The Magic of Being Outside

A blog featuring articles for Devon Preservation Association

"Encouraging all people to enjoy the power of nature"

Pudsham Meadow Day: Orchid Charms and Bee Spells

The Ponies of Pudsham

Pudsham meadows at Buckland in the Moor are valuable wildlife habitats. According to Dartmoor National Park ecologists, they stand as the finest hay meadows within the National Park. The UK Biodiversity Action Plan identifies such fields as Priority Habitat due to their alarming decline over the past half-century. Now, they are highly localized, and Dartmoor alone accounts for about 6% of the national resource—Pudsham is truly a gem. They have been managed by Devon Perseveration Association since 2016.

Between October and December five pure breed Dartmoor ponies are brought to graze the unique and ancient wildflower meadows of Pudsham, Buckland-in-the-Moor. The pure Dartmoor pony has plunged in numbers from 30 thousand in the 1950's to a mere 1,500 today due to interbreeding with Dartmoor Hill ponies and lack of demand but with their unique grazing ability they are experts at preserving the health and ecology of wildflower meadows such as Pudsham. DPA volunteers look after the ponies while they are at Pudsham and manage the meadows throughout the year.

On looking after Dartmoor Ponies brought in to graze Pudsham Hay Meadows, Valley of the East Webburn: December 2025.

These meadows where I volunteer for DPA, are like a melody rising and falling throughout the year. But they not only modulate their own change, ponies and people change them too. Pulling up suckers of blackthorn and willow in October, doing the work bear and elk once did DPA volunteers kept the meadows open. Now in November it is the turn of the Dartmoor ponies and during their stay at Pudsham DPA volunteers check them daily and fill up their water troughs.

Sturdy, low, I wish to leap on a pony and ride it over Pil Tor. Wisdom and confidence, courage born from ice and fire burns from their eyes. And yet they are gentle.

Icy day but the sun is warm. On the west side of the meadow between the sloe bushes and the ancient hedge wall the haze of the low sun sheens the tussocks and the gold leaves of the birch tree melt. Like a farrier's rasp frost has smoothed the world. Clouds appear. The sun drops. Insects shiver, shift – some creak in their winter nocturne among the leaf mould. I have watched the living world here through all the seasons and now the wild meadow needs to be cropped to enable new growth in the Spring. But it is done naturally here at Pudsham. Perhaps mankind works best when we tame nature with nature. I was just thinking this when the Dartmoor ponies grazed into the scene before me among the tussocks. Their thick winter fur soft as thistle down blowing in the air, their muscular flanks the colour of the chestnuts I gathered in the forest.

The youngest pony approaches me, tries to nuzzle my arm. I turn away to discourage human interaction. I walk through the herd to check the pony trough – the spring has surfeited – and the wool-warm, soft meadow is drenched and bare of life; the water sloughs over the lip of the trough like a green silk sheet wetted in sunlight. A hoary haired elder turns, eyes me and holds me still in her gaze. She is darkest oak brown with broad wise brow. They are otherworldly. The meadow is chthonic too; all has dropped to the other world and animate life is bleak. But these are the hardy Dartmoor ponies adapted to the cold and wet. They look so natural – so good in the field.

Their wild horse ancestors adventured across land bridges from the continent and found themselves in the space we now call Britain 130 thousand years ago and for four thousand the Dartmoor ponies have made Dartmoor home. In more recent times harnessed for mining, farming and transportation they were later, with the demise of Dartmoor tin, turned out onto the moor, unheeded and unwanted. These are the most intelligent, wise-seeming ponies I have encountered; small wonder I thought, that their predecessors are depicted on Celtic coins as human-headed. Ridden by warriors, their friend and force in battle, powerful, courageous, prized and venerated the link between horse and human was once sacrosanct. Proof in the tiny statue of the goddess Epona patroness of horses side-saddle on her stout pony; for these descendants preserve genes in their blood of that same adventurous race that carried the Celtic warrior on her chariot and safely down into the Underworld; as evidenced in the skeletons of ponies laid along the bones of warriors discovered in Iron Age burial mounds.

Their power as unique grazers and keepers of ancient lands is now re-established; their strength as glade-makers, of open meadows such as Pudsham. With any luck butterfly orchids, heath-spotted orchids, scabious and knapweed will fly out from their hooves like summer sparks. For the hoof of the Dartmoor pony is gold.

Now the ponies will give the new spring luxuriance. They will enable the tiniest creature, the springtails and the microarths that make up the surprising biomass of a healthy unimproved meadow (a tonne of soil species live in every five acres of wild unimproved meadow) to thrive and provide the foundation for life above ground. In the world we can see; the microhabitat among the plants where the pollinators and propagators feed and down in the green kingdom where the munchers and mutualists work. And deeper down, at the roots of the plants where nutrients made soluble by the soil food web are drawn back up to our world, into the health of the summer trees and flowers in full leaf. For all the beauty, form, colour and shape, fescue and cocksfoot, soft rush and spiky purple moor grass feeds the ponies and their droppings recycle nutrients back into the neutral, quiet earth here.

On my last evening looking after the ponies I watched them graze Small Field. They moved from place to place cropping a mouthful here and a mouthful there then regrouped and moved to another place. How slow and graceful. Why do we need to be so fast when we could be living slowly and more naturally like these ponies do? They look so at ease and natural at Pudsham.

By the stream of the Webburn far below the meadows in the valley I found what I believe to be a fairy horseshoe. It lay in a salmon pool by a ford shod deep in the gorge of the East-Dart river; a ford where the Dartmoor pony packhorses splashed through from the highlands to the lowlands with their loads of tin and food for miners. I dipped my fingers into the pool and the tiny horse shoe almost slipped onto my thumb; I am looking at it now as I write this; it may be a rusted trace of horse-harness but, to me, it is a fairy Dartmoor pony horse shoe and carries all the luck. I hope they carry the luck for their own survival.

Bruach-On the Brink of Winter

Written in a Pudsham Meadow October 2025

Rustling leaves, vibrating birds' wings, a beetle spins off a leaf. Clouds of aphids rise out of the oak canopy. Trees shudder in their roots, one tears at the wind. Winter is on the way.

4.00 Speckled wood butterfly wing-torn grapples onto a fence post in Sylvia's field. Over the high moor at Grimspound cloud manes fling back. Lightning flashes. A herd of ponies race down Pil Tor, their hooves shake the ground as the half-moon rises. Down in the grasses the Meadow brown butterfly shifts uneasily rustles the scapes of Plantain, husks of anthers alive in the wind. Thrush sings, little darts in the ear. Its message, a storm is coming!

Dark greens fern the distant moor the shape of a grouse wing quivering.

As I picnic hurriedly on cake and wild apples and piping hot tea, the warbler alarms. Perhaps one of the brood that first flew close that wet day in spring when I sheltered in the hut top of the meadow. Sun sinks down the skeleton of ash tree. Beams slant through the Rowan.

Change is in the air. In this Dartmoor meadow time has changed slowly at first from the earliest eras through Bronze age into medievalism and up till the modern day. The sound of beasts and scythe in the meadow were heard here. Now the noise of cars on the road to Widecombe on a Sunday afternoon.

The cycle of life is turning. Evolution is slow but the seasons are fast and unpredictable these days and all is uncertain on Earth. The wind is blowing through the shrinking leaves, the last bumble bee searches for a hole to overwinter. Urgent as the young bees I saw learning to gather nectar, tumbling off pignut blossom on that day in spring. Change is imminent. Winter is over the horizon.

Spring and summer I've witnessed the meadow transform, watched butterflies emerge from crysalides, beetles hatch, grasshoppers evolve, skullcap leaf, orchids grow. I found caterpillars, each had burst out of lid or aperture of a dimpled or frosted or crater, numinous gold or amber chamber. Caught glimpses of insect eggs glittering on leaf undersides like blue lagoons. In April willow-warblers blew in, singing off sea wind, chiff-chaff, cuckoo, nested and fledged. Lamb's bleated on the heath. Robin built her nest in the wall. Now the birds have left, willow warbler, swallow and martin and the trees along hedge and wall have fruited; Elder and Rowan. The oaks, their acorns beneath them like cobble-stone pavements.

The plants are seeding too, dying back into their roots. Yellow Iris disarmed by change, not one leaf dagger drawn, gold seed pouch spilling into the spring. All summer the meadow grew words and thoughts. I watched them flower. The willow-warbler, chiff-chaff, raven and buzzard nested word hoards hatched in my hand. Flew in Summer. Vanished in the dog days. The corn mint corollas fell like purple powder.

Now the chiff-chaff cants from perch to perch in his daily ritual round the meadow marking its territory before flying back to its southern home. Thistle seeds shimmer, caught in scapes of plantain. A moth struggles in a spider web. The scapes of the Plantain have gone to seed now - dirty rust, balded and singed are the knapweeds. The dark ground takes back life we won't see for months. Nature claims all in due time. Dear friends die. In the mirror fine lines appear on my face. All is in a state of flux. No sure ground after all. And now the season is changing.

4.10 The wind takes up in the silver birch, last gold leaves splitter splatter in first drop of rain. 4.20 A goldcrest perches above me then searches for shelter. 4. 25 A fox flees across the meadow.

I see myself less willing to go out. It's difficult in the weather. But I know from experience of writing in nature that to feel the change, the turning of the season, to feel connected I have to be willing. And nature can change us. I've learnt the names of flowers, butterflies and birds by listening and watching. I've learnt that flowers are ready to be pollinated when the bees enter the meadow, come somersaulting through the flowers and that the wind dishevels them, that they bob and rustle, that the pollen and nectar, its oil and scent is released in sumptuous clouds of perfume. I've learnt to get close down smell them, touch them, feel them.

4.30 Silver birch shakes out a charm of gold finches into the knapweed, they twitter, peck at the seed heads left them tufted.

4 .35 A blackbird panics and yells younger birds excitedly calling. Far western moor flowers into a bruise blue and yellow lichens.

I learnt each place in the meadow is special, slope or spring side, sweet or sour soil, attracts its own fellowship of plants and with them they bring their guildsof insects. That in each wild, self-seeded place where a native plant succeeds in rooting, flowering and seeding, it is a champion in its place. Each inlaid in the melody of the meadow.

This ancient Dartmoor meadow not only modulates its own change, like an octave rising and falling back to its root note, people change it too. Pulling up suckers of blackthorn and willow this week, falling over in the mud, doing the work bear and elk once did we kept the clearings open. For that is all a field or meadow is, a clearing in a forest, a 'close' as the old word has it in Devon.

Raven in the pine north of Goat Field squawks, wheels above the gap, panics. The jay in Bagley Wood squeals and pockets a crop of acorns. Badgers take to their sets. Deer gather, bucks to leks, hinds to lowlands, winter crawls out of a lair in the north. Spiders scurry.

5.00 Weather draws in. Far on the western moor over Holne Cross sun bright on black wing, ripple like adder through grass. Where is life of meadow now? Was it a mirage? Did I make it up?

The seasons pass, winter claims the world before our eyes but out of it nature above ground is reborn. From the cut willow a new stem rises. How we look forward to that in the spring. The first daffodil sprung from the winter bulb in the garden and the next and the next. Humans can be destructive through ignorance as Edward Wilson writes; by not knowing what is aleady thriving in a habitat, by insufficient knowledge. To learn to live in nature is a delicate knowing dance Patrick Holden put to me. In this ancient meadow it's easy to appreciate the complex delightful life forms, but it is all around is if we look and listen. If we don't we damage the beauty without realizing it.

For first time I feel the shiver of a raven shadow creep along the wall.

5.30 The temperature drops as cloud pitches over Widecombe vale.

Sky darkens. A wren creeps into the boulder crevice in the corner of of the meadow.

A leaf clatters onto hard earth, another and another, bish-bash of acorn and ash key. A wood dove flees out of cloud to the oak in the meadow side, a young buzzard all summer precarious on narrow wings regains balance, quivers, banks over the heath mewling for its mother.

5.35 Ivy in the hedge leaf-beats like hooves retreating. Suddenly it grows dark as twilight. Wind holds its breath. Rain straiths open, loud like machine gun fire. Finger tips purple with sloe berries I break cover and flee to the old stable in the corner. Then roar! granite grind of thunder. Rain threshes out of cloud barns into the quern of the meadow. A peacock butterfly winnows over my shoulder before me into darkness of the shed. Deep purple, damask closes to black. She lights on the timbers under shadow of a wrens nest bats her wings slap slap slap. To warm herself. My fingers ache. My toes are damp. She shuts her wings into the shape of a triangle and sleeps. Rain-glit strikes, drips through the corrugated iron roof. The wren's nest mildewed and empty.

The Storm arrives. Tears up fists of leaves and hurls them up. Trees, the hawthorn and rowan fight the wind. The oaks on the western side grip, twist, their roots tensile feel the friction. The keen wind buffs the leaf loads. Buzzard screams from her perch. Wind awls her out. The trees sway, receive the blows. The oaks resist, they lean and lay their canopies eastwards taking the knocks. The leaves roar back, each leaf contributes. Small birds cower in hidey-holes in hedge and wall crevice. Smelting rain pelts hard, wrecks spiders webs, hulmed cobnuts smashed in laneside. The knuckles of the hemlock dropwort useless now against any storm.

The storm has broken. Change has come.

*'brink', 'edge' Old Irish

Written after a day spent with The Devon Preservation Society in the ancient meadows of Pudsham, Buckland-in-the-Moor

Pudsham meadow is bordered on one side by farmland and on the other by gorse and heather heathland of the high moor. It comprises the Bronze Age meadows of Small Field, Goat Field, Pudsham Meadow and Sylvia's Field.

Pudsham Meadow Day: Orchid Charms and Bee Spells

by Roz Brady

all photos by Roz Brady

Cardinal Beetle

A young queen-bee is learning nectaring. She flops on and off the Yellow Rattle in their province in Small Field. She misjudged a landing, plunged, fell into the grass and was drenched in dew. Then, recovering, flew up to the flower heads again, slid off a buttercup, tumbled, grabbed at a petal which dislodged and dropped her back down into the thick mat of the meadow floor.

A carder bee, her hind legs hoary with pollen, chases a worker bee over the meadow. Tiny white moths flutter up out of the Yellow Rattle.

I notice this as I walk through the fields and meadows at Pudsham and take notes. The floral mix of each meadow is unique and represents them like separate coats of arms. I marvel at the flowers that have sprung up since my last visit several weeks ago.

The orchids are particularly elaborate with their exotic racemes of spurs, spikes and lobed lips. And peculiarly intelligent. The ivory spurred Greater Butterfly Orchid in Small Field for example. I've learnt each floret has little nodes for moths to kneel on when sipping nectar. Bumble-bees try to reach in, but the clever flower has designed itself so that the seduced bee finds her tongue too short to get to the nectar at the pit of each flower spur. I kneel down and inhale the orchids' astonishing wisteria-like scent. I imagine hawk moths and night moths streaming towards them over the moor—for moths will journey several miles to find a favoured flower. Rather like us I think as we negotiate our way through the orchids.

Greater Butterfly Orchid 'Each floret has little nodes on for the insects to kneel on whilst drinking.'

The spikes of scentless Twy-Blades, their miniscule green flowers seem ancient but they are, I heard, remarkable. As soon as the inner spur is touched by a visiting insect there is a tiny explosion in the heart of each flower. The drop of glue that results sticks the pollen clubs firmly onto the insect's head. You can try it yourself. The mechanism is extremely sensitive. Touch it with a hair from your head, the glue drop is immediately squeezed out.

Meanwhile I watch the bees being worked hard by other less exotic-looking flowers. The Lamb's-ears, Hawkweeds and the gold-orange coins of Bird's Foot Trefoil.

Tiny early forager bee spins over top of a pignut taking quick sips of nectar and tiny pollen dabs on her feet—Bombus Terrestris a white-tailed bee intrudes on another tiny bee's flower who squeals with a high pitched buzz. A breeze takes up, flicks petals open, blows buds, throws out the trifoliate leaves of the trefoil, bursts the round tips of a butterfly orchid and puffs goat willow catkins far and wide over the old wall, over Dartmoor westwards towards Widecombe

Wandering into Pudsham Meadow the ruby Lousewort are beginning to blossom. Later I discover the root of the Lousewort was made into a poultice as a cure for lice. I love these work-a-day folk names, One of my favourites is the old Devon name for a wild rose-hip: ‘pigs snout’. And red pimpernel—in Welsh Gaelic: Herb of the Witch woman. Dotted in the meadow here and there the magenta tongues of the Southern Marsh Orchid entice Cuckoo bees and Skipper butterflies into their hidden nectaries.

The 'magenta tongues' of the Southern Marsh Orchis.

Heath Spotted Orchid 'mysterious markings'

The Heath Spotted orchids take my breath away, their mysterious markings, their daubs of pale lilac on the wild moor.

Froghoppers, food for swifts gently stir in their crèche in the east corner. I learn that their presence shows this meadow is healthy.

Next generation of Summer Froghoppers

Bee taking shelter ' All of a sudden a hawker dragonfly slices the air. The bees stopped their wings, dropped to ground.'

A moth flutters out of the undergrowth, which I found later is the Brown Silver Line moth. Once I discovered a new moth fresh from its pupa. I watched it crawl onto a grass stem and expand its wings. I watched as they slowly filled out and then, after the moth had stretched them to their full extent, it flew away. The silver moth next to me shivering, imitates the hanging awns of the grasses. Then as quick as a cloud passes the bees move up again into the flower heads.

The sun ploughs a furrow in Sylvia's Field and, as I write field notes, a Cardinal beetle flutters up out of the grass tops onto my pencil. Meadow brown butterflies rise into the cock's foot grass. All of a sudden a blue Hawker dragonfly slices the air. The bees stopped their wings, dropped to ground.

The dragonfly accelerates, swerves, expertly somersaults crackling her menacing wings, grabs a young bee, drops into its perch in a water dropwort in the field corner by the stream and eats. Silence. Then as quick as a cloud scuds overhead the bees buzz into the flower heads again.

The drama goes on as we saunter through the wild plants that are enchanting us and calling us to their attention.

I love the little Eyebright growing by the path in Sylvia's Field, its bright, white and blue striated eyes. And the Celtic looking Black Knapweed throwing out their calyxes in the breeze to draw insects in. Ragged Robin has flushed up among the sedge in Sylvia’s field. In an old book by Endymion Beer called 'The Plants of Devon', I learn Ragged Robin and Knapweed were gathered for use in old Devon love charms; the forked petals were picked off one by one and the name of the wished-for lover chanted under the breath. The Ragged Robin is especially powerful. She bewitches moths and dragonflies, frogs and toads out of the stream and into the meadow.

Eyebright

So I try to use my senses to feel, smell and taste and my seventh sense to tune in to the secret life of the flowers and insects surrounding me here. I join my friends and we sit for a moment listening to the wind, watching granite clouds grind across the sky and observing worker bees gather pollen in the falling day. Skylarks are singing over the moor beyond the dry-stone walls.

Pudsham meadow day came to an end. As the last folk left and drove back to the hectic modern world, at Pudsham all is peaceful as it has been for thousands of years. Strange to think not long ago in former days England was abundant in meadows such as these.

Later on I reflect that Pudsham also moves through time. Its name, I discover, is ancient as the hills.

Thanks to Devon Preservation Association for saving and taking care of this rich, special place, and for inspiring me to write.

Pudsham Management History

In spring 2016, the Devon Preservation Association completed its purchase of a small area of land on Dartmoor. This land, previously owned by Elizabeth Proctor for about 20 years, was managed under an agreement with the Dartmoor National Park Authority due to its significance as a traditional hay meadow. With the help of a generous legacy, the DPA acquired it to ensure its continued conservation

All of these fields are not only valuable wildlife habitats but also recognized as a County Wildlife Site. Pudsham Meadow, the first field on the left as the bridleway leaves Pudsham Down, is particularly remarkable. According to Dartmoor National Park ecologists, it stands as one of the finest hay meadows within the National Park. the UK Biodiversity Action Plan identifies such fields as Priority Habitat due to their alarming decline over the past half-century. Now, they are highly localized, and Dartmoor alone accounts for about 6% of the national resource—Pusham is truly a gem.

The Herbs of Pudsham Meadows

Pudsham Hay Meadows Summer 2025 Restoring The Dream Land That Was Once The Real Land of England. 23rd June St John's Eve

The Ragged Robin of Pudsham Meadows

Ribwort Plantain 'Lus-an-Lease, Plant of the Enclosure'

Lesser Skullcap 'her fragile pink flowers'

The meadows at Pudsham have moved through time, and the lives it witnessed have passed from it. But the treasure it still retains tell us much. The walls, the stones, the plants, the landscape itself have much to say. There were lives lived hereabout. The Bronze Age was warm and the moor peopled, round houses and fields. And though the folk have gone, the landscape remains. The plants of this meadow, well known to those who came before as food and medicine, as a changing scene through the seasons. Nature was a resource utterly depended upon, their connection with it one we have gradually and imperceptibly lost.

At the beginning of summer, I walk back up Elliot’s Hill from the road, the lane gradually narrowing to where the tarmac breaks up underfoot. I pass up the tree-shadowed track and come to ‘Sylvia’s Field’.

By the gate I see Plantain, its sleek, ribbed leaves pressed close to the ground. I imagine a Bronze Age farmer going before with her flock of sheep, gathering herbs in the hot day, the dew low in the grass. She kneels as the sun rises to sheen the layers of tendril and leaf, the filigree stamens on a bramble flower: interwoven pagan decorations.

Plantain, widespread in Sylvia's Field, was known as Lus-an-Lease, plant of the enclosure or ham according to Grigson, the first coloniser of opened ground as the wild wood was cleared (assarted). It was revered as a vulnerary, a wound-healer, sovereign against the bite of the adder. Good also for love divination: In June place the flower head wrapped with dock leaf under a stone. If, by the next day the anthers still flourish love will find you.

The Anglo-Saxons knew this commonplace herb as Weybroed or bread of the path. It has a pleasant tang, somewhere between field mushroom and apple.

I walk through the sedges and grasses as through a medieval painting, rank wild mint in the sward crushed underfoot releasing its heady soothing scent. My farmer would have smelt it too, I see her now leading her sheep down to the stream by the willow carr, brushing the velvety leaves with her fingertips.

She crouches in the coolness cutting the soft stem with a stone knife. Taking care not to bruise the tender herb as she folds it in her leather pouch. I kneel and gather the mint, place it in my hip pouch. Like her perhaps, I learned the names of wild plants from my mother. Wild mint eases digestion and soothes the mind: 'The savour of water mint rejoiceth the heart of man' wrote Gerard in 1633, 'for which cause the folk strew it in their chambers and where feasts and banquets are made.'

I make my way along a fox path through hummocks and tangles to the goat willow tree. She walks with her stave, her tunic rustling the sedge, through the south gate onto Elliot’s Hill. Lifts, clicks the hasp behind her and vanishes. I sit under my cool willow to write.

Lesser Skullcap skulks in a murky puddle by the east gate the Farmer passed through. Among the sedges it is hard to see its fragile pink flowers. Named after the leather skull cap worn by the Romans, it is a powerful tonic to counter nervous excitability.

The flock left to fold in the field is drawn to the glittering stream where tall green dagger leaves of Yellow Iris spring up. One gold flower rises up like a chalice held against the azure sky; curvilinear petals glancing in the wind catching light like fire flame on metal. The Celts associated Iris with the mystical land of the Faerie and was given to mariners as protection against treacherous waters. It’s Devonian name was ‘Dragon Flower’

Once used to increase the flow of blood and a stimulate the heart, Foxglove's poison pink flowers have fallen over the wall at Pudsham meadow and lie in the lane. The plant has turned its power inward now and grows its dark seeds secretly. Underground time pods: they may last years. How long do the old beliefs last? Once foxes wore the gloves, a cunning magic for stealth, paws not heard by poultry or men. In some places Foxgloves were called Bee-catchers because young bees lose themselves in the deep bells and fall into drunkenness. I have seen this.

Pudsham has moved though time, and I step back through time here. Time unfolds like the pages of an ancient book. These plants are old, like our stories, like us. The old names, amusing and poignant give insight into days gone by. Oral, vernacular lore reveal the lives of the ancients and reflect our own concerns, human concerns. A human-chain, interwoven with the chain of nature. The details are in books, but out here on Dartmoor with its tangible atmosphere it is easy to conjure the old ways, to see with your own eyes the mornings of the Bronze Age, touch the plants that succoured the folk of yore.

But it is summer 2025. As I finish this under the willow tree, I wonder is it me gaining understanding of this land or is it the land and its fierce beauty coming to know me, suffusing my heart with peace, cleansing the superfluities of more modern sensibility.

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