Conservationists have moved 3,400 one-flowered wintergreen plants away from an eroding shoreline in Scotland’s Culbin Forest, seeking to protect a species already in steep decline.
Plantlife Scotland said in a Nov. 10 announcement that about two to three meters of shorefront land had collapsed into the sea over the preceding few years. The group worked with Forestry and Land Scotland, NatureScot and volunteers to move the plants to another site within Culbin Forest in Moray. The announcement did not specify when the move took place.
In the UK, one-flowered wintergreen grows in pine woods in northeast Scotland. Plantlife Scotland says an estimated more than half of the species’ UK population has been lost over 50 years. It remains at seven Scottish sites, only three of which have healthy populations.
Workers transported sections of soil with the plants to carry fungal networks that support their survival and germination. Plantlife said the flower can obtain energy from woodland fungi as well as through photosynthesis.
Plantlife links the species’ decline to changes in forest management and to hotter, drier conditions that reduce soil moisture. Moving the Culbin plants addressed the more immediate threat from erosion at their shorefront site.
A smaller relocation provides an earlier result, though it cannot establish how the Culbin plants will fare. In a 2024 release, Plantlife reported that 70% of plants moved from Roseisle Forest and Old Grantown Wood to RSPB Abernethy had survived after nine months.
NatureScot biodiversity adviser Iain Macdonald said the team does not yet know how many of the Culbin plants will survive. The plants will be monitored over the coming months and years, with the first useful signs of whether the new site suits them expected after about a year.
