Rhynchospora alba White Beak-sedge

A perennial sedge of wet, base-poor, acidic habitats such as wet heathland and bogs, preferring open areas such as bare peat where it is is free from agressive competition. It frequently occurs in shallow water and soakways where it can form large swards and then it is quite conspicuous with its paper-white, flowering spikelets in summer. It prefers high rainfall areas and has a largely, lowland, western distribution in Britain. It has been lost from many of its former sites as a result of drainage, conifer afforestation and peat extraction and it is on the rare plant registers of many of the vice counties where it survives, including Glamorgan (VC41). It is very rare in West Glamorgan and there are few post-millenium records of it in the county. The best known population, on Rhossili Down, is small and occurs in a shallow runnel.

Native