St Neots Rural

Its always nice when work takes me to one of my VCs. It doesn't happen very often but when it does I usually find something interesting. This time it was a trip to St Neots Rural Parish, an obscure corner of VC31 which until recently (following expansion of neighbouring St Neots) was virtually unpopulated. VC31 has a couple of these strange parishes, with Stanground North being even more obscure and unoccupied.

The first of the good finds was an obscure variety of Crack Willow (Salix x fragilis nothovar. furcata) that can only be reliably identified in flower (but the foliage is relatively distinct - large, wide and very glossy - and does give a clue of where to go back and look in the following spring). As the photo shows it is a male with forked catkins. This is the first record for the VC for at least 40 years.

Even better was the next find in a nearby field corner, where a 100 plants of Shepherd's-needle (Scandix pecten-veneris) were waiting to be found. Some were already in flower while others had only recently germinated. This species has become very rare in recent years, both in the VC and nationally, so it was great to find it in such good numbers and with spent stems from the previous year to show it had been here at least the year before as well.

Exciting Finds on Staughton Moor (VC31)

Pete Stroh has been down in the arable 'prairies' of Staughton Moor in the far south of Huntingdonshire. Its well away from the botanical hotspots of the county so is under investigated, but it does have its own character and is the centre of distribution in the county for the rare Spiked Star-of-Bethlehem (Ornithogalum pyrenaicum).

Pete's trip was motivated by the need to record his plots for the National Plant Monitoring Scheme. His arable plot turned out to be a disappointment this year with nothing present but the wheat crop. However, not far away he found thriving populations of two county rarities. These were Bur Chervil (Anthriscus caucalis) which was over-topping the crop in places, and the even rarer Shepherd's-needle (Scandix pecten-veneris). Pete providing the following photos to share. If anyone else has spotted either of these two species in VC31 (or VC64) I would be pleased to receive details.

Shepherd's-needle (photo by Pete Stroh)

 Bur Chervil over-topping the wheat crop (photo by Pete Stroh)

Bur Chervil (Photo by Curtis Clarke as published on Wikimedia Commons)