Calystegia soldanella Sea Bindweed

Calystegia soldanella, Sea Bindweed, is an attractive pink-flowered, prostrate, hairless bindweed with stems that trail along the gound in sand dunes and on shingle. It is not a climbing plant and it has much thicker, kidney-shaped leaves than our other bindweeds. It is hardly ever found away from the coast in Britain and on sunny summer days the showy, white-striped, pink flowers unfold to put on a colourful display in the open, sandy areas of coastal dunes where it is a striking member of the semi-fixed, mobile sand communities. It usually grows with other species that are also confined to this habitat such as Sea Holly (Eryngium maritimum), Sea Spurge (Euphorbia paralias) and Sea Stock (Matthiola sinuata). It is found in sand dunes all along the coast of West Glamorgan mostly in dynamic, actively accreting dune systems with large areas of unfixed sand such as Crymlyn Burrows and Baglan Dunes. It has been lost from, or has declined significantly in lots of its former coastal sites in England where it has recently been designated as locally endangered or vulnerable.

Native