ESSEX RED-DATA PLANTS 19
The relentless destruction of natural habitats has continued unabated in
Essex throughout the decade since the publication of Stan Jermyn's Flora
of Essex, and many plants that were quite abundant then are now hauing to
be added to the danger list, and a few of them, to the list of extinctions.
Furthermore, the changes haue been so rapid and widespread that in many
cases it is difficult to be sure at the present time of the exact status of
many of our more local wild plant species.
With the advent of the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981); the publication
of the second edition of the Red Data Book of Vascular Plants (1983), and
the recent request for B.S.B.I. Vice-county recorders to draw up Red Data
lists for each Vice-county, — it seemed both appropriate and opportune to
take stock of our rarer Essex plants and seek further information concerning
their status from the county's botanists.
1 THE WILDLIFE 4 COUNTRYSIDE ACT 1981
In addition to the general provisions of the Act for the protection of all
our wild plants, 62 British wild plants have been singled out for Special
Protection because they are either particularly vulnerable or close to
extinction. It is illegal, intentionally, to pick, uproot, destroy or sell
any of the 62 plants. It is also illegal to collect or sell their seed.
Fortunately, only three of these plants occur in Essex. Tragically however,
activities likely to be detrimental to all three of these species have been
reported to me since the act became law, though hopefully, not 'intention-
ally' in the sense of the act.
The three are: the Field Cow-wheat (Melampyrum arvense); now reduced to
one known Essex colony, of a handful of plants coming up from seed each
year at the edge of a cornfield; the Sickle-leaved Hare's-ear (Bupleurum
falcatum) reduced to a single clump of plants on a roadside verge by 1962,
subsequently destroyed by fire, but rediscovered in 1979 at the same site
by Mrs Russell, — only to be sprayed with herbicide in June 1982; and the
Least Lettuce (Lactuca saligna), formerly quite an abundant plant of salt
marshes, sea-walls and waste-ground near the sea in south-east England,
but now very scarce and confined to southern Essex and north Kent.
The Least Lettuce is the subject of a special research program by Dr Steve
Prince at Queen Mary College, London; while the fate of our few surviving
British colonies of Field Cow-wheat lies with the Nature Conservancy
Council. Our site was apparently 'dug-over' this year by a well meaning
botanist without the prior knowledge of either the local N.C.C. office or
myself as V.c. recorder, - or, until he appeared on the scene, the owner
of the site! The fate of the Hare's-ear is paradoxically more hopeful as
it grows readily from seed. Although it has not been seen at Norton Heath
with a flowering umbel since 1979, it may well still exist as small seed-
lings or buried seed. Since Umbellifers in general have rather short-lived
seed however, it seems more than likely that the 1979 plants grew from seed
that someone introduced to the site the previous year, and have since died
out. As if to make sure that it really is extinct, next year a further
section of the road will be re-aligned leaving this section of verge
isolated in the middle of a field. Hopefully, given the cooperation of the
Essex County Council, it will be possible to re-establish colonies of this
attractive yellow flowered umbel on the new verges from stocks held in
various parts of the country that originate from seed collected at the
classic site. Ths present re-aligned section of the road already has a
thick, expensive looking layer of finely sieved top-soil spread over it -
awaiting a luxuriant crop of rampant wayside weeds, that will no doubt