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Brassica etc                                                                                                                                                                               FLOWERING PLANTS

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 Brassica oleracea var. oleracea                                                                    Wild Cabbage                             __________________________________________________________________________________________

Essex status: Arable escape.

 

This is the so-called Wild Cabbage of sea cliffs. Unfortunately, the var. capitata (Cultivated Cabbage) rapidly reverts after a few generations in the wild, and in any case it is none too certain that the cliff cabbages in the U.K. are anything other than long established reverted escapes from cultivation as far back as Roman times. Edward Forster (c.1800) recorded var. oleracea from the cliffs at Southend (then only a small town with crumbling London Clay cliffs), but Gibson (1862) regarded the plants as being reverted escapes from cultivation. Thus we have no evidence that the genuine Wild Cabbage has ever occurred in Essex. Furthermore there would seem to be little point in recording occurrences of odd plants of var. capitata persisting after a cabbage crop.

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 Bupleurum tenuissimum L.                                MAP                   Slender hare's-ear           __________________________________________________________________________________

Essex Native.

As its name suggests, this is a slender, wiry, annual umbellifer, with narrow grass-like leaves, making it inconspicuous, except when in flower, and therefore easily overlooked. It appears to require bare and ideally disturbed ground to get established, but can tolerate the saline soils of the upper parts of salt marshes, grey dunes and sea walls. It also occurs, however, in non-brackish habitats, on dry banks and waste ground, in the short turf of grazed grassland between the sea walls and borrow dykes, and in maritime grazing marshes. It has a curious distribution in the U.K., being confined to England in an area coincident with July temperatures in excess of 16oC and with its main centres in areas with the highest summer temperatures; - along the Severn estuary, the Hampshire basin, around the Kent, Essex and Suffolk coasts, and with a few scattered sites along the coasts of Norfolk and Lincolnshire north to the Humber. It formerly occurred extensively inland but virtually all these sites are now gone, and it has also lost ground along the south coast and in Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambs. and Lincs. In Essex however it seems to be maintaining its distribution, [although it has probably declined along the Thames estuary] and has been recorded in 150?? monads.