The descriptive text, below the map, is from the Cornish Red Data Book (2009). The map on this web page depicts the organisms distribution and shows the records made pre-2000 and those made since.
Range & Status
Discovered in E. Cornwall in 2007, the only record of the species in Europe although there is an old specimen from Tenerife (Holyoak, in press). It has a wide range in the tropics and subtropics, including Gulf States of the U.S.A., C. and S. America, Africa, India, SE. Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaiian Islands and many other Pacific islands.
Regional Distribution
Known only from a small area at the edge of Retire Common.
Habitat & Ecology
Grows on disturbed, open, stony ground used for car parking at the edge of a track and inside a cattle-grid across the track. B. apiculatum is a weed of open habitats that is most likely to have arrived in Cornwall on soil attached to a vehicle.
Threats
The site is at least partly in the edge of a SSSI. Potential threats include resurfacing of the track or parking area or renovation of the cattle-grid on which it grows.
Conservation
The extensive range of the species and its occurrence as a ruderal elsewhere imply this should not be a conservation priority. However, the presence of several scattered patches of it at Retire Common imply that it has persisted there for some years, so that it may prove to be more than just a temporary casual occurrence.
I.J. Bennallick, S. Board, C.N. French, P.A. Gainey, C. Neil, R. Parslow, A. Spalding and P.E. Tompsett. eds. 2009. Red Data Book for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. 2nd Edition.Croceago Press.
The Cornish Red Data Book Project was led by the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Federation for Biological Recorders (CISFBR). The full text and species accounts (minus the maps) are available on the CISFBR website.