Rare plant rescued after popping up on footpath

CONSERVATIONISTS have stepped in to rescue one of the nation's rarest plants after it "rather catastrophically decided" to grow on a public footpath.

- EMILY BEAMENT

The starved wood-sedge is only found in two native sites across the UK, one of which is at Axbridge in Somerset, where a small cluster of plants has been clinging on to survival along a path edge near a woodland.

The Species Recovery Trust has been caring for the starved wood sedge for more than two decades to help it back from critically low levels, which saw it considered the rarest plant in the UK.

But the trust, which aims to help some of the UK's most endangered species back from the brink of extinction, said the plants at the Somerset site faced a new threat after they shifted from their habitat on the bank and on to the footpath.