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Hieracium ampliatum (W.R. Linton) Ley, Shaggy-stalked Hawkweed

Account Summary

Native, B & I endemic, very rare.

22 July 1872; Brenan, Rev S.A.; limestone cliffs at Marble Arch or Claddagh River Glen.

This solitary record has a voucher consisting of two sheets in BEL (Accession Numbers H2586 and H2586b). When the specimens were first collected by Brenan they were all identified by S.A. Stewart as H. tridentatum. In 1969, the English botanist C.E.A. Andrews examined and re-determined the specimens, and the two voucher sheets listed here he renamed H. ampliatum. Other specimens from the same collection were designated H. stewartii and H. uigenskyense (see H. calcaricola account above). In 1974, P. Hackney published a note in the Irish Naturalists' Journal 18: 255, in which he thanked not just Andrews, but also P.D. Sell and C. West for their determination of herbarium material in BEL. In 2008, all these vouchers were examined by another Scottish, Hieracium expert, D. McCosh, who decided that the H. stewartii and H. uigenskyense should become H. calcaricola, but he declined to determine the two vouchers that Andrews had named H. ampliatum.

Like H. anglicum, H. ampliatum is a variable B & I endemic hawkweed and is regarded as a plant of cliff ledges, slopes and by streams. Both these microspecies appear to prefer, or perhaps are confined to, calcareous or basic soils. H. ampliatum "has radical leaves which usually bear large, coarse [marginal] teeth towards their bases and a petiolate stem leaf." (P. Hackney, in: FNEI 3). It is common on the basic rocks of N England and especially of the NW. It is also scattered throughout W Scotland and NE Ireland, where it is described as frequent on the basalt scarps of the Garron Plateau (FNEI 3). The map in the 'Critical Atlas' (Perring & Sell 1968, Map 558/1.56) indicates an Irish outlier at Doon Lough in Co Leitrim (H29), and it is interesting that this old Fermanagh record listed here has now been recognised and published. The current author (RSF) and RHN sincerely trust that future fieldwork illuminated by Sell & Murrell's Flora of Great Britain and Ireland 4 will reveal the continuing presence of this and the other as yet unrecognised or unidentified Fermanagh hawkweeds.

References

Hackney 1974; Perring & Sell 1968; Sell & Murrell 2006