Fen Management Handbook - Scottish Natural Heritage

Use of seed bombs
‘Seed bombs’ were used to colonise two newly dug ponds at Whitlaw Mosses NNR in
the Scottish Borders in an area with few other wetlands or ponds where leaving nature to
take its course through natural colonisation was unlikely to be successful. Material which
formed a strand line around the mosses following the retreat of annual winter floods was
found to contain a wide range of seeds, mainly sedges and bog bean, as well as large
amounts of reed and sedge debris. In 2003 four freezer bags of the damp strandline
material were simply thrown into each pond and allowed to disperse naturally. In the first
summer few of the plants were evident, but by the second year a wide range of plants
that could be attributed to the mix in the seed bombs had started to grow. This included
the rare lesser tussock sedge; the main sedge that is growing on the bank edge in the
photograph.
9.9.5 Plug plants
Pond inoculated with seed
bombs (A.McBride)
Specialist nurseries and some tree nurseries will grow plug plants to order. The plants
are grown in a small amount of compost which helps them establish quickly when
planted into moist substrate, which can help stabilise substrate to help establishment
of other fen plants. Rapid ‘greening’ of a site is sometimes also important to project
funders to demonstrate that work has in fact started.
Planting of plug plants is very labour intensive, and consequently not feasible in
large numbers without the assistance of many willing volunteers. It took two men on
average a day to plant out approximately 1,500 tillers and tussocks of common cottongrass
and harestail cotton-grass on a cut-over area of Thorne Moors, South Yorkshire
using a local source of plants. This is a similar rate to that achieved in the restoration of
some Minnesota peatlands where rates of 120 transplants per person per hour were
achieved (Johnson & Valppu 2003).
9.9.6 Vegetative propagules
For sedges and some dicotyledonous plants (e.g. bogbean, marsh cinquefoil) the most
effective method of establishing plants is to take sections of vegetation/turf from a
donor area and transplant to the receptor site. Transplantation should be within a day
or two to avoid plants drying out. The receptor site should be wet, but with the water
table below the substrate to allow the plants to establish. Water levels can then be
gradually raised to their final levels over the next six months.
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