The important grassland habitat that was translocated  (moved) from Tycroes School to the National Botanic Gardens earlier this year, when it was in danger of being lost as part of a planning application at the school, has established well and one of the key species found growing in it has finally had a chance to flower after years of being mown.

The rare meadow thistles were part of 300 m2 of grassland moved to Waun Las Nature Reserve at the Gardens, when a primary school’s playing field was going to be lost to development.

Meadow thistle (Cirsium dissectum) is a rare plant and a key species of Rhos pasture. Rhos pasture is a wet, heathy, semi-natural grassland found predominantly in Wales and southern England; Carmarthenshire holds a considerable proportion of the remaining habitat.

It has suffered massive losses due to agricultural improvement, afforestion and inappropriate management. The areas remaining are often small and isolated and this can have negative effects for the plants and animals that depend on the habitat, including the meadow thistle, marsh fritillary butterfly and whorled caraway.

As the thistles had probably not had a chance to flower since the school was built it is amazing that they have survived at all. When regularly cut at best the population is kept in a kind of stasis, not actively reproducing and spreading vegetatively (rather than by seed production). At worst, the population stagnates and eventually dies out.

 In another location on the Garden’s estate, there is another population of the meadow thistle. Here the flowers have had a chance to set seed but could not germinate in an undergrazed grassland.

As the translocated site is also quite close to the other meadow thistles it is hoped that the newly transplanted plants will have interbreed with the plants already on the site, boosting their genetic make-up, resulting in a good healthy population of meadow thistles.