50 Years Ago

Conservationists, farmers and highway managers met in London on March 14 to discuss the function and management of road verges … all that is needed is cooperation for roadside verges to become a haven of rare and attractive plants while not interfering with the safety and amenity of what is described under Common Law as “a perpetual right of passage for the Queen and all her subjects” … [V]erges represent the last vestige of grasslands which existed before the modernization of agriculture. The rich pastures of the past often survive only on unploughed and unsprayed verges. Many roadside verges also provide a habitat for some of Britain’s rare plants … at least twenty-seven of the three hundred rarest species grow on roadside verges; Linum anglicum, perennial flax, grows only in this habitat and the same goes for several other species. Clearly the loss of one roadside verge could mean the end of a species in Britain.

From Nature 22 March 1969

100 Years Ago

The Times of March 17 gives an account … of a remarkable Australian rainfall. It states that “the extraordinary rainfall at Melbourne threatens the greatest flood since 1891. The south-eastern corner of Victoria and New South Wales is almost engulfed … At Macedon 8 in. were registered in twenty-four hours, and other watersheds have been converted into lakes. Thousands of persons are homeless. Thirteen inches of rain in twenty-four hours has practically drowned the township of East Bellingen, in New South Wales. Although the damages are estimated to aggregate tens of thousands of pounds, the benefits from the breaking of the drought will be represented by hundreds of thousands.”

From Nature 20 March 1919