WILD IDEAS
Cottonweed by Zoe Devlin
Cottonweed SAVING ONE OF IRELAND’S RAREST PLANTS BY TONY MURRAY, MIKE WYSE JACKSON & NOELEEN SMYTH
C
ottonweed, cluasach mhara in Irish, is a rare, coastal plant species that is known in Ireland from a single location in Co. Wexford. Its status was assessed in the 2016 Red List as ‘critically endangered’ on the basis of a population decline of over 80% and because less than 50 plants remain in the wild. It is a small, shrubby perennial, growing to around 25cm tall, which has leaves and most other parts densely covered in white, felted hairs that give it a very attractive silvery-white appearance. The tiny individual tubular florets are packed tightly together to form small, yellow flower heads which were described by Zoë Devlin in her Wildflowers of Ireland as “fluffy buttons”. In September 2018 after the hot summer, staff at the National Botanic Gardens went on an autumnal expedition with the 20
National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) staff to see how the largely Mediterranean-distributed cottonweed had fared in the summer. During that visit we were shocked that just 12 individuals remained at its sole Irish location, down from the 32 recorded in 2014, and that it was on the very brink of extinction in Ireland. Since 2018 a further two individuals have disappeared and as of 2021 only 10 remain. Apart from Wexford, where it was first noted in 1866, it has been recorded from three Irish counties: Wicklow, Waterford and Kerry. It has, thus, been clinging on here in Ireland for very many years and while it is long gone from counties Kerry and Waterford and its occurrence in Wicklow was short-lived, its decline in Co. Wexford, where it was thriving up to the 1980s, has been dramatic.
Irish Wildlife Winter ‘21
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26/11/2021 14:51
