STATUS, DISTRIBUTION
and IDENTIFICATION
Notes on Essex Specialities: 5: Sickle-leaved Hare's-ear
Bupleurum falcatum L. subsp. falcatum
KEN ADAMS
School of Biosciences, University of East London E15 4LZ
This famous, and rather attractive Essex plant, with bright yellow flowers and entire, ovate-lanceolate,
glaucous leaves, the subject of coloured illustrations in both Gibson's and Jermyn's Floras, is probably
the most visited of all our Essex specialities by botanists from outside the county. It is still included on
the National Red Data list, - although technically, it became extinct at its only British station at Norton
Heath in 1962 (Jermyn 1974), - and there is some doubt about whether or not the colony was ever
native in the first place. Nevertheless, it became the subject of one of the first 'back from the brink'
projects (Birkinshaw 1990) and it has survived, though somewhat precariously, in an artificial reserve
at Norton Heath since its reintroduetion there in 1998, - with seed from garden colonies derived from
the original pre-1962 population.
In 1831, when first found in its classic Essex site by Thomas Corder (Sowerby 1834), it was by then
well established abundantly on both roadsides, (and therefore in both Vcl8 and 19), and for some
considerable distance out from the field borders on either side, over a stretch of nearly a mile between
Ongar and Chelmsford; and Gibson (1862) stated that it grew abundantly by the roadside and borders
of fields for some distance between Ongar and Chelmsford, and was scattered more or less over that
neighbourhood for several miles. The main colony seems to have been just east of the little square
turnpike house, but it was reported on the verges of Norton Heath itself in 1913 (Wilmott 1913)
growmg with Lesser Fleabane Pulicaria vulgaris (now extinct in Essex). The first nail in its coffin
seems to have been a road improvement during the first world war, when George C. Brown reported
that the bulk of the population that he observed in abundance in 1910-11, had been destroyed (Brown
1939). This was confirmed by James A. Whellan who reported only c.50 flowering plants and many
barren shoots along a 100 yard stetch of grassy roadside 'east of Chipping Ongar1 in 1943. The
botanical fraternity cannot be entirely blameless for its demise, however, for just as in the case of our
other Essex speciality Tordylium maximum, the Hartwort (Adams 1999a), large numbers of herbarium
specimens have been collected from the site over the years; 300 in 1842 alone for the Botanical Society
of London, presumably for their exchange (Crompton 1974-86).
The population somehow survived the next twenty years, but then in 1962, during a hedge cutting and
ditch clearance operation, a file was lit on the site of the mainstay patch just east of the turnpike. That
seems to have been the last of the original population (Jermyn 1974). Nothing more was seen of it until
1979, when Mrs Jocelyn Russell drew to the attention of the author a tiny patch in flower on the south
side of the road. Although it is possible that a small population survived un-noticed in the bottom of the
hedge, bearing in mind the short-term viability of its seed, it seems just as likely that a well meaning
Essex Naturalist (New Series) 18 (2001)
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