Sunday 27 July 2014

Puzzling Eyebrights

A single small patch of Eyebright appeared last year which I guess was the meadows management kicking in and providing suitable germination conditions for some existing seeds. The trouble is that Eyebrights are a very difficult area when it comes to identification. There are about 20 UK species and telling one from another is not easy - and that's before you consider their habit of hybridising. To cut a long struggle short I ended up thinking they were likely to be Euphrasia nemorosa but just might be E. confusa. This year I have four patches of Eyebright, three in the field that the original patch appeared in and one in a separate field. Here comes the puzzling part - there seem to be at least two species and maybe three. Certainly the Eyebrights in the second field are different - they have long glandular hairs on their leaves which are only found on certain species. I have measured, photographed, researched and puzzled and still have no firm conclusion on which species we have. The standard method of confiming an Eyebright ID is to send six specimens to a qualified referee but three of my four patches have less than six plants so that's a non-starter. My amateur conclusion is that I have E. confusa and E. officinalis ssp monticola. I realise that this is unlikely but I can only follow the evidence as I see it for my conclusions. At the point when I realise that I have measured some aspect of the plant in the wrong way, or not interpreted some results correctly, or whatever error it is, then I will happily defer to the experts. Pictured is part of the original patch of Eyebright that I have tentaively decided are E. confusa. How appropriate!

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