Smooth Cat's-ear

Another hot and sticky day for our remaining summer visit to Whitemoor Marshalling Yard. We were over on the bunds to allow me to record my final four quadrats of the season - yay!! There were very few flowers out, but this dandelion-lookalike was growing on ballast quite close to the edge of the track.

On closer examination it proved to be Smooth Cat's-ear, an annual of open summer-parched grasslands and heathy pastures, on usually acidic, nutrient-poor, sandy or gravelly soils. It was formerly widespread as a weed of arable fields, and as a wool-shoddy alien but is now considered to be Vulnerable in the UK.

I last recorded it at Whitemoor in 2003 when it was growing on a sandy substrate, but I have seen it growing on ballast at Doncaster station. It's really good to confirm it's continued presence at the site, one of very few Cambridgeshire locations for the species, in the last year of our regular monitoring visits.