Erucastrum gallicum (Willd.) O.E. Schulz, Hairy Rocket

Account Summary

Growth form and preferred habitats

This casual winter or summer annua introduction can sometimes behave as a biennial. Hairy Rocket grows 20-60 cm tall, flowers from May to November and can develop on a range of mineral soils from sand to chalk. E. gallicum often appears as solitary individuals, apparently remote from any obvious source of introduction. Generally it does not persist long, although vegetative growth and seed production are very plastic with respect to local environmental conditions and thus populations can vary greatly from year-to-year (Rich 1991).

Fermanagh occurrence

There is a solitary record in the Fermanagh Flora Database. The details of the record are: site about 200 m along the Maguiresbridge road from the Presbyterian Church, SE of Lisbellaw. RHN has a voucher and the identification has been confirmed by T.C.G. Rich. Is this change correct?

Irish occurrence

At present, the New Atlas map shows that apart from the solitary Fermanagh record listed above, in Ireland E. gallicum is entirely restricted to, and rather thinly scattered within, an area S of a line between Dublin and Limerick. Reynolds (2002) in A Catalogue of Alien Plants in Ireland lists around 35 records, mostly dating from the late 1980s and the 1990s, in ten southern Irish VCs in the area mentioned. Rich (1991) considered the species to be currently spreading rapidly in Ireland but, despite this, Reynolds regarded E. gallicum as an infrequent casual, with no evidence of it spreading (Reynolds 2002).

British occurrence

In Britain, the species is a weed of disturbed lowland roadside, railway, dockland and waste ground habitats, occasionally more established and persistent in quarries and along track-ways on chalky soils in S England. The plant is sometimes sown to bind and stabilise steep roadside cuttings, for instance through chalk in parts of Hampshire (Brewis et al. 1996).

European and world occurrence

The plant is considered native to the Pyrenees and Central Europe, but is widely introduced in many other parts of Europe, across N America and the Urals, as animal feed grain and as bird seed (Hultén & Fries 1986, Map 993; Rich 1991; Clement & Foster 1994).

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