Shropshire - Botanical Society of the British Isles

IntroductionThe Botanical Society of the British Isles has,in recent years, encouraged the production ofCounty Rare Plant Registers to complement themore traditional botanical publications. Someare little more than lists of six-figure gridreferences given in confidential reports, whileothers, such as Rare Plants of Shetland (Scottet al. 2002), are beautifully illustrated books onsale to the public. In essence, they are theedited highlights of a full county Flora and, assuch, they are much quicker and cheaper toproduce. Following in the tradition of theEcological Flora of the Shropshire Region(Sinker et al. 1985), Rare Plants of Shropshireis intended primarily for ecologists, so itcontains historical records and NVCcommunities rather than colour photographsand detailed grid references.This third edition incorporates many new (andadditional historical) records and gives moreanalysis, with the intention of providing betterand updated information to natureconservationists and ecologists. We have triedour best to give an accurate representation ofthe facts and to consider the implications ofchanges in the flora. We have also attempted togive a realistic perspective of rare plants –when they are important to an issue and whenthey are not.A significant change since our second editionhas been the categorisation of plants into threestatuses: native, archaeophyte and neophyte(Preston & Pearman 2004, Preston, Pearman &Hall 2004). We have adapted the process tomake it applicable at the county level, withoutbeing too strict about dates of first records. It isa useful system for describing the origins andecological niches of the various species, but itsshould not be taken too far. Native does notmean ‘good’ and the other categories do notequate to ‘bad.’semi-natural habitats such as hay meadows andarable fields. Neophytes are recentintroductions, usually as garden escapes or inresponse to modern activities such as spreadingsalt on roads in winter.This report is primarily about native species,but some archaeophytes and neophytes arecovered if they are of interest. The BSBI’sguidelines (Farrell & Perring 1996, Lockton,Whild & Pearman 2001) for inclusion in acounty rare plant register are given below.Criteria for inclusion1. Endemic species (those that occur only inthe British Isles).2. Internationally rare species cited in theBern Convention, IUCN lists or theEuropean Habitats Directive.3. Nationally Rare species that occur in 15 orfewer 10km squares (hectads) in Britain.4. Nationally Scarce species that occur in 16-100 hectads in Britain.5. Locally Rare species that occur in three orfewer sites in the county.6. Locally Scarce species that occur in ten orfewer sites in the county and which arethought to be declining.Critical taxa and hybrids are covered to varyingdegrees, and full details are given whereknown, but there are undoubtedly manyomissions. We can only apologise for these andhope to gather better information in future.The current report is based on 4,921 records of238 taxa (including species, subspecies,varieties and hybrids).In the Endemic category, there is just onespecies that may be endemic to Shropshire,Fumaria painteri, but its taxonomic status issomewhat uncertain, and it has not been seenfor nearly a hundred years. The only speciescurrently found in the county that is endemic tothe British Isles is English Whitebeam Sorbusanglica.Native plants are those which are believed tohave arrived in the county independently ofhuman activity, and which tend to occur innatural habitat types such as woodland andlakes. Archaeophytes are those which werebrought here by people, deliberately orinadvertently, during the last few thousand In the second category, Internationally Rare,years and which have become established in there are two species. Floating Water-plantainLuronium natans is restricted to westernRare Plants of Shropshire 3