Fen Ragwort

This might not look very much, but it's one of the rarest plants in Britain, Fen Ragwort Senecio paludosus, photographed at Woodwalton Fen NNR after I picked Pete up from the Great Fen Joint Technical Advisory Committee meeting. I had to use the telephoto lens as the area where it's growing has been roped off to avoid trampling and damage by overenthusiastic photographers.

It;s a long-lived perennial of tall-herb fens and ditches. Many sites for this species were drained in the 18th and 19th centuries and there was no substantiated record between 1857 and 1972, when it was rediscovered near Ely (Cambs.)in a rather ordinary-looking ditch next to the A10, which is where I first saw it many years ago when I worked for the Nature Conservancy Council. Since then, the species has been reintroduced in or near some of its historic sites, including Wicken Fen, the Cam Washes and Woodwalton Fen and is doing well in many of them.