| Site of Special Scientific Interest | |
 | |
| Area of Search | Suffolk |
|---|---|
| Grid reference | TM 226 581 [1] |
| Interest | Biological |
| Area | 3.0 hectares [1] |
| Notification | 1991 [1] |
| Location map | Magic Map |
High House Meadows, Monewden is a three hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest west of Monewden in Suffolk. [1] [2]
A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle of Man. SSSI/ASSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in the United Kingdom are based upon them, including national nature reserves, Ramsar sites, Special Protection Areas, and Special Areas of Conservation. The acronym "SSSI" is often pronounced "triple-S I".
Monewden is a small village and a civil parish in the hundred of Loss, in the Suffolk Coastal District, in the English county of Suffolk. The population of the civil parish as of the 2011 census was 120. The village is located around 12 miles (19 km) north of Ipswich and 4 miles (6.4 km) west of Wickham Market.
Suffolk is an East Anglian county of historic origin in England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowestoft, Bury St Edmunds, Newmarket and Felixstowe, one of the largest container ports in Europe.
These unimproved meadows have diverse herbs typical of clay pastures. There are scarce species such as autumn crocus, green-winged orchid, sulphur clover and adders-tongue fern. [3]
Colchicum autumnale, commonly known as autumn crocus, meadow saffron or naked ladies, is a toxic autumn-blooming flowering plant that resembles the true crocuses, but is a member of the Colchicaceae plant family, unlike the true crocuses which belong to the Iridaceae family. The name "naked ladies" comes from the fact that the flowers emerge from the ground long before the leaves appear. Despite the vernacular name of "meadow saffron", this plant is not the source of saffron, which is obtained from the saffron crocus, Crocus sativus – and that plant too is sometimes called "autumn crocus".
Ophioglossum vulgatum, commonly known as adder's-tongue, southern adders-tongue or adders-tongue fern, is a species of fern in the family Ophioglossaceae.
The site is private land with no public access.
