Road verges offer an insight to the how the Welsh countryside looked in the past – in much the same way as brownfield sites tell us something about historical work places. In the relatively few remaining places where road verges have not been subjected to intensive management and over-cutting, the flora of the road-verges gives us a glimpse of the historic flora of the fields behind the road. Typically, these were flower-rich meadows that have been reseeded either as species-poor permanent pastures dominated by perennial rye grass (Lolium perenne) and white clover (Trifolium repens) or been replaced with species-poor silage crops, again typically dominated by perennial rye grass. A brief outline of favourable and unfavourable road verge states are provided in the sections below.