More room for rare mushrooms in Oeffelter Meent

This week Staatsbosbeheer starts local soil clearing and lime spreading in the Natura 2000 area Oeffelter Meent. Through this measure, nature gets an important boost. The lime gives special plants, mosses and mushrooms more opportunities. The work is done both manually and with a small machine and will take several weeks.

The Oeffelter Meent is a unique stream valley grassland, where the river used to have free play. It is home to many characteristic plants, grasses, mosses and mushrooms. Rare plants that have disappeared from the Maasheggen in other places have been able to maintain themselves here. But they are under severe pressure. These include species such as big thyme, soft greasewort, perennial hardflower, vernal gooseberry and lathyrus vetch. A rare plant like tripadam seems to have disappeared for good. To halt the decline, Staatsbosbeheer is opening and liming the soil locally. Grasses, which displace the rare plants, are thereby dealt with. The measures also mimic the dynamics of flooding by the river. As there are fewer floods, less calcareous silt is deposited. Through liming, this deficit is more or less made up.

Mushrooms benefit along with it
Not only plants, but also mushrooms benefit from the work. Between 2017 and 2019, several inventories were carried out on mushrooms of the Oeffelter Meent, revealing once again how many rare species occur. Extraordinary wax plates with evocative names such as parrot mushroom, black-winged wax plate, heather satin mushroom and tawny snow mushroom. The Oeffelter Meent is an important core area of all kinds of wax plates and button mushrooms. Because the ground here has not been excavated or tilled for decades, the mushrooms have been able to develop excellently under the soil. Therefore, the locations where work is being done are outside the sites where the mushrooms have been found.

Staatsbosbeheer will closely monitor the effect of the measures. The limed sites will be monitored annually to see how nature is developing and whether the characteristic plants are expanding again.