A roadside nature reserve, hosting some of the country's rarest wild flowers, has been chosen as Norfolk's contribution to the Prince of Wales' Coronation Meadows project.

Last year, Prince Charles launched a nationwide scheme to identify a meadow in every county to mark the 60th anniversary of the Queen's Coronation.

The idea was to preserve outstanding surviving fragments of flower-rich grasslands – of which an estimated 97pc have been lost during the last century.

In Norfolk, Wood Lane Roadside Nature Reserve, near Long Stratton, was selected because it supports a range of threatened species typical of south Norfolk boulder clay grasslands.

These include the nationally-scarce sulphur clover – a species now largely restricted to road verges in south Norfolk – as well as pyramidal orchid, pepper saxifrage, dyer's greenweed and lesser bird's foot trefoil.

The conservationists behind the Coronation Meadows project said the scale of destruction of flower-rich meadows and grasslands in Norfolk has been so severe that some of the best remaining fragments are now found on roadside verges.

The Wood Lane reserve, which dates back to at least 1944, is a good example of this, and it is hoped that seeds from this roadside meadow can now be used to restore flower-rich meadows on nearby farmland.

Helen Baczkowska, conservation officer for the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, said: 'It is probably fair to say that this is not the best example of a meadow in Norfolk, but it has got a very particular set of wild flowers that are so vulnerable, yet are clinging on here – so we want to harvest those seeds and get them started elsewhere.

'Creating new sites for threatened meadow species in less vulnerable locations has been something Norfolk Wildlife Trust and Farm Conservation have been hoping to achieve for some years.

'Sulphur clover is nationally scarce and yet it has a stronghold on a handful of road verges in south Norfolk. Wild flowers are a keystone of nature conservation because small animals rely on them. Without protecting that habitat we cannot do a lot for anything else.

'There has been a lot said in the press recently about the decline of bees, for example, which are one creature which rely on wild flowers – so one of our key aims is to get wild flowers back.

'There has been a lot of attention on woodlands and reed beds in the last few years, and wild flower meadows have maybe been seen as the poor relation, so I am really grateful to Prince Charles for coming up with this idea.'

The national project has three aims: To identify a Coronation Meadow in each county by the end of this year; to identify sites within each county where green hay and seed from the Coronation Meadow can be used to create new grasslands; and to map the UK's remaining meadows. The Coronation Meadows Partnership is made up of Plantlife, The Wildlife Trusts and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. The Prince of Wales is patron of all three charities.