A RARE plant which may medieval origins has been spotted flourishing in Tavistock ? the only place in the country in which it can be found. Dartmoor National Park ranger Roger Hutchins, who is also a naturalist and botanist, said he had only recently discovered the interesting fact that the Tavistock Hawkweed ? Hieracium Medium ? can only be found in West Devon in the UK. Mr Hutchins said: ?It is unique to the town. It grows mainly from the walls along Glanville Road and Watts Road and the best place to see it is at the Madge Lane steps leading from Bannawell Stree. ?I knew we had a rare hawkweed but had no idea it was named after Tavistock. ?I thought it would be nice to let people know it?s there. Mr Hutchins believes the plant may have originated from the days when Tavistock Abbey still existed. It also grows in France and Spain, where monks would have travelled. The plant is a perennial herb with a 30 to 45cm stem, pale yellowish-green in colour, often suffused with brownish-purple. Its hairy leaves are medium yellowish-green, spotted and blotched with brownish-purple on the upper surfaces and paler beneath. It has two to nine branching flower heads, and the yellow flowers resemble dandelion heads. The hawkweed family as a whole is quite common. The Tavistock variety is said to resemble the Nipple-toothed Hawkweed, which also grows in the area, but the Tavistock variety has shorter, less toothed leaves. It is not the first time Mr Hutchins has spotted a rare species. Twenty years ago he found a fern on the disused railway track in Tavistock he did not recognise. He took it to a local botanist who identified it as a particular species of Brittle Bladder Fern. He had doubts over its identification, especially when it did not lose its leaves as it should have done in winter. A little while later he saw in a paper that a ?new? species of fern had been found beside the River Camel in Cornwall. He sent away fern samples from Tavistock for identification in London and confirmation came back that it was indeed the ?new? species ? but it was too late to claim he had discovered it!