Steven Heathcote, Kieran Sheehan & Laura Hodgkinson

STEVEN HEATHCOTE, KIERAN SHEEHAN & LAURA HODGKINSON

This article is intended to present the botanical picture of the vegetation of the drift line at Dungeness and Rye Harbour beach. Here nutrientrich drift is washed up annually on 15km of shingle beaches, sufficiently far above the reach of high energy tides for vegetation to develop, but in which only two species are consistently able to grow and seed set. The recent BSBI News article by Phil Smith highlighted the richness of the drift line vegetation of the Sefton Coast (Smith, 2022). We had been preparing this article at the time and enjoyed the contrast of the species rich drift on the sands of Ainsdale compared to the species poor shingle drift line we present here. This article is based on the results of three years of annual monitoring completed by the authors (2019–21), supplemented with data produced by the long history of interest in the vegetation at Dungeness, the largest shingle structure in Europe.

The annual vegetation of drift lines (AVDL) was noted in the seminal text on the vegetation

Annual vegetation of drift lines comprising scattered plants of Babington’s Orache on the beach in front of the Dungeness lighthouse. Photographs by Steven Heathcote.

of Dungeness by Ferry et al. (1990) as their ‘C1’ vegetation, comprising ‘scattered to dense plants of Babington’s Orache Atriplex glabriuscula’. AVDL is recognised an Annex 1 habitat in the Habitats Directive, and despite its paucity of species, is a qualifying interest feature of the Dungeness Special Area of Conservation, where it occurs along much of the shingle beach.

The crest of the shingle beach provides protection for various infrastructure facilities inland and, as such, is subject to management measures by the Environment Agency that maintain a certain level of protection from flooding by the sea. The regular management of the beach profile can alter the end position of the drift lines so there is an annual monitoring of the vegetation completed on behalf of the Environment Agency to ensure there