Pavement plants in the Wirral
kindly supplied previous records and a map of the monad distribution of Orobanche minor s.l. in the vicecounty. He revealed there had been less than fifteen individual records mapped in ten monads. Graham (1988) listed only three localities, two pre-1940 sites in clover fields in the Tyne Valley, one near Ryton (NZ1564), supporting a population of ‘almost a thousand plants’ and a third from 1973 in grassland adjacent to an old colliery railway, near Chopwell Wood (NZ1458). All other records are post-1988, mostly from the 21st century and probably for O. minor var. heliophila.
References
Graham, G.G. 1988. The flora and vegetation of County Durham. Durham Flora Committee and Durham County Conservation Trust. Joel, D.M., Gressel, J. & Musselman, L.J. 2013. Parasitic Orobanchaceae. Parasitic Mechanisms and Control Strategies. Springer Nature, Berlin & Heidelberg. Jones, M. 1989. Studies in the pollination of Orobanche species in the British Isles. Progress in Orobanche Research Proceedings 1989: 6–17.
Rumsey, F.J. & Jury, S.L. 1991. An account of Orobanche L. in Britain and Ireland. Watsonia 18: 257–295. Thorogood, C.J., Rumsey, F.J., Harris, S.A. & Hiscock, S.J. 2008. Host-driven divergence in the parasitic plant Orobanche minor Sm. (Orobanchaceae). Molecular Ecology 17 (19): 4289–4303. Thorogood, C.J., Rumsey, F.J., Harris, S.A. & Hiscock, S.J. 2009a. Gene flow between alien and native races of the holoparasitic angiosperm Orobanche minor (Orobanchaceae). Plant Systematics and Evolution 282: 31–42. Thorogood, C.J., Rumsey, F.J. & Hiscock, S.J. 2009b. Hostspecific races in the holoparasitic angiosperm Orobanche minor: implications for speciation in plants. Annals of Botany 103 (7): 1005–1014. Thorogood, C.J. & Rumsey, F.J. 2020. An account of common broomrape Orobanche minor (Orobanchaceae) in the British Isle. British & Irish Botany 2(3): 223–239. USDA www.plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=ORMI (date of access: 23 August 2020)
Patricia S. Graham 3 The Willows, Bishop Auckland DL14 7HH
David W. Shimwell shimwell44@tiscali.co.uk
Pavement plants in the Wirral ERIC GREENWOOD
C
ovid-19 has prevented many of us venturing far in our botanical rambles, necessitating closer study of our immediate neighbourhood. As the season progressed it became apparent my local council had abandoned street maintenance. Without the application of herbicides and street cleaning, plants appeared where few normally get a chance to grow. In my local suburban streets in Heswall, Wirral (v.c. 58 Cheshire) garden boundaries are often made of brick, concrete or sandstone walls. Pavements are either tarred or made of concrete flags and both are occasionally interrupted by manhole covers. Between the pavement and the carriageway, a mown grass strip with street trees may occur and this is separated from the carriageway by a stone or concrete kerb. During the year plants appeared in the cracks and joints in the hard surfaces. 22
BSBI NEWS 147 | April 2021
Accordingly, in late August 2020 two adjacent monads (SJ2880 and SJ2781) were surveyed, but only the plants growing in the cracks and joints of hard surfaces were recorded. The grass verge and garden walls were ignored. Up to two hours was spent recording in each monad but a few species known to have been present early in the year but no longer visible were included, e.g. annuals such as Erophila verna s.l. (Common Whitlowgrass). This survey is similar to the street survey carried out in Dundee in 2001 and 2020 (Ballinger, 2020) where boundary walls were also included.
Results
A total of 144 taxa were recorded, with 102 and 103 taxa found in each of the two monads. Sixty species were found in both monads, leaving 84 species having been found in only one monad. Forty-three
