Flora of West Lancashire Dunes

Abstract

FOR some time, increasing concern has been felt amongst the botanists and Nature-lovers of this area for the dangerous position of the unique flora of the dunes of west Lancashire, particularly around Ainsdale. Recently two representatives of the Flora's League-& society for the preservation of wild flowers Dr. C. T. Green, president of the Liverpool Botanical Society and author of “The Flora of Liverpool”, and Mr. Eric Hardy, librarian of the Liverpool Naturalists' Field Club, made a special survey of the present status of the flora, with the consent of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, to find whether the latter's sea-bird sanctuary on the dunes is also serving as a wild flower sanctuary. The dunes are unique for their profusion ofPyrola rotundi-folia (round-leaved wintergreen) and Parnassia palustris (grass of Parnassus), probably more numerous there than anywhere else in England, and these flowers have been banned from the wild flower collecting sections of the Southport flower show in order to protect the dunes. The duneland orchid (Epipactis dunensis), which so far has not been recorded from any other part of the country, was found growing abundantly on the dry dunes, beside the pinewoods, and in the thinner pinewoods, its only enemy being the rabbits. The area is rich in Orchidaceae. According to the records of the Liverpool Flora Committee, Erythrcea latifolia, the broad-leaved centaury, which was first described from these sandhills by Shepherd and Bostock a century ago and has not been recorded from any other part of the country, is extinct, though profuse enough at the time of its discovery. The last specimen gathered from the sandhills at Formby is now in the collection at the British Museum (Natural History).