The Scarce Plants of Essex. Part 2.
Apera spica-venti
Arabis glabra (L.) Bernh. (=Turritis glabra)
Essex Status: Extinct native.
Tower mustard
A biennial Crucifer to 120cms, hairy only below, stem leaves entire, sagittate and amplcxicaul at the
sessile base. Flowers yellowish/greenish white. A colonist of open disturbed ground on light, sandy,
calcareous infertile soils, that has declined throughout its range in Britain from 61 hectads post 1950 to
only 19 in 1999. In the Breckland, however, it has in recent years become explosively successful at a
few sites, giving rise to colonies of thousands of plants. It is yet another plant that has recently been
transferred to the Red Data Book (Wiggington 1999) and since 1993 has been the subject of a Back
from the Brink proj ect. Although not uncommon in Gibson's day, it has not been seen in Essex since
1953. However, with thriving colonics not too far away on the Suffolk breckland it would not be
surprising if it reappears sometime in Essex on the calcareous brickearths of the Tendring plateau.
All records:
TQ(51)39/49
TL(52)70
TL(52)92
IS/19
Between Waltham Abbey and High Beach, pre-1771.
Richard Warner (Gibson 1862).
Nr. Danbuiy church, Edward Forster. (Gibson 1862).
Between Lexden and Colchester, pre-1724. John Ray.
(Gibson 1862). Lexden, occasionally, James C Shenstone.
Essex Naturalist (1887) 1: 30. Lexden, 23 June 1876.
18
19
Essex Naturalist (New Series) 17 (2000)