The prickly poppy. The corn buttercup. The purple milk-vetch. Some names trip off the tongue, others trip it up. But not for long, if nothing is done to save these once-common British plants.
They are among 345 groups of vascular plants in the UK, an astounding 20 per cent of the total, that have been classified as endangered by the UK’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee.
The JNCC report, released on Monday, compared the 1962 Atlas of the British Flora with the 2002 New Atlas of the British & Irish Flora. The comparison allowed scientists for the first time to measure…
