A happy find.

A glorious day today, hot, sunny, no wind; what a rare treat.

Walking through the slacks between the sand dunes I was delighted to come across an area literally carpeted with field gentians Gentianella campestris. As far as I can tell this is a new species record for the area in which I was walking. Great excitement!

The field gentian is a Vulnerable Red Data List species added to the list of UK Biodiversity Action Plan priority species in 2007. G. campestris had already suffered a marked decline before 1930, but sites are still being lost through overgrazing in the uplands and the neglect of lowland pastures. In its English stronghold, Cumbria, it has disappeared from half the 10 km squares for which there are post-1930 records. It is now extremely rare in southern England, apart from in the New Forest, where it is stable and even possibly increasing; it has recently been reported from three sites on The Lizard and only one each in E. Cornwall, S. Devon, N. Hampshire, E. Sussex, W. Norfolk, Staffordshire and Derbyshire.
 

In England it is apparently extinct in many counties including Berkshire and Shropshire. Most of the historical losses must have been from agricultural improvement, though many of the recent losses have arisen from relaxation of grazing and invasion by heather and other shrubs. The extent to which acid grassland and heathland populations have declined as a result of atmospheric pollution is unknown but may account for at least some of the losses in S.E. England. Elsewhere in Britain and Ireland there is only evidence of local losses.

Information from the Botanical Society of the British Isles, www.bsbi.org.uk.