Taraxacum drucei Dahlst., a dandelion

In common with other species of this genus, there is just one Fermanagh site for this dandelion, although there are three vouchers for it in BEL. It was recorded on 30 March 1975 and collected from a vertical bank on a roadside ditch near the International border with the Republic of Ireland, NE of Garrane, 6 km NNW of Rosslea. Voucher H5054 was originally determined as T. maculigerum H. Lindb. f., and revised by A.J. Richards firstly in 1975 to T. maculosum A.J. Richards, and then re-determined and confirmed as this microspecies by C.C. Haworth in 1983. The two other T. drucei vouchers have accession numbers H5052 and H5053 and were also identified by C.C. Haworth.

T. drucei is a small to medium-sized, rather delicate microspecies with leaves having a distinctive rounded terminal lobe and margins with short, obtuse, deltoid lateral lobes that as Richards (2021) comments, "sets it apart.".

The Dandelion Handbook and Field Handbook both consider it characteristic of rocks, cliff ledges and pathsides at low altitudes and it displays a mostly coastal distribution in B & I. The Dandelion Handbook (Map 28) shows it thinly distributed in the west of Scotland and more concentrated in SW England. The same map shows that T. drucei is even more poorly represented in Ireland, being thinly and widely scattered and with just seven hectads recorded in six VCs, none of them nearer NI than West Mayo (H27). The Field Handbook hectad map indicates a considerable increase in knowledge in Ireland, since it contains a total of 13 Irish coastal squares with records, two of them from Co Down (H38). The same map, however, shows that previous records of T. drucei from S & SW England have been completely removed, presumably specimens having been re-determined. This makes this taxon completely Scottish and Irish in B & I, although it has been found in NW Spain and Portugal (Richards 2021).

Until the publication of the new edition of the Dandelion Handbook in 1997, T. drucei was frequently confused with the closely related and very similar T. maculosum A.J. Richards. This is very apparent when reading the T. drucei account in the FNEI 3, and comparing it with the current position described in the Dandelion Handbook. Taraxacology does not stand still for very long, as is clearly exemplified by the number and scale of the revisions in voucher determinations in BEL and the re-determination of the T. drucei records from southern England.

References

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