Llanelli Naturalists Newsletter - May 2002 - No 68
Richard Pryce

In late 2001 Viv and Tony Lewis excitedly phoned to report that they had found a few plants of what they suspected might be Chaffweed (Anagallis minima) at a site near Pont Bacas, Bynea.  Kath and I duly spent some time in the mud and cold photographing tiny plants which to my mind could have been one of several annual species but having never before seen Chaffweed, let alone in an immature state, we were not even convinced that we were looking at “Viv and Tony’s plants”!  At the first Llanelli Naturalists meeting of 2002 they told us that they had been back and marked the plants with stones and told us exactly how many paces to count from easily recognisable landmarks. A few days later we were back again and their plants were the ones we had photographed previously but were no more convincing as Chaffweed than before!  After several more photographs and mutterings along the lines of ‘b… good eyesight, that’s all I can say’ we left feeling very grateful that  Viv and  Tony are so keen to spend so much time botanising in Carmarthenshire. At the first opportunity I showed some of the photos to some leading botanists at a BSBI Records Committee meeting in London and not one would commit themselves to confirming Chaffweed - or any other identification, for that matter!

In mid April, Tony phoned to say that Viv and he had recently revisited the site, found the plants to be flowering and that they were not Chaffweed at all, but American Speedwell (Veronica peregrina), a small alien weed most common in the UK in Northern Ireland, a new plant to Carmarthenshire.  So this identification stands for the present, awaiting confirmation by George Hutchinson at the National Museum in Cardiff… unless he tells us different!