A Work of Hope - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 144

belongs, and where despairing householders might fervently wish it had
stayed, dry rot is a fungus living on pine and yew trees. It is so rare that
between 1953 and 1992 it was officially recorded only three times, 67 and
it may be in danger of extinction in the wild. In Britain, purple loose-
strife is an occasional and delightful native ornament of our riverbanks
and lakesides. In North America and New Zealand it is a rampaging,
uncontrollable menace, smothering wetlands and choking rivers.
But there are many exotic species which cause little discernible
harm to the countries they colonize. Until recently I had not realized
that the little owl does not belong to our native fauna: it was intro-
duced to Britain in the nineteenth century. But its presence here is
uncontroversial: it persists in fairly small numbers without driving
out native species. The knowledge that it did not originate here will
do nothing to dampen my delight next time I see one.
Many of the plant species - 157 according to one estimate 68 - that we
once saw as native now appear to be what botanists call archaeophytes:
exotic species which arrived before the year 1500. A handful reached
Britain during the Neolithic, their seeds probably lurking in the grain
brought here for sowing by the first farmers, or, perhaps, stuck to the
feet of travellers or in the hides and fleeces of the animals they imported.
Some archaeophytes are familiar to anyone who loves nature, and
their inclusion on the list of non-native species is often surprising:
field poppy, greater burdock, cornflower, wormwood, scarlet pimper-
nel, shepherd's purse, fumitory, corncockle, deadnettle, common
mallow, crack willow, common vetch, field pansy, mayweed and white
campion, for example. 69 You can find several of them in the packets of
wildflower seeds we are encouraged to sow in spare corners of our
gardens, to save Britain's native flora. As their lovely names suggest,
they have seeded themselves in our culture and are as embedded in
our lives as the species that arrived before we did.
Among these archaeophytes are plants which are now extremely
rare. The pheasant's eye, for example, which appears to have arrived
in the Iron Age, is marked as endangered on Britain's Red Data List, 70
and officially classed as a priority species for conservation here. 71 Is it
illogical to seek to save these plants, even in the knowledge that they
were brought here by humans? They do no harm and afford delight