Seakale

 

The rare Seakale on an East Devon beach last August

Watching BBC2's Springwatch last night (which was on Minsmere RSPB Reserve on the Suffolk coast), I discovered the name of the plant I saw on an East Devon beach last August but couldn’t identify. It’s Seakale.

The plant grows on shingle beaches in the south (mostly) and used to be abundant. You can eat the leaves however and in the eighteenth century became fashionable and was harvested almost to extinction. I feel quite privileged therefore to have seen it.

My two older wildflower books say it flowers June to August, but my newest one (published 2008) says it flowers May to September – a sign of changing climate, I suppose. Another interesting point. (Well, I find it interesting anyway.)

Buttercups

I know buttercups are anathema to farmers because they can poison grazing animals, but they don't half look nice.

Bad and good news

I’m not a fan of The News (on television and radio). Much of it is prurient. Most of it is bad. You get the beginning of a story but not the end. It adds nothing to the sum of human happiness. It was only by chance therefore that I came across the following happy ending.

Last year, as you may remember, seabirds were dying in their thousands on West Country beaches. The cause turned out to be a chemical called PIB (polyisobutylene) discharged by boats. (What they were doing with it and why they got rid of it, I don’t know.)

The Devon Wildlife Trust, RSPB and RSPCA among others launched themselves at the problem and over 25,000 people signed petitions (me among them and maybe you too), and in October last year the International Maritime Organisation changed the chemical’s classification so that it can no longer be discharged at sea.

As the latest DWT magazine says, ‘Change in pollution legislation often comes very slowly, while international change only moves at the speed of a glacier. However, this time things were different . . . Campaigning for wildlife really does bring results.’

The DWT article, with some delightful pictures of guillemots, one of the birds worst hit by the PIB pollution