Vascular plants in Wiltshire
Activities and highlights in 2010
By Sharon Pilkington, BSBI Recorder for VC7 and VC8
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New and interesting records
Approximately half of the new finds in North Wiltshire this year were the result of one man’s quest for botanical excellence. Jack Oliver has been assiduously recording the area around Marlborough for many years but amazingly he still manages to find new things. Unlike many other botanists he is not daunted by hybrids and this year has found two hybrid docks Rumex x dufftii and R. x sagorskii. Given that the parents of these hybrid docks (Wood Dock R. sanguineus, Curled Dock R. crispus and Broad-leaved Dock R. obtusifolius) are widespread in Wiltshire it is likely that the hybrids occur elsewhere. Perhaps another brave local botanist would like to follow Jack’s lead?
Rob Large found Ivy Broomrape Orobanche hederae flourishing outside the old rectory in Bemerton. This species – mostly native to rocky coastal cliffs and grassland – was historically planted in large gardens and this is the most plausible explanation for it there. On the other side of the county Tim Kaye was most excited to find Flixweed Descurainia sophia in a field corner in Bishopstone, the first record in North Wiltshire. This was just one of many exciting arable weeds he found during survey work in the area (more below).
It is sometimes said that plant distribution patterns tend to reflect the location of field botanists rather than the plants themselves. Thus it is that I found two plants new to VC8 in Westbury, my new home town. Green Bristle-grass Setaria viridis growing in pavement cracks in the town centre was almost certainly a bird-seed alien, whilst Common Ramping-fumitory Fumaria muralis ssp. muralis was flourishing as a weed in a garden border. Wiltshire Botanical Society member Rosemary Duckett, who lives in the same part of town, has also reported this fumitory in her garden so it seems plausible as a legitimate inhabitant.
Wiltshire has the only known British chalk grassland site for Marsh Helleborine Epipactis palustris. This showy orchid has been known from dry grassland in a disused chalk quarry for many years but it appears to be on the move. A visit to Morgan’s Hill SSSI in June by the Wiltshire Botanical Society found possibly hundreds of leaf rosettes of the species. Not only that, Rob Large and S. Payne found 15 flowering plants in early successional set-aside among MG1 grassland and ash saplings when they visited the farm just downslope of the quarry later in the summer. Clearly, the population is thriving.
Arable plant recording
Wiltshire is a known hot-spot for declining arable weeds and quite a bit of effort has been made by the Wiltshire Botanical Society, FWAG and others to record on a number of farms in the county. The north has been a little neglected, probably because large tracts lack the thin chalky soils that so many of our rare species seem to like. Tim Kaye managed to obtain funding for surveys in the North Wessex Downs AONB and co-ordinated volunteer surveys during the summer. One or two of the farms yielded some excellent records including Night-flowering Catchfly Silene noctiflora, Rye Brome Bromus secalinus, Corn Knotgrass Polygonum rurivagum, Venus’s Looking-glass Legousia hybrida and Grey Field-speedwell Veronica polita. In my opinion the most exciting find of all was two fully flowering plants of Cornflower Centaurea cyanus in an unpromising-looking organic turnip field at Bishopstone. Many other rarities were also present in this field and the Cornflower seems likely to be genuinely native there – a rare thing these days. Unfortunately the farmer let pigs into the field before Tim could tell her about the Cornflowers but we hope some plants will grow from the seed-bank in 2011.
The summer of 2010 was also good for arable weed recording in a general sense. Having seen all four of our native poppies flowering together for the first time in arable field margins in two different places (a Stone-curlew plot on Salisbury Plain and at Martin Down NNR) it is tempting to think that the tide may be turning at last for some of our scarce arable flowers.
New datasets
2010 was a superb year for data flow. As some people know, I hold records in a MapMate database which enables efficient data entry and records exchange. Every year I send data to various places including the W&SBRC, BSBI, Defence Estates, the Cotswold Water Park Society and neighbouring BSBI county recorders. In turn, all of this data ends up in places like the NBN Gateway in a publicly accessible format. I strongly believe that biological records are only useful if they are shared and thus encourage submission of reliable records. In Wiltshire I am very fortunate to work closely with a small but knowledgeable and enthusiastic group of amateur botanists who are willing to collect records and send them to me. In addition, last year Geoff Goatley of the Westonbirt Wildflower Group sent me more than 600 records collected on the Wiltshire side of the arboretum, including information about the rare Spreading Bellflower Campanula patula. Tim Kaye submitted hundreds of records from road verge surveys and Richard Aisbitt sent more than 1500 records from Clouts Wood and Markham Banks alone. There are numerous other botanists who send me occasional records and I am very grateful for their time and enthusiasm.
