They made it all up you know!

Notice to the reader : There are some people who attack me personally about this blog . Please see the notes at the end of the article after you have read it  which explain why you should trust what I am saying.

Subsequently to writing this blog entry I have become someone who is sufficiently respected as an expert that he is allowed to sign letters to the press on behalf of Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland. ( Scotland has an independent organisation.)


I should say before I start this that ragwort is poisonous. No one denies that. It contains chemicals that are toxic and that are also found in 3 % of all flowering plants. It is a problem in hay and where animals are starved into eating it in desperation. This is not what a blog about. I blog about the hysteria that leads to environmental damage.

I should also before I start say quite clearly that none of this is about people lying. People often believe quite odd and incorrect things because they have been told them or they have misunderstood something . The usual cause is poor critical thinking skills often combined with a lack of knowledge of science.

There has been a need for a while for a posting that I could point people to which sums up why I blog on this subject. Ragwort is the subject of hysteria and is not the problem it is made out to be. The problem is essentially one that has been invented.

There is a well-known hoax about a substance called DHMO which is described as being present in cancer cells, used in nuclear power stations, killing hundreds of people a year, etc. This is actually a true description of the substance presented in an inaccurate way. DHMO is Di-Hydrogen MonOxide or water. Its true properties are overexaggerated and it has even led for some politicians to call for DHMO to be banned. It is very similar to the propaganda about ragwort as it is true it is poisonous . Poisoning is rare, however, and in the case of ragwort, they have even invented new things about it.


To say that the problem  of ragwort is invented sounds quite some charge to make . That people, organisations and public bodies have been making a fuss about an invented problem. It is however, supported by the evidence.

It is important to realise that anyone can make silly claims and publicise them. Debunking them however, is time consuming. A scientifically minded person has to have evidence for everything, and there are a lot of superficially plausible sounding myths out there. It has taken years of work for me to get through all of them Documenting every myth and error. I started with visits to the British Library. It is a magnificent world class source of information. It is a  national treasure, but even they failed me on occasions. One crucial paper on seed dispersal had apparently been discarded or something and wasn't available. Fortunately a foreign expert had a copy. It takes a lot of work to examine all of these data. The propagandists however, do not appear to have these scruples. Their literary muse is not fettered by such considerations as ensuring they have the correct facts.


It is also quite important for those who have not been following it to understand just how daft some of the claims are. We have been told that it kills hundreds or even thousands of horses a year. We are told it kills people. It is poisonous to the touch and can give you cancer if you do. We are told by the BBC no less that it is dangerous to dogs ( It is poisonous to dolphins as well as dogs but they don't eat it either!)

 These are just a few of the falsehoods that have been promoted. I can for a large part of the year find something on almost a daily basis that is being publicised about ragwort that is incorrect. Last year there was a letter in the Daily Telegraph that I blogged on. It was given pride of place as the only illustrated letter . It told us that this native plant was an illegal foreign invader,  and that it poisoned people who breathed in its seeds  etc.etc. I blogged about it as Bonkers letter in the Daily Telegraph. I really do try to avoid emotive language in discussing science but bonkers is absolutely correct. The only thing that seemed to be correct is that the author said there was a lot of ignorance about ragwort.

But surely you ask this couldn't extend to Parliament? Surely in our democracy we wouldn't create an Act of Parliament based on ignorance would we?

Let's look at some of the discussions about the Ragwort Control Act, which fortunately doesn't force the control of ragwort as was its original intent.
During this process Baroness Masham steered the bill through the House of Lords and boy did she say some silly things. She introduced herself  as a Vice-president of the British Horse Society. This is an organisation that has been central to dispersing incorrect information and their claims have fallen foul of the Advertising Standards Authority  code as I blogged about before.

These are some of the things she said.

 Ragwort has become a scourge in the countryside and has increased alarmingly in the past few years.

 Actually there has been a government survey. It shows ragwort decreasing

I am told that each plant can produce between 150,000 and 250,000 seeds that, once airborne, can travel up to 10 miles.

Even the 150,000 figure would be very exceptional let alone 250,000!
Also the Advertising Standards Authority, who are impartial and just look at the evidence, banned an advert making the claim of just 150,000 seeds being produced by each plant!

Let's look how crazy that 10 miles figure is. Ragwort seeds don't have wings they have little parachutes. This means that their general direction is downwards.  To travel 10 miles in the air they would have to have something propelling them upwards all along that distance. The wind does not in normal and typical circumstances blow up from the ground. While of course there are going to be exceptional dispersal events,  these are not significant for a quite common native plant whose seeds are going to be present in lots of places anyway. We do actually know how far ragwort seeds travel.  Most fall at the base of the plant the others travel just a few metres.

Again it doesn't matter really about seed dispersal because the plant will only grow where the conditions are right. If you don't want ragwort don't create the conditions for it to grow. The real problem here is that it causes miles of roadside to have every vaguely ragged plant or yellow flower exterminated for no sensible reason. I heard only this morning about someone wanting advice about her yellow ragwort flowers. They were actually buttercups!

It is estimated that about 500 equines die each year, but that number will rise unless something positive is done.

This is actually a figure with no basis whatsoever. There is no test that can confirm ragwort poisoning. The set of problem chemicals occur in many other British plants and 3% of plants globally. Then significantly the characteristic microscopic changes in the liver that are diagnostic have other causes including toxins from moulds that commonly grow on damp feedstuffs.

A freedom of information request to the ultimate source of this well-known myth shows that in the last 5 years for which data are available 2006-2010 they have recorded  precisely ZERO  possible cases. NOT ONE!!
This is a central part of what I mean by saying the problem has been made up! 

We also now know the statistical method under which this figure appears to have been generated. It seems to be fundamentally flawed and to break the rules of proper statistics. 

The same ultimate source has also claimed, in print, that our common ragwort is a serious problem in South Africa. The experts there tell me that they have no record of the plant even growing there!

 So we have someone getting an Act of Parliament passed with false or inaccurate information.

The same problems are repeated in DEFRA guidance, local council websites and so on ad nauseam, as I show regularly with this blog.

The misinformation continues. I blogged recently about the British Horse Society using a spokesperson who made a number of serious gaffes on radio.

You may ask well, surely even one case of an animal suffering should be avoided? This is a matter of where you concentrate your efforts. If you concentrate them on a really non-existent problem like ragwort then you neglect other problems that are worse. There is a malady called Equine Grass Sickness. It is an odd and unusual condition that kills horses that eat grass rather than hay. The available statistics show that it is much commoner than ragwort poisoning. It would seem from the evidence that grass is a worse problem than ragwort. (I should add at this point that Equine Grass Sickness is a complicated problem and that the research indicates that it may be more complicated rather than just grass in the diet, but there are other diet related problems that are much commoner and deserve more attention than all the moral panic about ragwort.)

As ever, good information can be found at these websites.

Ragwort Facts
Ragwort Myths and Facts
Ragwort the Sense and the Nonsense

The middle of these links goes to the site of Esther Hegt who was originally a member of a ragwort extermination group in the Netherlands where ragwort hysteria has spread from the UK. She is a really quite brilliantly intelligent person and she asked some experts and did her own research. Like everyone else who looks at them  properly she saw the hoaxes for what they were.

Finally, before my explanatory notes below ,here is a video with Matt Shardlow the Chief Executive of Buglife telling us all on the BBC about the hysteria. Buglife are an excellent organisation and have been  a lot of help.

The author frequently uses this blog entry to explain things about ragwort. Unfortunately there are people in social media circles who make clearly false accusations that the content of the posting is false, misleading or unbalanced. You frequently find, on researching it, that  they are members  of organisations criticised here. Often they may have the kind of cognitive or mental processing issues I mention above. The statements here are the product of over a decade of study helped by an international network of supporting scientific experts.

If you should have any doubts as to my integrity or honesty I would direct you to this page in the Daily Telegraph where the I am signatory to a letter. The three other signatories are leading figures in British conservation circles representing some of our foremost conservation organisations, with whom I work on this issue. These knowledgeable experts  evidently believe I have good judgement and integrity. (The letter was a response to the "bonkers letter" about which I write above.)

It spreads to other plants now,.

I'll start this blog post with a short digression. One of my many interests is in languages. After posting  today's blog subject I have some time scheduled to deal with my langauge studies. One of the things I study is Latin. You may think it is not a lot of use. I can say rather useless  things like "Possum Latinam loqui" ( I can speak Latin) or more truthfully "Non Latinam bonam loquor" ( I don't speak good Latin). I can certainly read it quite a bit, but I don't get much chance to speak it. The real benefit of studying it is understanding English better, and in particular, understanding technical or legal jargon.

Today's subject is a case in point. It is a classic example. It is about a website called Hydra-aqua.com where rather oddly, they start talking about ragwort and other land plants in the context of pond weeds.

Fourth most common invasive aquatic plants is the Himalayan balsam. This one can grow dominantly, reaching a height of two to three metres, capable of stopping other pond plants from thriving. In addition to these plants, there are other particular  weeds which can be damaging to animals such as common ragwort, spear thistle, creeping or field thistle, curled dock, as well as broad-leaved dock. Among these weeds, the most perilous is the ragwort.
It is because of its poisonous parts that can immediately kill livestock when they eat them. If you want to stop these invasive pond plants from spreading out of control, you must always seek some help first from professionals or local environmentalist for proper and safe treatments.

Let's deal with the list of plants first "common ragwort, spear thistle, creeping or field thistle, curled dock, as well as broad-leaved dock". It would appear that the author of the article concerned doesn't understand a piece of legal jargon which is derived from Latin. These plants are all listed in the Weeds Act 1959 as "injurious weeds". The one thing that "injurious" doesn't mean in this context is causing injury!
In fact  this word actually derives from the Latin word “iniurius” which in the middle ages would have been often spelled “injurius” . It carried the meaning of  unjust or wrongful and over the years from this it eventually developed the meaning of something that did injustice or wrong to something else, or that did in some way harm to an interest. In this case "injurious" means "harmful to the interests of agriculture."

It can't mean poisonous in this context because all the other plants apart from Ragwort are actually edible!
They may not be that good to eat and some docks do, like quite a few plants, contain toxic oxalic acid.
Many edible plants contain something that is not good to have in  excess and there have even  been livestock deaths caused by brassicas.


The Weeds Act is an anachronistic piece of legistlation . It doesn't make having these weeds on your land illegal it just gives certain powers to government  It was developed at a time when the emphasis was on increasing agriculatural production. It was never actually used until all the ragwort hysteria started. but now we see that the other rather harmless plants being targetted because "They are listed in an act of parliament" and so they must be dangerous. This is a common mistake even repeated by official bodies on occasion. Back in 1959 the civil servants would have done Latin in school perhaps. Today that is less likely to be the case or may be they use less legalistic jargon in writing laws.

We should remember it isn't just ragwort that gets targeted. It is any plant which might have yellowish flowers and also now all thistles and dock like plants in some cases. This affects all the wildlife that needs them too and thisles are an excellent nectar source.

Of  course I should point out that the statement, "It is because of its poisonous parts that can immediately kill livestock when they eat them. (sic)" even ignoring its incorrect use of pronouns is very badly incorrect about ragwort. Ragwort poisoning is, all the evidence says, rare and the classic symptoms are certainly not instant and sudden death.

 For more information on the meaning of "Injurious" see : Injurious weeds explained

Highland Council repeats ragwort notifiable weed hoax

It is an all too  typical occurrence for a council to get the facts wrong about ragwort. This time it is  Highland Council in Scotland who say incorrectly.:-

Householders are reminded that the brown bin collections and garden waste skips at Recycling Centres are intended solely for garden waste such as grass cuttings, hedge trimmings, twigs and small branches, flowers and weeds but excluding notifiable weeds such as Japanese knotweed and ragwort.

I'll repeat it again as I have said it before there is no such thing as a notifiable weed in UK law.

Why on earth shouldn't this plant be composted anyway. It doesn't make compost dangerous. There are plenty of other plants containing the same chemicals and to see this native and ecologically valuable mentioned next to Japanese Knotweed just serves to highten the hysteria.

Worse still this is a press release. It is already appearing on other sites. A blog and a forum so far and it is just a matter of hours. Telling people it is "notifiable" makes them complain more and more fuss is made and we get more hysteria.

Horse and Hound An Inaccurate Article on Ragwort

The May 3rd edition of Horse and Hound contains  an article on liver damage in horses that is accompanied by the most dreadful misinformation on Ragwort. They state:

"150,000 the number of seeds each ragwort flower carries"

This is clearly wrong. these are figures for normal ragwort plants at 8 sites that are documented in one of the best papers on ragwort ecology.

4,760
5,900
11,690
13,370
47,600
63,700
117,740
120,400

Clearly it is wrong to state that each flower carries such a large amount

more detailed scientific information is availavle on this article on Ragwort Seed Production

"70 the percentage of ragwort seeds from every flower that will go on to germinate"

This is also clearly wrong. Many seeds will not fall in a suitable place and the germination percentage, which is in the range that quite normal for many plants, is a laboratory figure. On average only one plant will be produced from each parent. Indeed it will be less than that since we know that ragwort is actually decreasing.

Horse and Hound has been printing the most dreadfully inaccurate information on ragwort for years and this is only the latest example.

Country Land and Business Association's Nonsense on Ragwort

The Country Land and Business Association has just put some real nonsense about ragwort  on their website. They start with this:-

Following the early hot weather and heavy rain in April ragwort is rife this year.

I wrote about this odd claim that ragwort is increasing because of the weather- any weather before. Last year Horse and Hound claimed :-

Cold weather in November and December, followed by a mild January have caused the deadly weed ragwort to start to grow early.

The actual facts are that the latest government survey shows that ragwort is DECREASING. There is in any case nothing in the scientific literature which I have seen that would support either claim about the weather affecting ragwort. What is actually happening is more notice is being paid to theamount of ragwort, because of the hysteria.

However some really ignorant  nonsense from the CLA follows.

The Council does not have responsibility for dealing with ragwort on private land. As a result members are reminded that as Ragwort is a notifiable weed it is the responsibility of the landowner to remove it from private land.

There is no such thing in UK law as a "notifiable weed." The CLA have got it badly wrong and are misinforming their members. There is no automatic legal responsibility to remove ragwort from private land.

They should remember too that there is no evidence that ragwort is a serious risk to livestock. The inflated figures for horses have been conclusively shown to be WRONG.

This link will give you the law.

British Horse Society Spokesperson's Gaffes on Ragwort

The British Horse Society have again, it seems, been distributing scare stories about ragwort and this time their spokesperson  appears to  have demonstrated very very clearly the ignorance of basic biological knowledge that characterises the hysteria over the plant.

This matter is over a BBC Radio Wales broadcast where unfortunately the BBC chose to put on air a person whom , it appears,  was just repeating things she had heard., without having a proper technical understanding of the issue. To be frank, from the viewpoint of a knowledgeable person,  it seems she made a right fool of herself.

Rose Brooke,  who the  BBC lists as the BHS press officer for North East Wales,  went on radio and gave an interview that she seemed  ill prepared to make. It appeared to be full of gaffes, real howlers of gaffes!

First of all she started by saying that a spoonful of ragwort could harm a horse and went on in the course of the interview to say that the ragwort would make the animal sick for years and years and years.

The reality is that horses avoid ragwort., and this is backed up by many scientific papers and experts around the world. It is basic elementary science that they would do so. It isn't just because ragwort tastes terrible, because of the bitter taste. The bitter taste exists because it is poisonous. Nature created a system in all animals called taste. It is different in different animals, but the bitterness factor developed because of  need to detect and avoid poisons. Those animals who did not have a good working taste system died and did not pass on their genes.

There are two possible circumstances where there might be a problem . Where the ragwort is dried an in hay, and where the animal is being starved to death and eats poison out of desperation. Neither is the case here.

Toxic doses of ragwort to a horse are not usually measured in spoonfulls, but often  in percentages of body weight which for a horse is a lot.


The BHS seems to have been doing this all around the country. Putting up people with poor knowledge to make press statements and getting things badly wrong. Often the journalists don't know anything either and the nonsense gets printed or broadcast. More people believe the nonsense and it multiplies. On this occasion though the BBC  had some information from an expert , which they used rather badly, and at least some of the ignorance was , it would appear, revealed..

When questioned about the environmental benefits of ragwort she just didn't seem to know anything much . Instead of mentioning the many invertebrates which require ragwort , it seemed she only knew about the Cinnabar Moth and then proceeded to get its biology hopelessly wrong. "There is a theory" she said that the Cinnabar Moth feeds on ragwort. Well it isn't a theory!. It is a solid hard FACT. It really is questionable that a registered charity should raise its funding profile using people who will talk about fact  and theories when they don't appear to know the difference . Then came a series of really bad statements. She said the moth fed on the flowers when it actually eats the whole plant and then, quite dreadfully, said that it only lives for a day!. Cinnabar moths stay on the wing for weeks and have a year long life cycle!

She then goes on to say that there is evidence for this, from Professor Derek Knottenbelt. This professor's claims are worthy of several blog postings, but let's suffice to say they a  do not appear to be supported in any way by the evidence, or by the opinions of all the experts with whom I regularly correspond.
He has claimed that based on his research, that thousands of horses are dying from ragwort poisoning a year. A freedom of information request to his university shows that over the last five years for which records have been disclosed 2006-2010 the number of recorded  cases of ragwort poisoning in horses is exactly ZERO.

Rose Brooke didn't seem to know much about the work done there anyway. She said that the horses had to be operated on. This doesn't appear to be normal for this kind of liver damage, beyond a simple biopsy. It just seems to be another example of her ignorance.
 
Ignorance is no crime. We are all more ignorant of more things than we are knowledgeable about, but the real fault seems to lie with the charity which put someone up to speak for them who, it seems, was simply not up to the job. It seems that they too have been made to look right fools!

There is a well known phenomenon in psychology called "The Dunning-Kruger Effect" where in which unskilled individuals think they are cleverer than they are, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This appears to be a clear example of it. When Rose Brooke is confronted with evidence from an expert she laughs as if it is wrong. Well, unfortunately for her there will have been quite a few knowledgable people laughing or groaning at her poor knowledge of entomology.

Rose Brooke does however, deserve some sympathy. She is not the only person who it appears is misled by the hysteria over ragwort. She gives the impression that she is probably a very kind and  nice person, who frightened by the misinformation, is concerned about the welfare of animals.  It is quite understandable that ordinary people do not appear to have the technical knowledge to see through the nonsense. As I said,  real fault is apparently with the charity which appears to have a poor knowledge of the scientific method itself.

The BHS have seem to have a poor record  on ragwort information as is evidenced by their leaflet on Ragwort  and  series of adverts repeaing their information that were stopped after action by the Advertising Standards Authority.



You can listen to a clip covering the entire  item from BBC Radio Wales here

As ever proper information can be found on these websites.

Ragwort Facts

Ragwort Myths and Facts

SSSI being damaged?

This appears to be an example of habitat being damaged on an SSSI due to the hysteria about ragwort. This is what is said on the Downland Views Blog

The first job of the New Year was to get over to Saltbox SSSI to dig up the Ragwort. Although Ragwort is the host plant for the Cinnabar Moth,

It isn't just the Cinnabar Moth as ragwort is one of the most important plants for invertebrates.

it is, unfortunately, also very toxic to grazing animals and eventually the effects can kill them.

Despite what we are told the scientific literature shows that the only real risk is from hay. Grazing animals avoid poisonous plants instinctively. Those who didn't had their genes removed from the populations millions of years ago. It is also worth remembering that these alkaloids occur in 3% of all flowering plants and yet we only hear about ragwort.

Horses are particularly sensitive to the plant if eaten and for this reason one is obliged by Defra's Code of Practice, to remove it if there are grazing animals near by.

Just because someone in authority says something it doesn't mean they are right! This is guidance from government and it contains a number of flaws including using suspect sources for the number of horse deaths. We now know, from analysis of the published statistics, that more horses are recorded dying from Equine Grass Sickness than from Ragwort poisoning. Equine Grass Sickeness is a rare malady caused essentially by eating fresh grass (Although the actual disease is more complex) It is rare, but ragwort poisoning is rarer! If more horses die from eating grass than from eating ragwort it is clear that the problem of ragwort is being over emphasised. There are far worse problems which should come before ragwort control especially when it results in damage to habitat on SSSIs.

We thought we had cleared the Ragwort from Saltbox in the summer but, worryingly, not only are there plants still flowering and producing seed heads (each plant can produce 150,000 seeds!!)

Ah the widespread figure of 150,000 seeds again. A man can grow to 7 foot tall too, but neither figure is normal. The best reference work on Ragwort Ecology is perhaps that published by John L Harper and W.A Wood in the July 1957 edition of the Journal of Ecology. These are a set of figures for normally grown ragwort plants. Each one is a figure recorded on a separate site.
4,760
5,900
11,690
13,370
47,600
63,700
117,740
It is perhaps understandable that, given the bad information in circulation, that people believe that ragwort is worse than it is but it really is not acceptable that our finest wildlife sites may be being damaged as a result of bad information and hysteria and that government guidance appears to be facilitating it.