With permission of Natural England, members and friends visited Cabin Hill National Nature Reserve, Formby, an area of sand-dunes which has been much-modified by past sand-winning. This so weakened the coast-protection function of the dunes that a barrier bank was erected in 1970 as a secondary defence against the sea.

We first crossed an area of grazed dune pasture where bare sandy patches have been colonised by a variety of ruderal plants, including Common and Sticky Stork’s-bills (Erodium cicutarium and E. lebelii) and their rare hybrid (Erodium x anaristatum), the latter known only from Wales and South Lancashire in the British Isles. The hybrid is easily identified by its large, intermediately-coloured flowers, vigour and near-sterility.

Moving on, we next came to a large borrow-pit from which sand was excavated to make the barrier bank. This created a damp slack, now supporting the best display of Grass-of-Parnassus (Parnassia palustris) on the Sefton Coast. The abundance of this charismatic plant, officially listed as “endangered” in Lancashire, was breathtaking.

West of the bank is another, deeper and therefore wetter, borrow-pit which supports a large stand of the uncommon Blunt-flowered Rush (Juncus subnodulosus). Nearby, was the nationally “vulnerable” Flat-sedge (Blysmus compressus), a species that is rapidly declining in most of Britain but which is doing well on the Sefton sand-dunes.