Over the next few years the members of the Botanical Society of the British Isles (BSBI) led in each county by the County Recorders, will be monitoring some of the plants species that are not so rare as to have attracted special attention in the past but common enough not merit much of a second glance. It is surprising how little is known about these scarce plants, which are generally more-or-less threatened by habitat loss, poor site management and all the other factors which are slowly seeing the demise of our native flora. The BSBI’s Threatened Plants Project involves the selection of a range of species to study throughout the country, of which two or three might occur any particular county.

The project started last year when the selected species which occur in Carmarthenshire were Yellow Bird’s-nest (Monotropa hypopitys) and Annual Knawel (Scleranthus annuus). Neither species was present at the random-sample sites selected by the BSBI where they had occurred in the past, although they are still present at a few other locations in the county.

This year’s species are Frog Orchid (Coeloglossum viride), Tubular Water-dropwort (Oenanthe fistulosa) and Wood Bitter-vetch (Vicia orobus). One randomly selected site for Tubular Water-dropwort is Ffrwd Fen where we know it still occurs but we will nevertheless be re-checking in the next week or so. We hope at least, to also have a few positive results with Wood Bitter-vetch but so far have not been able to relocate plants at any in the selected random sites. We will also be checking for Frog Orchid but are not hopeful of refinding it.

Wood Bitter-vetch is a member of the pea family not unlike Tufted Vetch (Vicia cracca) but has flowerheads (racemes) of pink flowers instead of blue. The leaves do not have a tendril at the end of the leaves but most characteristically they are conspicuously net-veined, a feature unusual among legumes. The species is historically a plant of traditionally managed upland hay meadows and its recent population decline is largely as a result of the loss of this habitat. Most of these formerly flower-rich grasslands are now sheep-grazed, management which Wood Bitter-vetch is unable to tolerate. Most recent Carmarthenshire records are from roadside banks which escape grazing and perhaps are subject to just one or two annual cuts – a regime which must have affinities with hay-meadow management! There are 25 past records in the county but only one since 2000.

Tubular Water-dropwort is a distinctive, greyish-leaved and stemmed umbellifer of tall-fens and reedbeds in the coastal lowlands. The white flowers are borne in small clusters of umbrella shaped umbels (flower head) at the tops of the stems which may be up to about a metre tall. When flowering is over, the inflorescences (flowerheads) are very distinctive with their hooked seeds. The plant has been recorded from only fifteen sites in Carmarthenshire but due to habitat losses, this number is now likely to be much smaller.

There are five past records of Frog Orchid from Carmarthenshire but the most recent records are from the 1990s and are of single plants at the Pendine MoD Ranges and in a sheep-grazed field near Abergorlech. it is a very small, inconspicuous greenish-yellow-flowered plant of short, dry, neutral or calcareous grasslands and is very easily overlooked.

Any records of these or last year’s species would be gratefully received by Richard Pryce, the BSBI County Recorder, who would be glad to follow them up and acknowledge the finder in the write-ups which follow. Please contact Richard by email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it