Spring Sandwort (Minuartia verna)
Key Details
| Taxonomic Groups: | Vascular plant > flowering plant > Herbaceous plant |
| Red List Status: | Near Threatened (Not Relevant) [NT(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: | Sabulina verna |
| UKSI Recommended Authority: | (L.) Rchb. |
| UKSI Recommended Qualifier: | (none specified) |
| Red List Citation: | in Stroh et al., 2014 |
| Notes on taxonomy/listing: | Sabulina verna |
Criteria
| Question 1: | Does species need conservation or recovery in England? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | LC in England; a localised species with around 700 locations in England (based on the number of 100m grid cell records in the BSBI's database), recorded from The Lizard, Somerset, North Pennines, Yorkshire Dales, Lancashire and the Derbyshire Dales. Plant Atlas 2020 indicates a moderate long term decline for reasons that are largely unknown, but may include the loss of limestone grassland and the natural leaching of calaminarian sites making them less suitable for metallophytes such as Sabulina verna. |
| Question 2: | Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | A species that requires open sites on limestone with virtually no competition. It's ability to tolerate toxic levels of metals gives it a competitive advantage on many sites |
| 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: | No |
| Justification: | This species would not benefit from untargeted management |
Species Assessment
| Current step on the Species Recovery Curve (SRC): | 4. Autecology and pressures understood |
| Recovery potential/expectation: | Low - Life history factor/s |
| National Monitoring Resource: | Opportunistic - insufficient |
| Species Comments: | A difficult species to census given how widespread it is |
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Proposed Action: Undertake a targeted survey of calaminarian sites to establish key sites and its ecological requirements
Action targets: 3. National Monitoring Plan agreed and implemented
Action type: Status survey/review
Duration: 2 years
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 50 sites
High priority sites: Teesdale, Yorkshire Dales, Derbyshire
Comments:
Key Action 2
Proposed Action: Experimentally trial the use of regrading of heavy metal wastes to create suitable conditions for the reestablishment of populations of Sabulina and other metallophytes (e.g. Noccaea cearulescens)
Action targets: 5. Remedial action identified
Action type: Scientific research
Duration: 3-5 years
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 5 sites
High priority sites:
Comments: Would make a good PhD study
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.