Profile

About Me::

I’m a short-lived, often rather straggly Cabbage with pretty golden-yellow flowers, a lot like Oil-seed rape but unlike that common crop plant I’m very rare, only growing on the south-eastern cliffs of the little island of Lundy, off the North Devon coast in the mouth of the Bristol channel. I am very unusual in being one of only very few flowering plants endemic to Britain, i.e. found nowhere else in the world. My nearest relatives like growing on beaches and cliffs in the Mediterranean, although another species the Isle of Man cabbage also only occurs in Britain. I was first described as recently as 1936 and one reason for scientists thinking me distinct then was because I was home to several insects also not known anywhere else. Perhaps the most interesting is a little flea beetle called Psylloides luridipennis. At times in the past my population has crashed to fewer than 320 plants and while it has bounced back recently I am still threatened by natural erosion processes, heavy grazing pressure on the accessible slopes and ledges and shading by invasive shrubs.