SPECIES LIST

Flowering Rush

This plant looks like a tall reed with long narrow leaves emerging vertically from shallow water up to over a metre and a half high. Often the plant does not flower but when it does it seems almost too exotic to be a native species. It has an umbrella-shaped open cluster of lovely three-petalled pink flowers with clustered pink stamens dotted with black carpels. The populations on the Levels are native but this is a popular garden pond ornamental. So popular that our plants are illegally collected and are not as common in some areas as they used to be as a result. If you see this type of activity it is worth noting details. We have several rare wetland plants on the Pevensey Levels that are targeted in this way. Thankfully the Flowering Rush is still found in locations scattered over most of the Levels and is abundant in one or two sites.