Welsh groundsel facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Welsh groundsel |
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Senecio cambrensis (Welsh groundsel or Welsh ragwort) is a special flowering plant. It belongs to the daisy family, called Asteraceae. This plant is unique because it only grows in Great Britain. Right now, you can only find it in North Wales. It's a very new plant that appeared suddenly. It formed when two other related plant types mixed together.
How Welsh Groundsel Appeared
Welsh groundsel is a type of plant called an allopolyploid. This means it has sets of chromosomes from two different species. Chromosomes are like tiny instruction manuals inside every living thing.
Its ancestor was a plant called Senecio × baxteri. This plant was not able to reproduce. It could appear naturally when two other plants, the common groundsel (Senecio vulgaris) and Oxford ragwort (Senecio squalidus), grew close together.
Sometime in the early 1900s, something amazing happened. The number of chromosomes in an S. × baxteri plant accidentally doubled. This change created a brand new species that could reproduce. That new plant was the Welsh groundsel.
Where Does Welsh Groundsel Grow?
The Welsh groundsel was first found in 1948. A person named Horace E. Green discovered it in Ffrith, which is in Flintshire, north-east Wales. A scientist named Effie M. Rosser officially described the plant in 1955. She used samples from the place where it was found.
Later, people found it in other places across north-east Wales. These places included Chirk, Brymbo, Queensferry, and Colwyn Bay. They even found an old plant sample from Brynteg that was collected way back in 1925.
For a while, people thought it grew in Shropshire, England. There was also a group of these plants in Wolverhampton. But the Shropshire record was a mistake. The plants in Wolverhampton have also disappeared. So, there are no recent reports of it in England.
In 1982, Welsh groundsel was found near Edinburgh, Scotland. This group of plants appeared on its own. It did not come from the Welsh plants. Scientists think it started around 1974. However, these Scottish plants also seem to have disappeared. No one has seen them since 1993.
You can often find Welsh groundsel in certain places. It likes to grow on waste ground and along roadsides. It also grows in cracks in walls and pavements.
What Does Welsh Groundsel Look Like?
The Welsh groundsel looks like a mix of its two parent plants. These are the common groundsel and Oxford ragwort. It is an upright plant that lives for one year. It can grow up to 30 centimeters tall, and sometimes even 50 centimeters.
Its stem and leaves have very few hairs, or no hairs at all. The leaves have deep cuts or lobes. The lower leaves have small stalks. But the leaves higher up on the stem attach directly to the stem.
Its flower heads look like small cylinders. They usually have 8 to 15 yellow "petals," which are called ray florets. Some plants might not have any petals at all. The petals can be different lengths. Most often, they are about 4 to 7 millimeters long. The pollen grains are very tiny, about 30 to 36 micrometres wide. They usually have 4 small openings.
