Allimore Green is a small hamlet in Staffordshire

Staffordshire

Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, 1 mile north-east of Church Eaton

Church Eaton

Church Eaton is a small English village in the west of Staffordshire lying some southwest of Stafford, northwest of Penkridge and just from the Shropshire border. It lies in gently rolling dairy farming countryside...

.

It is the location of a Site of Special Scientific Interest

Site of Special Scientific Interest

A Site of Special Scientific Interest is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom. SSSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in Great Britain are based upon...

, a Common

Common land

Common land is land owned collectively or by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect firewood, or to cut turf for fuel...

 of Wetland Meadow

Wet meadow

A wet meadow is a semi-wetland meadow which is saturated with water throughout much of the year. Wet meadows may occur because of poor drainage or the receipt of large amounts of water from rain or melted snow. They may also occur in riparian zones....

, in the care of the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust

Staffordshire Wildlife Trust

The Staffordshire Wildlife Trust is a wildlife trust covering the county of Staffordshire, England.-External links:**...

. The site supports more than 140 species of vascular plant

Vascular plant

Vascular plants are those plants that have lignified tissues for conducting water, minerals, and photosynthetic products through the plant. Vascular plants include the clubmosses, Equisetum, ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms...

s including 5 orchids, two of which are found nowhere else in Staffordshire. The Staffordshire Wildlife Trust describe the varied history of the site:

As a parish common, the site experienced a chequered history of management with local parishioners grazing their livestock and cutting hay, and reports of gypsies regularly using the Common for their horses and coppicing the alder trees. There have also been attempts to drain the site by excavating ditches on three sides of the Common and a central ditch through the southern half of the pasture. Fortunately these attempts have not been successful - the Common still has poor drainage with the ironic added benefit of several areas of open water habitat.

Somewhat appropriately, the name Allimore means 'the path through the marsh'.

External links

• Allimore Green SSSI