IT IS the time when the ragwort weed is blooming, filling the countryside and wasteland with pretty yellow flowers. However, those same plants actually hold a hidden and terrible danger.

Juice from the stems and leaves contains an alkaloid poison and children picking the flowersare endangered.

Horses and cattle will not eat the plant normally but they die, after much suffering, from liver failure through eating the plants which are often harvested in dried hay for animal fodder.

Every plantproduces thousands of tiny seeds which the slightest breeze sends streaming like smoke and these seeds travel for miles.

Ragwort was a "prescribed weed" and any farmer or landowner who did not eradicate it was liable to prosecution. If something is not done about it urgently it will take over our meadowland making it impossible to harvest hay or killing much of our cattle and horses.

Ragwort is flourishing all along Roman Road and Goosehouse Lane in Darwen and on farmland on the Bolton Road. It is up to councils and individuals to root it out whenever possible but protective clothing and gloves must be worn. The time is now before it goes to seed.

EILEEN EASTHAM, Milton Close, Darwen