Mertensia maritima Oyster Plant RR DDD N
Ever since I first saw this beautiful plant on Pensarn beach in Denbighshire, I have looked for other specimens. It has now completely disappeared from Denbighshire. There was one large plant on Pensarn beach, Abergele and I reckon I was the last person to see it alive and well.
It was in full flower on the day I found it and looked magnificent. It was the first time I had seen Mertensia maritima. I went further down the beach to do some plant hunting and when I returned an hour or so later to take a last look, I found it had been ripped apart (by a dog it looked like). The next year there was no trace of the plant at that well-known site but a few smaller plants were found further East on the beach. A year or so later the great storms came and washed everything away. The locals blame car parking but actually it was the weather and uncontrolled dogs. It is a northern plant and according to research the nutlets (seeds) must have a prolonged period in the cold sea water below 5C and then some time on cold pebbly beach in order to scrape the hard outer coat of the nutlets and allow germination to begin. The winter seas around Wales are far too warm now and it will probably never return.
This plant is supposed to be rare in the British Isles as a whole and we found very little of it on Orkney where it is supposed to occur in large numbers. The other site where it is supposed to grow in reasonable numbers is on Ballantrae shingle spit in South Ayrshire where we counted about six plants.
Mertensia maritima is only now found on a few coastal sites in Scotland, northern Ireland and the outer northern Islands.
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| Mertensia maritima Oyster Plant close | Mertensia maritima Oyster Plant whole plant |
Ballantrae Shingle Spit, south Ayrshire, Scotland 19th May 2003
Added December 5th 2004, updated January 3rd 2011, updated January 6th 2011