Kirkcudbrightshire Botany Group at Mersehead, 25th July 2025
This meeting was held at the kind invitation of the RSPB and Mersehead is always a popular venue, so a large group of 19 of us, including RSPB staff and volunteers, gathered at the Visitor Centre car park. The monad that we planned to record was several kilometres away, so we then transferred to 4×4 vehicles in order to get closer and save valuable time.
At the field entrance near where we parked there were a few plants of Bugloss Lycopsis arvensis, an arable plant of open ground on light sandy soil. This is one of our Rare Plant Register plants with only a handful of records in VC73.
Our priority for the day, however, was to record the nearby area of wet grassland in NX9355 which the group hadn’t recorded before, and this turned out to be very interesting indeed with a broad range of wetland species. There was an unusual pattern of vegetation here: rather than a uniform mix of wetland plants, there was a mosaic of distinct stands of individual species, presumably reflecting local variation in topography and hydrology as well as management. For example, there were separate stands of the sedges Bottle Sedge Carex rostrata, Bladder-sedge C. vesicaria, Brown Sedge C. disticha and Common Sedge C. nigra. Even the two rushes Sharp-flowered Rush Juncus acutiflorus and Jointed Rush J articulatus showed a very distinct zonal separation in the sward. There was a remarkably large population of Nodding Bur-marigold Bidens cernua comprising huge dense patches each containing hundreds of plants; such abundance is unusual for a species normally only found in small groups.
Amphibious Bistort Persicaria amphibia was scattered throughout the sward and we found all three horsetails (Equisetum fluviatile, E. palustre and E. arvense) as well as Common Spike-rush Eleocharis palustris, Yellow Iris Iris pseudacorus, Bulrush Typha latifolia, Tufted Forget-me-not Myosotis laxa, and Reed Canary-grass Phalaris arundinacea. There was a particularly colourful mix of Greater Bird’s-foot-trefoil Lotus pedunculatus growing with Tufted Vetch Vicia cracca.
This area was fringed by the reedbed at the edge of which we found Marsh Woundwort Stachys palustris and Hybrid Woundwort S. x ambigua together with Common Valerian Valeriana officinalis, Purple-loosestrife Lythrum salicaria, Common Marsh-bedstraw Galium palustre and Yellow Loosestrife Lysimachia vulgaris.
We ventured briefly into an adjacent monad (NX9356) to look at a pool which had flowering Amphibious Bistort and Marsh Speedwell Veronica scutellata.
There was so much to look at that we found the afternoon was slipping away and we decided to move to the sand dunes area of the original monad to see some contrasting vegetation. Here we immediately found Hare’s-foot Clover Trifolium arvense and Wild Pansy Viola tricolor and Bob had found Goat’s-beard Tragopogon pratensis nearby earlier in the day.
We finished by looking at the strip of merse along the shore of the Solway. This is dominated by Sea Club-rush Bolboschoenus maritimus with Sea Arrowgrass Triglochin maritima, Sea Aster Tripolium panonnicum, Sea Plantain Plantago maritima, Long-bracted Sedge Carex extensa, Saltmarsh Rush Juncus gerardii and Sea Rush J. maritimus. On the mud beyond were patches of Common Cord-grass Spartina anglica.
However the highlight of this area was at the junction of the dunes and merse where there is a damp depression line, possibly the result of vehicle tracks, in which Gavin found Lesser Centaury Centaurium pulchellum with Knotted Pearlwort Sagina nodosa close by. Both are scarce plants in VC73.
A visit to Mersehead is always very rewarding and enjoyable and this visit was exceptionally so. Our most notable plant finds of the day were Bugloss, Hare’s-foot Clover, Lesser Centaury and Goat’s-beard, all of which are included in the VC73 Rare Plant Register. Knotted Pearlwort and Nodding Bur-marigold are other species with a restricted distribution in the vice county.
Our species list for the day was over 140 from both the wet grassland and the shore in NX9355. We also had two interesting invertebrate records for Water Ladybird and Spiked Shieldbug.
We are extremely grateful to Rowena Chambers and the RSPB for hosting our visit to Mersehead, and my thanks to all the participants for their observations and their company. It was a great day.
Sarah White
