Basil Thyme (Clinopodium acinos)
Key Details
| Taxonomic Groups: | Vascular plant > flowering plant > Herbaceous plant |
| Red List Status: | Vulnerable (Not Relevant) [VU(nr)] |
| D5 Status: | Included in the baseline Red List Index for England (Wilkins, Wilson & Brown, 2022) |
| Section 41 Status: | (not listed) |
| Taxa Included Synonym: | (none) |
| UKSI Recommended Name: | Clinopodium acinos |
| UKSI Recommended Authority: | (L.) Kuntze |
| UKSI Recommended Qualifier: | (none specified) |
| Red List Citation: | in Stroh et al., 2014 |
| Notes on taxonomy/listing: | (none) |
Criteria
| Question 1: | Does species need conservation or recovery in England? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Undergoing continued, strong decline. |
| Question 2: | Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | The species used to occur more widely as a plant of arable fields, and in its grassland habitats requires periodic disturbance for germination. |
| Question 3: | At a landscape scale, would the species benefit from untargeted habitat management to increase habitat mosaics, structural diversity, or particular successional stages? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | As a species of disturbed grassland, especially chalk grassland, it may benefit from action to increase the availability of early successional stages in suitable areas. |
Species Assessment
| Current step on the Species Recovery Curve (SRC): | 6. Recovery solutions trialled |
| Recovery potential/expectation: | Medium-high |
| National Monitoring Resource: | Combination - insufficient |
| Species Comments: | Sufficient is likely to be known about the species to enable delivery of suitable habitat management and/or restoration or recreation of past populations. |
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Proposed Action: Seek appropriate management and monitoring of populations of this species on all protected sites. Management will include maintenance of skeletal soils and bare ground, together with periodic disturbance.
Action targets: 6. Recovery solutions trialled
Action type: Advice & support
Duration: >10 years
Scale of Implementation: Not applicable
High priority sites:
Comments: Management would need to be ongoing. Note that annual repetition of management would not be necessary, but that as only a small proportion of seed remains viable for more than 5 years within the seedbank, actions such as ground disturbance should be repeated at a 3-5 year frequency. Year-to-year fluctuations in population size are to be expected, but monitoring should show long-term maintenance or increase in the local population.
Key Action 2
Proposed Action: Identify a series of sites/areas/farmer clusters/landscapes across the species' geographic range where targeted management could be applied in order to increase the size and spread of local populations, and target these areas with suitable bespoke advice and support
Action targets: 6. Recovery solutions trialled
Action type: Advice & support
Duration: 3-5 years
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 10 sites
High priority sites:
Comments: Include sites on the edges of the species' range, to help maintain existing Extent of Occurrence.
Key Action 3
Proposed Action: Identify a series of sites across the species' geographic range where the species was last recorded between 20 and 50 years ago, and carry out appropriate ground disturbance on suitable substrates with the aim of restoring a population from the seed-bank.
Action targets: 6. Recovery solutions trialled
Action type: Habitat management
Duration: 2 years
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 10 sites
High priority sites:
Comments: Include sites on the edges of the species' range, to help maintain existing Extent of Occurrence.
Acknowledgment:
Data used on this website are adapted from Threatened species recovery actions 2025 baseline (JP065): Technical report and spreadsheet user guide (Natural England, 2025). Available here.