THE long dry period is making many of our reserves look more like African savannah than the lush green we expect in England.

The acid grasslands of the Devil's Spittleful, Burlish Top and Habberley Valley have a desert-like hue with the trees standing out like an oasis of green in among them.

Looking across one of the grasslands on the Devil's Spittleful, it would not have stretched my powers of imagination, if I were to visualise monkeys picking a living from the trees as herds of zebra and wildebeest scrape out a living from the scorched land beneath.

The wetland reserves by their very nature hold a little more water than the acid grasslands and hence have a greener landscape.

However, there is far less water on these than in previous years and the specialised wetland plants, which have evolved over the millennia to cope with being water logged are really feeling the pinch.

No plants can survive without water indefinitely but some plants are better evolved to survive drought conditions than others.

Wetland plants are particularly poor at this and while they are not dying, the more able wayside and dryer meadow plants, which are better adapted to the dryer conditions, are starting to out compete the specialised wetland plant.

Competition is everything in the natural world, it is the very force that drives the processes of evolution that has led to the amazing diversity of living things that inhabit the earth.

If these dry conditions persist then the wetland plants which have had the edge in damper conditions will be out competed by plants better suited to drier conditions.

This would be a wildlife disaster, as these days there are very few places left for wetland plants while the more hardy and aggressive plants of wayside places have flourished under man's rule.

However, I see no need to panic just at the moment, when it comes to weather we humans seem to have a short memory.

I can remember when we were experiencing the wettest conditions on record for 40 years and the wetland plants certainly liked this.

While life out on the heaths where plants are better adapted to drier conditions were a little less comfortable, over time I imagine plants have evolved strategies to cope with the odd dry or wet year.

It is only if the conditions persist over a prolonged period that habitats and plant species truly suffer.