DORSET'S wild flowers are declining in line with a new report that shows one in five of Britain's native flora is under threat.

But there are pockets of hope and one is the re-introduction of grazing on heathland and cliffs.

"That is the most positive thing in Dorset's natural history for a very long time," said David Pearman, an editor of a new atlas of plants and past chairman of Dorset environmental records office.

Past president of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, he was commenting on the new "Red List", which took two years to produce.

This analysis of the whole of the British flora shows that 345 (19.6 per cent) of 1,756 species and sub-species are currently threatened due to agriculture, overgrazing and the use of herbicides and fertilisers.

Grazing on the Purbeck cliffs, heaths and commons since the 1990s was "turning the tide" he said.

Bog-loving plants such as the great sundew, marsh gentian and early spider orchid on the cliffs were making a comeback.

"They have all benefited from a realisation that it was their habitat that needed love and management," he said.

But many of the plants that have died out grew in cornfields and on field margins and verges.

"Dorset has lost just as many as any other county," said Mr Pearman. Corn marigold, corn buttercup and pheasant's eye have all largely or completely vanished from Dorset.

Other Dorset plants on the threatened list for the first time include chamomile. In the 1930s it could be found on 60 sites but now is on only three.

In the grazed New Forest it is found everywhere but the best place to see it in Dorset is Corfe Common, which is still grazed by horses.

Curly pondweed is another loser, which likes really clear water, uncontaminated by nutrients from field run-offs.

"We've been rather good at stopping rare plants from becoming extinct, but less good perhaps at stopping common plants from becoming less common," said Simon Leach, botanical adviser at English Nature.

"We are hoping that agri-environment schemes and other landscape-scale initiatives will help to arrest and reverse the decline of many of these declining species," he said.

First published: May 11