The Burnham Meadow (TA347246) on the Hollym Carrs Nature Reserve has a scattered population of a brome grass recorded as Smooth Brome Bromus racemosus by Eva Crackles in 1984. In 1999, just before publication of Atlas 2000, I recall Eva expressing doubt about her identification. We were unable to relocate any plants to get another opinion and it has escaped by attention to follow it up, until now. On June 1st I visited HCNR and spotted the so called B. racemosus in the meadow and then later in an expanse of grass elsewhere on the reserve.
The bromes have undergone a lot of taxonomic changes since 1990. I used the key in Stace Edition 4 which includes a few taxa that were not included in commonly used books of 20 years ago. I keyed this out to a subspecies of Soft Brome Bromus hordeaceus ssp. molliformis. In common with most soft bromes it is softly hairy all over but the defining features are stiffly upright inflorescences of more than 10 spikelets on 60 cm culms, with pedicels shorter than the spikelet. The lemma awn is 0.2 mm at the base tapering down to 0.1 mm with a tendency to splay outwards (divaricate). This taxon is referred to as B. hordeaceus ssp. divaricatus by Cope and Gray (BSBI Handbook No 13), and may eventually be elevated to species status.
Peter J Cook, 1 June 2021
Plant records
I am happy to receive record by email, and need as a minimum the date, and the location of the record, preferably as an OS grid reference. The database accepts 4-, 6- or 8-figure grid refs, though the last would only be for those using a GPS system. Additional info in the form of habitat, status of the plant e.g. if likely garden escape or planted and quantity is useful.
