Uckfield students help save stinking hawk's-beard
.jpg "Uckfield students help save stinking hawk's-beard")
Students at Uckfield Community Technology College have helped the Millennium Seed Bank save a rare native plant.
Seeds are now safely stored at the seed bank at Kew Gardens’ “country home” at Wakehurst, north of Haywards Heath.
The Kew Foundation has sent a “big thank you” to the students and teachers at the college for supporting the work of the Millennium Seed Bank.
According to Kew, the Crepis foetida, known as the stinking hawk’s-beard, is an annual or biennial plant, which has only been found on a few coastal sites in south east England, typically on disturbed shingle or chalk.
It apparently became extinct in England in 1980, when the last plants were recorded at Dungeness.
Following a talk by Dr Paul Smith, Head of the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP), Uckfield Community Technology College made the MSBP its charity of the year and raised £1,000 to adopt the species under the Adopt a Seed, Save a Species campaign.
Various events were held throughout the year to raise funds to save the species.
* The Millennium Seed Bank has successfully banked ten per cent of the world's wild plant species and has its sights on saving 25 per cent by 2020.
* The seeds of the stinking hawk’s-beard were collected at Dungeness in 1978.
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(Added to site Friday, January 14th, 2011)
