Help for rare plant underway!

A project is underway to help a rare plant in Carmarthenshire that survives at only one site in the county and less than 30 in Britain as a whole.

The Deptford Pink (Dianthus armeria) is a wild relative of garden plant Sweet William, producing a bright pink flower from early July through to early September, although flowering can continue into early November.

In the UK small populations survive in only 7% of its total historic area, and it is now thought to be extinct in Scotland.

It is now found at only four sites in Wales: at sites in the Flintshire, Rhondda Cynon Taf; Neath Port Talbot; and along a farm track on a site near Llanelli. In 2007, an extra site was found after an observant cyclist found it growing beside a cycle track in Llanelli but, although surviving into the following year, these plants have not been found again since.

At all the sites the species is in a precarious situation as it relies on a certain amount of disturbance to produce open ground for seedlings to germinate. If the sites get overgrown the species can rapidly disappear.

With the permission of the landowners and after obtaining a special licence from Natural Resources Wales (the plant is protected under the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981), members of the Carmarthenshire Biodiversity Partnership will take a limited amount of seed from the Deptford pink plants growing at the site near Llanelli. These will be taken to the National Botanic Garden of Wales where they will be carefully propagated to establish more plants to provide a reservoir of the local genetic-stock. These could be used to reintroduce into the wild should the species be lost at its existing site or if it is considered desirable to, increase the number of sites where it is found in the county, assuming that suitable sites can be identified where future management can be assured.

Carmarthenshire County Council Biodiversity Officer Isabel Macho said ‘With the State of Nature report showing that one-in-six of our wild plants is considered threatened with extinction in Wales, every effort is needed to conserve existing populations. With the help of the expertise at the National Botanic Garden of Wales we now have the opportunity to build up the population of this rare plant and look for sites where the Deptford pink could be re-introduced.’

Are there other currently unrecorded sites where this plant grows in the county? If it looks familiar to you and you think you’ve seen it growing, take a photo and send it to Biodiversity@carmarthenshire.gov.uk