The thing I like about plants and about science in general is, you never stop learning and you never know what you might discover.
I went for an evening stroll along the West pier in Dunlaoire and came across a plant I hadn’t seen before. I guessed which family it was in from the flower arrangement and the seedheads. A quick search showed it was Small Teasel, a plant I hadn’t even heard of before. It’s related to the Wild Teasel (Dipsacus fullonum), which is locally common around parts of Ireland, mainly along the East coast. After some more reading I only found one record of small teasel in Ireland, on Zoë Devlin’s website. The books I used show no record of it in Ireland. It is local, scattered in England and Wales only and not found anywhere else in the British Isles according to all sources I checked. I suspect seeds from the UK arrived in Dunlaoire Harbour with the ferry and germinated on the pier. Once I noticed the plant, I kept an eye out for more, and found about 5-10 plants along a stretch of the pier. I’m hoping it will spread a bit more and people will notice it.
Small teasel has white flowers in a round-topped cluster on hairy, slightly spiky stems up to 1.2m. The ‘pilosus‘ part of the name means ‘soft hairs’ referring to the spikes/hairs found on the stems. The flower heads are spherical, 15-20mm across with spiny bracts and can be seen July-September. Each little flower has 4 black stamen protruding from it. From far away these look like lots of tiny insects resting on the flower. The basal leaves are oval and long-stalked, toothed and form a rosette. The stem leaves have 2 basal lobes that are not joined around the stem. Small teasel is a biennial, meaning it will form a rosette of leaves the first year, flower in the second year, set seed and then dies. It is usually found along woodland margins and on hedge banks, usually on limy soil. The pier does not seem the ideal environment for small teasel, but it seems happy growing there.
I find it interesting to watch people walk by (like I probably would have done years ago) without even looking at this rare plant. They are not even aware that this might be the only specimen in Ireland. Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council spray the pier regularly and might not even be aware that there are rare plants to be found there. They are just spraying anything that looks green.
Whenever you are walking, I hope you keep an eye out for plants that look unfamiliar and try to identify them. If you are unsure, feel free to ask me and I’ll try my best to help you. You never know what you might come across.
Wildflower Walks Ireland 