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| Sefton Coast Partnership | Shoreline Management | Nature and Wildlife | Coastal Heritage | Visiting the Coast | Students and Teachers | Coastlines | |
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Summer 1999Plant Diversity on the Sefton CoastArticle by Philip H. SmithHow many different plants are there on the Sefton Coast? I asked this question recently while writing a book on the sand-dunes. The nearest I could get to an answer was a list of 530 vascular plants (flowering plants, conifers and ferns) drawn up by Paul Rooney in 1993. However, I knew from other lists and my own observations that this was not complete. Therefore, as a spare-time exercise, I decided to compile an up-to-date inventory using as many sources of information as possible, the starting point being Travis's Flora of South Lancashire published in 1963. "Modern" records were provided particularly by the current Atlas Survey of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, the Joint Countryside Advisory Service's data-base, the Sefton Coast Life Project and local botanists. It was decided to include only vascular species, sub-species and hybrids found growing either as native plants or as naturalised introductions. The so-called "lower" plants (mosses, liverworts and algae), together with fungi and lichens, would have to wait for another occasion! With a little extra work, it was possible to make check-lists for three zones : 1.The Sefton Coast Management Scheme (SCMS) area from Bootle Docks to Crossens; 2.The sand-dune system; 3.The candidate Special Area of Conservation (cSAC) selected under the EU Habitats Directive. The results were interesting and somewhat surprising. A grand total of 971 vascular plants for the Sefton Coast Management Scheme area is much higher than I expected and emphasises how botanically diverse this coastline really is. Of this total, 881 (90.7%) occurred in the sand-dune system and 733 (75.5%) in the cSAC. The lower figure for the latter area is explained by the fact that some coastal habitats, particularly dune-heath, are poorly represented here. Some 290 plants (29.9%) were considered to be introduced. Interestingly, the proportion of alien plants in the dune system (27.1%) and the cSAC (21.6%) is rather lower than in the SCMS area as a whole. This is probably because the SCMS area includes a good deal of derelict, reclaimed and disturbed land as, for example, at Seaforth, Crosby and Marshside, as well as dune margins near housing. Such habitats would be expected to support many more introduced plants, including garden-escapes, than the dune core. I also tried to determine how many vascular plants have become extinct on the coast. This proved to be surprisingly few. Only 14 plants have pretty certainly been lost, 13 of these being listed as extinct in Travis's Flora, the other having disappeared during the 1980s. In addition, there are 26 species apparently not recorded since the early 1960s and therefore possibly extinct. However, these are balanced by 36 native plants noted in the coastal zone only since Travis's Flora was published. This figure does not include a large number of alien plants, especially garden-flowers, and several new brambles (a "difficult" group) recorded for the first time in recent surveys. Some groups seem to be particularly well represented on this coast. For example, we have 19 sedges (Carex), 17 rushes (Juncus) and no less than 23 willows (Salix)! Thirteen of the latter are hybrids, three being extreme rarities otherwise known only from single Scottish localities. The next step is to determine the status of those 971 plants on the Sefton Coast. Any volunteers?
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