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Winter 1994Plant Hunting in WinterArticle by Peter Gateley, Local Botanist
Most people would assume that the winter months are hardly appropriate for plant hunting. However this is not strictly the case. All our dune wildflowers, grasses and ferns have their own strategies for survival from year to year and once you know what to look for, many species can be seen and identified all through the winter months. A great sense of achievement can be gained when walking through the winter dunes and being able to identify many of the plants seen there. Visions of warm, sunny weather can be conjured up even on the frostiest of days by studying, for example, the brown empty seed-capsules of an Evening- Primrose and mentally re-constructing the four large soft-yellow petals and the green pods.
Plants can be recognised in winter from all the sand dune habitats found on the coast, from strandlines to slacks. To help your out of season quests there are four main categories of behaviour to look out for:- 1) Plants that flower late into autumn 2) Plants that develop distinctive dead seedheads 3) Plants that have evergreen leaves 4) Plants that flower very early in spring Regular late
flowerers to look out for include Autumn Gentian and Field
Gentian, which can be found in some of the drier slacks. Also
found in slacks well into October is the Grass-of-Parnassus with
its distinctive five-petalled white flowers and water mint with
its clusters of small lilac flowers. An opportunistic species is
sea rocket, a plant of the mustard family adapted to growing on
the highly unstable strandline. The pale pink to white four-petalled
flowers can be found at almost any time of the year when the
A walk anywhere in the dunes in winter will reveal a wide range of dried stems carrying seed heads, either empty capsules that persist after doing their job or heads still containing seeds, which are only released under conditions more favourable to the plant. Many of the grasses have persistent heads, either spreading panicles like Common Bent and Smooth-Stalked Meadowgrass or the distinctive and obvious cigar-shaped heads of Marram, surviving atop the tough straw yellow tussocks. Also in the front edge of the dunes the tall stems of Lyme grass are very distinctive, the large seeds arranged in a similar fashion to ears of wheat. Amongst the Marram, dying bushes of Sea Holly are easily spotted; their seedheads are well worth a closer inspection for when the seeds are teased out they resemble tiny pineapples in shape. Another species with distinctive seeds can often be identified by studying your socks after a dune walk! Hounds-tongue seeds have a coat of small hooks making them look sharp-snouted and hedgehog-like. Also obvious in the tall frontal dunes are the dark brown stems of Evening-Primrose, these are very tough and erect with clusters of dark three-sectioned pods standing stiffly around their upper parts. In the slacks the small individual rounded capsules of Brookweed are arranged on complex branched structures like angular Christmas trees. In the fixed dune grasslands the pale yellow-grey stars making up the persistent heads of Carline Thistle are quite common.
Even the most cursory glance of their winter dunes shows that much vegetation survives, the dominant element being the distinctively coloured Marram. Between the Marram tussocks many low, wind-avoiding, rosettes of leaves can be found against the sand surface; the bright green and red-blotched Evening-primrose, steely grey undulatingly spiked Sea Holly, sea-blue Lyme Grass and dull dark green Groundsel. Also in this zone are the upright stems of Sea spurge with their tight formations of waxy grey-blue linear leaves. In the more fixed dunes the attractive fronds of common polypody can be found most of the year, only completely blackening and dying-off in very harsh winters. In some flooded slacks Brookweed plants can be seen through the clear waters, their bright rounded leaves making them look like drowned lettuces. Around the drier slack edges Round-leaved Wintergreen lives up to its name, the leathery dark green, pale-veined rounded leaves lasting the year through, often with cinnamon-brown seedheads persisting alongside. Once the worst of the winter weather has passed a group of small plants starts to be more noticeable in the semi-fixed dunes. These are either known as Dune Ephemerals or Spring Ephemerals. From a range of different families these annual plants all share the strategy of surviving the dry summer in the dunes as seeds, then growing through the winter and flowering very early so that by the time the weather warms up and the sand surface dries out they have set numerous seeds which disperse as the plants shrivel. Flowers can be found from March onwards, even February in very favourable years. Most of them are small and white, such as Small Mouse-ear, Sea Mouse-ear and Thyme-leaved Sandwort. With Rue-leaved Saxifrage the shining white petalled flowers are beautifully set off by the bright glossy red leaves of this diminutive plant. A patriotic note is struck when the even tinier Early Forget-me-not blooms nearby adding a blue haze. These two species both really need a hand-lens to be fully appreciated.
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