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Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus minor) Seed

Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus minor) Seed

Regular price £15.95 GBP
Regular price Sale price £15.95 GBP
Sale Sold out
VAT included. Free shipping.

Origin: English (see description below), 2025 harvest

Sow: July to end December

Seeding rate: 0.5 - 1g per square metre

Suitable for:

Calcareous Soils
Heavy Soils
Higher Fertility Soils
Neutral Soils
Origin
Size

Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus minor) Seed

Yellow rattle, Rhinanthus minor, is the only single species seed we sell. It can be an important plant for meadow creation. It's otherwise known as Hay rattle, as it was said to herald the harvest when it set seed. It's an attractive annual, quick to appear through existing sward in early spring. Yellow Rattle is hemi-parasitic, like Eyebright - a distant relation - and Mistletoe. This mean that is photosynthesises, but also needs nutrients from a host plant. Rhinanthus significantly reduces the vigour of some other plants, including - most helpfully - grasses. Not all grasses though - the more vigorous, coarser species will overwhelm it. If you have lots of the thug in chief - perennial rye grass - in an area where you want to have Rattle, I'm afraid it's a lost cause. Some plants, like plantains and Oxeye daisy, have developed their own strategies to resist Yellow Rattle, so do well in swards with large Rhinanthus populations.

Once common but disliked by farmers - unsurprisingly - Yellow rattle is an attractive plant with a yellow snapdragon type of flower which pollinators find helpful too, particularly bumblebees and butterflies. It's said to represent a cockscomb, hence another of its synonyms.

Yellow rattle is an important part of most of our seed mixes, but as an individual species it can be added to existing grass if it is cut very short and raked or chain harrowed to open it up. If you're doing this, aim to have at least 50% of the earth showing, and tread in or lightly roll the seeded area to ensure good soil contact. Rattle must be sown in late summer up to the year end; the seed needs to get cold to germinate. Avoid cutting the seedlings as they appear, and the developing plants will significantly reduce the vigour of grasses, enabling other wildflowers to compete with them more effectively. When they die back they leave a helpful space for other species to use. We've written more about Rattle in our blog.

Our Seed

Rhinanthus seed has limited viability over time so we always make sure we supply the freshest seed available. It also needs to be processed carefully, which goes some way to explaining the cost of it. We think there at least 6 different subspecies in the UK, which vary a fair bit visually.

Our seed is all UK origin. Over the season we offer several options of English seed, generally speaking harvested from neutral or calcareous sites.

We have our Yellow Rattle seed independently tested for successful germination, and ask harvesters for at least 90% viability.

Please sow between August and end December.

Yellow rattle seed is available in larger quantities at our Habitat Aid website.

Supplier: Heritage Seeds, Kevin Wharf, Higher Blacklands Farm, Bright Seeds, Will Steel, Robert Lee

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Our Company

Experience and Advice

British Wildflower Seeds is a trading name of Habitat Aid Ltd. We are a small Somerset based business, trading since 2008. We have been making meadows for over 20 years and are happy to advise you on yours. 

Ethics

We have donated c.£150,000 to UK conservation NGOs through our structured giving programme and work more generally to promote habitats like grassland. We are a certified B Corporation and licenced to sell seeds by DEFRA. We are also a Plant Healthy Nursery and authorised to issue Plant Passports. 

It’s not our objective to make as much money as possible out of what we do. We want to play a practical part in the fight against biodiversity loss. This means empowering customers, helping suppliers and, of course, putting wildflower meadows back into our landscape.

Our Seed

Quality

Our seed is freshly sourced from the best harvesters around the UK. We test it randomly at an independent laboratory.  

Choice and Provenance

We have an unbeatable range of meadow mixes to suit (nearly!) all conditions. These are often sustainably harvested from donor meadows around Britain and are regularly not available commercially elsewhere. We also offer seed mixes constructed to set %s.

  • Floral Content

Our constructed mixes aren’t the cheapest as they have 30% wildflowers, rather than the usual 20% or lower. 

The harvested mixes we sell have up to 70% wildflowers to 30% grasses and much higher species diversity, often including relatively rare flowers. They often offer outstanding value for money.

None of our mixes include non-native or imported flower seed. Period.

Our Customers

We’re not sure how many people we’ve dealt with over the years – many tens of thousands.  Happy customers include The National Trust, Wildlife Trusts, Natural England, leading garden designers, housebuilders, BNG specialists, solar farm developers, local councils, etc. etc..  

We have an average 4.5 Judge.me customer rating, which puts us in the top 10% of stores. 

You can typically expect your seed to be dispatched on the day you place your order or the following day. There may occasionally be a small delay while we restock; please do tell us if there’s a special event you need the seed for if you’re ordering at the last minute.

We usually send packages under 1kg by Royal Mail first class and larger weights by courier, overnight delivery. Over something like 200kg usually on a pallet. 

Delivery charges are included in the prices quoted on the website.

Sadly we cannot currently deliver to Northern Ireland because of the mess following Brexit. We don’t export seed either, other than in exceptional circumstances. 

On small areas it’s best to hand sow. 

Check you’ve prepared the area to be sown thoroughly and mark it out into squares using canes. These can be an appropriate size for the total area - we usually recommend something like 10mX10m for sites around half an acre, for example.

  • Shake the bag of seed to ensure even species distribution in the mix.
  • Weigh out the appropriate amount of seed for the square you are seeding. Sowing rate will be 1 to 4 g/m2 - check on the website.
  • Pour into a bucket and add sand or similar to bulk the seed out - it doesn’t really matter how much - 1:1 or similar.
  • Scatter the seed, half in one direction (side to side) and the second pass in the opposite direction (front to back).
  • Walk slowly across the area, taking a small handful of seed/sand regularly and scattering. 
  • The aim is to throw the seed out in an arc in front of you as you walk - imagine you’re throwing a frisbee.
  • Throw the seed as hard as possible in practice this will be about 2 or 3 metres. Sow downwind rather than upwind or you’ll end up covered!
  • Don’t watch the seed as you walk, keep looking forwards in a straight line.
  • If you can see the seeds on the soil as you spread them it is likely you are sowing too heavily.

 Don’t rake the seed in! Just give it a light roll after sowing. The seeds need very little help. They will take up water and germinate slowly over the next 8 weeks, providing the soil is warm.

If your seed mix is a meadow mix, cut it once it has reached around 10cm in the first year of establishment, after any Yellow Rattle has set seed. This permits light and air to reach the establishing seedlings and also promotes germination of other slower germinating seeds.

Please contact us at info@habitataid.co.uk if we can help with anything.

Customer Reviews

Based on 56 reviews
84%
(47)
11%
(6)
2%
(1)
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2%
(1)
F
Faymondo
Meadowtastic

We have a small plot of grass area outside the front of our new build property which we have been trying to establish a meadow for the last four years. With the fertile soil and slightly shady position it’s been a challenge but with expert advice from British Wildflower Seeds and my quality Yellow Rattle seed we hope next year will be our best year yet!

A
A Brown
Excellent Service

From the easy to understand descriptions on the website, to the efficiency and speed of delivery, I have been very impressed with British Wildflower Seeds.

A
Anonymous
Great advice and speedy delivery

Very helpful advice and prompt delivery.
Thank you.

a
andrew love

The seeds were delivered very promptly and I am looking forward to seeing the bees, hoverflies and butterflies enjoying the flowers next summer.

A
Ade
No sign of growth after 6 days

Not sure why you’ve asked for a review 6 days after sending seed that is still sat in the packet it arrived in so nothing to review. All I can say is quick delivery, thanks. Perhaps come back to me next year!

Hi Ade - thank you for taking the trouble to post your review. We agree - as we say in our email asking for reviews it does seem daft.

It is however helpful for us commercially to show that people's purchasing experience is as expected - i.e. that we're not running some kind of scam.

We would like to ask customers how their seed performs, but different species and mixes have different germination periods which makes it virtually impossible to automate.

British Wildflower Seeds