ECOLOGISTS worked through April showers to carry out an annual count of Oxfordshire’s official county flower.

The BBOWT team surveyed the spectacular snake’s-head fritillaries at the Trust's Iffley Meadows nature reserve in Oxford on Wednesday, as they have done every year since 1983.

Sweeping across the fields in a tightly-controlled formation, the conservationists tallied up a total of 45,734 flower heads.

The data collected helps the Trust to preserve the precious floodplain meadow habitat at Iffley Meadows, which is one of fewer than 30 sites in the country where these striking flowers bloom in the wild.

Colin Williams, BBOWT Ecology Officer in charge of the count, said:

“I have been organising this survey for 15 years, and it has never rained so much on the day of our count! Despite that, the team of volunteers did a fantastic job: we couldn’t do this count without their help, so I would like to say a massive thanks to them.

“The snake’s-head fritillary is a great indicator of how healthy this habitat is, so by counting their number each year we can get a good idea of how the meadows are doing, and this helps us to manage them not just for these flowers but for all the other species that live here.”

When BBOWT took over management of Iffley Meadows in 1983 there were fewer than 500 fritillaries at the site. Under the Trust's management of the floodplain meadow habitat, this number has soared to more than 80,000 in some years.

The total number of flowers counted this year was slightly lower than in some recent years, but Mr Williams said it was within the normal annual fluctuation that one would expect.

He added: "Numbers vary each year due to flooding events of the previous 24 months, the weather just before and during the flowering season and the impact of browsing deer. We manage the meadows in the same way each year, with a July hay cut and aftermath grazing."