Notes on Essex Specialities. 8: the fifty year history of Orobanche crenata in Essex
hot dry years and has probably declined recently with our spate of wet springs.
How did it really get to Cranham? - and what does being a 'native' or 'alien' really mean? What is
often neglected by botanists and particularly bryologists and mycologists, is that birds migrate in
vast numbers every year, some flying back and forth from northern Europe to south-cast Asia, others
nortli to us from Africa via the Mediterranean and Sahara. The seeds of broomrapes are like purple/
black dust - more like a fungal smut than the seeds of a plant -just like the seeds of orchids, and the
spores of mosses/liverworts/fungi. At least some of them must from time to time get entrapped in the
feathers of birds or in the mud on their feel. Thus we don't necessarily have to assume that the seeds
of 0. crenata were brought in by man as a contaminant on the surface of a pea or a broad bean
purchased from a Mediterranean source - one tiny seed might just have hitched a lift on a feathered
dinosaur! Would it then be a native plant? - according to Stace (1997) it would be native if it got here
by 'natural' means. On the other hand, as the Cambridgeshire occurrence was shown to be due Io
contaminated Field Bean seed from Italy, the initial inoculum at Cranham could well have arisen in the
same way.
Finally, having exhibited the plant at the BSBI exhibition in 1983, I suggested calling it 'Carnation
Scented Broomrape'. Imagine my disdain when it was pointed out that the Mediterranean floras and
Stace (1997) merely called it 'Bean Broomrape'. In 1995 however C.A.J. Kretz produced Part 1 of
what must be one of the most magnificent photographic monographs of any genus. And for O.
crenata he gives the English name as Carnation-scented (Bean) Broomrape.
I am grateful to all those who provided records and in particular to Marv Smith and Fred Rumsey for
sorting out the chronology.
References
ADAMS, K.J. (1984) Orobanche crenata Forskal - Native ill the British Isles? Watsonia 15: 161-162.
FLOOD, R. (1991) Orobanche crenata. B.S.B.I. News. 59: 10-11
RUMSEY, F.J. (1986) Orobanche eremita Forskal. BSBI News 43: 18.
RUMSEY, F.J. (1991) An account of Orobanche L. in Britain and Ireland. Watsonia 18: 257-295.
KRAFT, J. (1979) Oversikt over Orobanche, snyltrotslaktet, I Sverige. SvenskBotanisk Tidskift 73: 30.
KREUTZ, C.A.J. (1995) Orobanche. The European broomrape species. Part 1. Central and Northern
Europe, pp. 84-87.
STACE, C. (1997) New Flora of the British Isles. 2nd edition, pp. 628-630. Cambridge University Press.
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