In June 2014, our monitoring of Starfruit (Damasonium polyspermum) in the temporary marshes of the Tour du Valat Regional Natural Reserve enabled us to discover a rare species near one of these ponds, Bird’s-foot Clover (Trifolium ornithopodioides), which up until 2013 was considered to have disappeared from the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) Region.
The Bird’s-foot Clover in April 2015 in the Tour du Valat Estate (© D. Cohez / Tour du Valat)
This small Atlantic-Mediterranean clover is an amphibious species found in temporary ponds and grasslands with a low degree of salinity, mainly along the coast. It was observed in the 1960s in two places in the Camargue, where it had not been seen again since that time. In 2014, the species was also discovered in the Var in the town of Ramatuelle. Extremely rare in the Mediterranean region with only two populations in Languedoc-Roussillon and two others in the PACA Region, it is more common on the Atlantic coast, where there are over one hundred stands of it.
Bloming in April 2015 at the Ramatuelle station, in the Var Department (© J. C. Arnoux / Conservatoire Botanique National Méditerranéen)
This small clover is one more addition to the impressive range of rare species present in the temporary ponds of the Tour du Valat Regional Natural Reserve [1], showing they are in good condition. Particularly numerous at the Tour du Valat, these habitats are highly threatened in the Mediterranean Basin, where their conservation is a priority in the European Wild Fauna and Flora Habitats Directive (1992).
Contact: Damien Cohez (e-mail) [2], Deputy Director of the Tour du Valat Estate, and Nicole Yavercovski (e-mail [3]), Research Assistant