease in populations since 1983. Any site where this species occurs is therefore of significant nature conservation importance.
Little Wood
Location
Grid reference: NZ 340375Facilities
NoneSimilar Sites
Cassop Vale National Nature ReserveHawthorn Dene
Thrislington National Nature Reserve
Enquiries
Durham County CouncilEnvironment,
County Hall
Durham
DH1 5UQ
Tel: 0191 3833594
