South Gare, Teesside

Wednesday 11^th July 2018

Leader: Vince Jones

South Gare is an entirely man made area built from blast furnace slag and river dredging in the mid 1800’s. Now largely abandoned it appears as dunes to the North Sea bordered inland by a breakwater training the Tees river mouth, a huge mothballed steelworks and Redcar golf course. Botanical habitats include sand dunes and slacks, lime rich beds of slag dumped 40 years ago and a mound of soil the volume of a terrace of 10 houses which seems to be added to every few years.

We were showed the botanical highlights by vice-county recorder Vince Jones and David Barlow going first to the end of the Gare to look at Sea Wormwood. A cool sea breeze and cloud cover helped us concentrate on botanising, sunny later.

By the unmanned coastguard station amongst Ragwort covered in Cinnabar moth caterpillars and visited by a Grayling butterfly we spotted one Ragwort that had leaves silvery both sides - Senecio cinerea, then the hybrid between them - Senecio x albescens, with leaves only silvery underneath.

This added another to the over 600 species for the Flora of South Gare that Vince plans to write. His speciality in Hawkweeds was represented at South Gare by Hieracium uiginskyensis - locus classicus, Uig in Skye. He told us it is easy to identify as it is the only one to have simple hairs on the phyllaries that are not patent but lying along the surface.

On the sea shore grew three Oraches: Frosted Orache, Grass-leaved Orache and Spear-leaved Orache with many showing leaf characters between the last two forming a hybrid swarm Atriplex x hulmeana. Great lettuce grew to 6 foot behind stands of Lyme Grass, Sea Couch and Marram Grass.

In the afternoon we explored the slag from the steelworks finding Fragrant orchids in perfect condition along with Northern Marsh and Pyramidal Orchids though these were mostly going over. There were a few flowers of Purple Milk Vetch but mostly the hairy seed heads. Toad and Frog rushes were separated by the frog rush having a shorter rounded tepal between the pointed tepals while other rushes have equal tepals. In a brackish slack grew Shrubby Sea Blite in flower, the tiny petaless flowers consist of 5 tepals which remain to protect the fruit.

Alongside the road probable garden throwouts had become well established. Bergenia x smithii identified by the prickles on the leaf edge and Orange Bladder Senna.

There was much discussion over patches of Everlasting Pea as two patches were much paler pink than the usual rich pink. Jesse later found it to be the variety ‘Rosa Perle’.

Finally we visited the soil heap which was full of surprises from Hemlock, Wheat and Wintercress to Garden Celery, a Hollyhock that would grace any garden and a very fine Globe Artichoke

A thoroughly enjoyable day, we thanked Vince and David for showing us round and sharing their identification tips with us.

Text and photographs by David N