Bastard Toadflax is the only native member of the Sandalwood (Santalaceae) family found in Britain. It is a very small plant which means it can often be overlooked. Bastard means false, as does the word toad in front of flax. Its strange name therefore means false false flax!
It is a very small, procumbent plant with stems rarely longer than 20cm. The stems and leaves are fleshy and yellow green with long linear leaves. The flowers are small (3-4mm) and are rather like small stars! Their yellow- white flowers have obvious white sepals. It flowers from June to the end of August and fruits until late September. It is a perennial.
Bastard Toadflax is found on dry calcareous grassland. The plant appears to prefer short turf and warm soil with some disturbance that will keep the turf short, such as grazing.
Unusually it is a Hemiparasite, which means that it is a root parasite of other calcareous grassland plants. It uses their roots to obtain water and nutrients form the soil. The Bastard toadflax does have chlorophyll to capture the energy of the sun to use to make sugars. However because it is using the roost of other plants it can devote more energy to seed production.
Bastard Toadflax is nationally scarce and is only recorded from less than 100 ten km squares in Britain and Ireland. It is generally a southern species found from Dorset in the west to central Kent in the east. It extends as far north as Herfordshire and Worcestershire. There are two outlying populations, including the ones found in Cambridgeshire. The other is found further north in south-west Lincolnshire, where it is at its northern most extreme European range.
Bastard Toadflax can be seen on Fleam Dyke in the more well established chalk grassland sections where it occupies the shorter turf. Work for this species at present mainly focuses on monitoring its population levels to ensure its continued presence at the site. At present it seems to be doing well and is gradually expanding the area it covers.
Find out about what's been seen on our sightings page, or take a look at details of some of the projects and sites that we work on.