Chess Flower Meadows

The Chess Flower Meadows are a nature reserve in the city of Sassenberg in the Münsterland region of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is one of the few areas in Germany where the strictly protected chess flower still occurs.

In 1956, part of the meadow area on the Hessel was designated as a nature reserve on an area of 1.8 hectares. In 1957, about 55,000 chess flowers were counted. Since the 1960s, the number of flowering plants has declined sharply. While in 1961 there were still about 3,000 plants, in 1974 only 250 flowering specimens could be registered. In 1977, the town council had more than 3,000 chess flowers dug up from a private garden and transplanted to another meadow area. In the meantime, a large part of this area, totalling around 91 hectares, has been placed under nature conservation together with the "Sassenberger Tiergarten" forest area. During the weeks of the checkerflower bloom, the sites are intensively monitored. While in 2014 only around a thousand flowers were counted, in 2020 their number increased to 4025 specimens.

Wikipedia