Endangered Plant Discovery Could Signal Climate Change
A team from the Department’s ECRC (Environmental Change Research Centre) has found a new example of a rare and endangered plant in a Welsh lake, it has just been confirmed.
The Starry Stonewort (Nitellopsis obtusa) was found in a Glamorgan lake just south of Cardiff. This is the first time it has ever been found in Wales.
Ewan Shilland was leading a team doing SSSI site condition monitoring surveys of aquatic plants for the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW) when the discovery was made.
Until recently, the plant has mainly been found in six sites in the Norfolk Broads, although it has now disappeared from four of them.
The Starry Stonewort is a simple water plant with whorls of narrow leaf-like branches along its length. It is often robust and up to 60 cm long, with long, branching ‘leaves’ and tiny starry bulbils along the lower parts of the stem. It grows in deep, slow-running waters, preferring locations with chalky water that are often slightly brackish.
The plant is susceptible both to water pollution, caused by phosphates and nitrates from sewage and agricultural run-off, and to turbulence. This means there are fewer and fewer places for the Starry Stonewort to thrive in the UK, and as a consequence the plant has been designated as endangered.
Ewan Shilland says: “in the UK the traditional range of N. obtusa was largely restricted to the Norfolk Broads. Interestingly, over the last 5 years it has been recorded in several new sites in other parts of England. Further study may well be pertinent in order to ascertain whether this species is responding to the effects of climate change.”
The ECRC’s find has been was confirmed by Nick Stewart, the UK Charophyte (stonewort) referee for the Botanical Society of the British Isles and author of the Red Data Book on stoneworts.
RSS
