Long Lye (grid reference ST265122) is a 11.7 hectare (29.0 acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest at Buckland St Mary in the Blackdown Hills, Somerset, notified in 1988.
This site along with the adjoining Long Lye Meadow were considered to be under threat from a scheme to widen the A303.
Long Lye is a traditionally managed neutral grassland of a type which was once characteristic of lowland Britain but has now become increasingly rare due to agricultural intensification. Mature broadleaved woodland and wet flush communities add considerable diversity to this site. Fifteen species of butterfly have been recorded here. They include the Silver-washed Fritillary (Argynnis paphia), of which the valenzia form has been found, Purple Hairstreak (Quercusia quercus) and Marbled White (Melanargia golathea).
Famous quotes containing the words long and/or lye:
“He will not idly dance at his work who has wood to cut and cord before nightfall in the short days of winter; but every stroke will be husbanded, and ring soberly through the wood; and so will the strokes of that scholar’s pen, which at evening record the story of the day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of the reader, long after the echoes of his axe have died away.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We all cry out that the world is corrupt,—and I fear too justly,—but we never reflect, what we have to thank for it, and that it is our open countenance of vice, which gives the lye to our private censures of it, which is its chief protection and encouragement.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)