PRINCE Charles has thrown open a challenge to preserve the nation’s wild flower meadows in the Queen’s honour.

And the Prince of Wales has already secured his first grassland in East Lancashire as part of his crusade.

Six fields at Bell Sykes Farm in Slaidburn will form the county’s first ‘Coronation Meadow’, it has been announced.

The royal heir has teamed up with the Plantlife charity, after reading a report claiming the UK had lost 97 per cent of its wildlife meadows since the 1930s.

Prince Charles said: “This year we are celebrating my mother's coronation so surely there is no better moment to end this destruction and to stimulate a new mood to protect our remaining meadows and to use them as springboards for the restoration of other sites and the creation of new meadows right across the UK.”

The new Bell Sykes Meadow is an ideal candidate - three of the fields are regularly flooded by the nearby River Hodder and are replete with meadow foxtail and sweet vernal grass, and blooms such as the great burnet and meadowsweet.

Dry hay meadows, where Meadow Crane’s-bill and melancholy thistle vie with yellow rattle, eyebrights, pignut, buttercups and lady’s mantle, which regularly attract curlew to the area.

The land is part of the Slaidburn Estate, owned by Norfolk-based Anthea Hodson.

A Plantlife spokesman said: “Bell Sykes Meadows is one of the last unimproved flower-rich grasslands in this part of Lancashire.

“This vulnerable habitat has become increasingly scarce and has largely been destroyed in Lancashire through agricultural intensification.”

Promoters hope more sites will be suggested in Lancashire but nature-lovers have not been resting on their laurels.

Parish councillors in Heskin, near Chorley, had plans for a wildflower meadow to celebrate The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and a similar field was created at Whitehough, near Barley, by Pendleside villagers.

WHAT TO SPOT

  • Great Burnet (April - August) The bulbous, blood-red heads of this member of the rose family often indicate a floodplain meadow.
  • Yellow rattle (May-September) A semi-parasitic flower, that feeds off nutrients in nearby grass roots. In doing so it helps restrict the vigorous grasses, allowing more delicate wildflowers to emerge.
  • Pignut (April-June) Common in open woodland, hedgerows and dry grassland, pignut has fine leaves and delicate stems with small umbrella-like clusters of white flowers.
  • Meadowsweet (All year round) Also known as the meadow, this perennial herb is often found growing in damp meadows, ditches and bogs.
  • Curlew (All year round) Curlew are very large, tall waders, about the same size as a female pheasant. The sound of the curlew's display call ('Cur-lee') is unmistakeable and can be heard from February through to July on its breeding grounds.