Help your local herbarium!

Volunteers mounting specimens at Univ Leicester
Image: L. Marsh

Regular readers of this blog will know that we have a passion for herbaria. If you don't know much about these collections of dried, pressed plants or why they are so useful, check out our Herbaria page where you'll find resources, videos and contact details to help you find - and maybe visit? - your local herbarium. They are incredibly important for all plant-lovers, whether you're carrying out research, interested in the history of plant collecting, or you're trying to improve your botanical skills and really want to get to grips with what a particular species looks like across the year and in all kinds of conditions. 

Ranee putting away specimens
 in the NHM Herbarium
Image courtesy of S. Knapp 

So when Sandy Knapp, Chair of BSBI's Board of Trustees and botanist at the Natural History Museum, London, got in touch with important information about how we can help our herbaria, we were keen to help spread the word!

Over to Sandy to tell us more:

"As botanists we all love to see plants in the field, there is nothing like it. But herbaria are essential resources for verification of occurrences, especially when taxonomic opinions change. David Pearman showed how important herbaria are for finding first records of alien species in our area and emphasised the key role small, local herbaria play in understanding our flora.

Herbaria of the world are recorded in the online resource Index Herbariorum maintained by the New York Botanical Garden. Here you can look up herbaria by country or acronym (all registered herbaria have a standard acronym – for example mine at the Natural History Museum is BM (from when we were the British Museum!) and Trinity College herbarium is TCD and so on). There has been increasing interest in digitising and providing online images of herbarium specimens – for example, Kew has embarked on a programme to digitally image the entire herbarium.

Digitising herbarium specimens
Image courtesy of S. Knapp

But it is not only the big collections that are important for understanding our British and Irish flora! Right now, in the UK we have a great opportunity, especially for small institutions. Sadly, Ireland is not a part of this local initiative, but future initiatives await (and there is a Europe-wide DiSSCo consortium from which the UK node sprang).

DiSSCo UK (Distributed System of Scientific Collections UK) is a national programme to digitally record  the UK’s natural history collections – herbaria included. DiSSCo UK seeks to become a one-stop, dynamic, openly available and easy-to-use e-science infrastructure, integrating digital access to UK natural science collections. Through a hub and spoke model of digitisation at national, regional and local levels DiSSCo will:

• Empower the UK network of collections through digitisation
• Enhance UK biodiversity and heritage information infrastructure
• Improve data quality
• Deliver relevant data

Folders full of herbarium specimens
Image courtesy of S. Knapp

The 10-year programme has been allocated funding from the UK government, and herbaria are among the first collections to be digitised – so the fun and benefit from having access to digital records of herbarium specimens will soon begin!

An Expression of Interest (EOI) for DiSSCo UK has been launched for organisations interested in participating in future DiSSCo UK digitisation funding calls and wider activities over the 10-year programme. We’d encourage all organisations with an interest in DiSSCo UK to participate, and the EOI will aid in connecting organisations with potential hubs to collaborate on funding calls

Prof Clive Stace in the Univ Leicester Herbarium
Image: L. Marsh

The EOI is a light touch process that should not require special preparation or research – completion time will depend on which questions are relevant to the submitting organisation but is estimated at 20-40 minutes. Submissions are via Citizen Space, an online survey platform. The survey can be found here. The closing date for submissions is Friday 21st March.

If you have any questions, please direct them to dissco-uk@nhm.ac.uk. If you encounter any difficulty using Citizen Space, please direct your query to infrastructure@ahrc.ukri.org. Our BSBI President, Paul Ashton, has registered his local herbarium’s interest – I encourage all BSBI members to contact their local collections and urge them to do the same!"

Many thanks to Sandy for sharing this important news. We'll be following developments as they unfold, so watch this space, and Sandy will be keeping BSBI members in the loop with a longer piece about DiSSCo and its role in helping herbaria in the autumn issue of BSBI News, our membership magazine. Let's get involved and show some love to our wonderful herbaria!

British & Irish Botany: issue 7.1 published

Open limestone pavement  at Ingleborough,
Yorkshire, showing the clint and grike structure
 Image: C.Stevens

We've just published the latest issue of British & Irish Botany, the Botanical Society's online Open Access scientific journal. This issue contains six papers which we think will be of interest to botanists across Britain and Ireland.

First up is a paper by Carly Stevens called 'More evidence gaps than grikes: how limestone pavements havefallen through the cracks of British conservation' in which the author considers the various factors which may have contributed to the poor condition of British limestone pavements. This paper will be essential reading for anyone involved in the conservation of this internationally important habitat, which can support such a rich array of wild flowers.

Charlotte Grace O’Brien in 1894.
Image: Anthony O'Brien

From Ireland, Sylvia Reynolds (until recently, BSBI County Recorder for Co. Limerick) offers a fascinating account of the botanical interests and the many and various achievements of her great-grandaunt Charlotte Grace O'Brien. It's always a delight to read about eminent C19th female botanists, who managed to achieve great things - often in the face of adversity - and Sylvia's engaging writing style makes this a particularly enjoyable read.

Our third paper sees Tim Rich and Libby Houston, two of the authors of the BSBI Handbook on Whitebeams, Rowans and Service Trees of Britain and Ireland, make a number of new combinations in Sorbus, in preparation for the highly anticipated second edition. The first edition is currently out of print, although it is available as an eBook (as are all our BSBI Handbooks and a selection of other titles too).

Next up, a paper by the aptly named Caroline Plant et al. considers new records of New Zealand Pigmyweed Crassula helmsii in two Irish lakes; these records indicate a continued spread from east to west on the island of Ireland, since the first records of this invasive non-native plant in 1984.

Oxalis corniculata depicted by L’Obel (1576)
Image courtesy of the Linnean Society

From Chris Preston and David Pearman - two very well-known names in botanical circles, and frequent contributors to British & Irish Botany - we have an account of the first British record of Procumbent Yellow-Sorrel Oxalis corniculata in the late C15th. This plant has gone on to attain worldwide distribution, and Preston & Pearman tell the story of the British botanists who first described it in Britain and observed the explosive method of seed dispersal which helped it proliferate.

Finally, we have an account from Tim Rich of a new Lake District endemic, Lesser-leaved hawkweed Hieracium subangustatum, which was formerly treated as the Norwegian H. angustatum. This latest paper by Tim, author of many such contributions to this journal and several BSBI Handbooks, adds to the already considerable BSBI resources on hawkweeds. 

We hope you enjoy reading this latest issue of British & Irish Botany and as always, if you have an idea for a submission, do feel free to get in touch with us to talk through your idea. If it's about the vascular plants of Britain and Ireland, we'll be keen to hear from you. 

New Year Plant Hunt 2025: Day Four

Early Dog-violet spotted by
BSBI trustee Dr Trevor Dines
on his Hunt in North Wales 

The sun has set on the fourth and final day of BSBI's fourteenth New Year Plant Hunt so it's time to say a huge thank you to everyone who took part and to take a bit of an overview of how things have gone so far. 

The Hunt has been hugely popular, from the very first record which pinged in just after midnight on Sunday, to Olly Lynch Milner's Hunt by torch light tonight - he didn't think he'd have time to do a Hunt but in the end he just couldn't resist...

The Results website shows that more than 20,000 records have been submitted so far from 1,666 surveys, with the total number of different species recorded so far standing at 610. Of course not all the results are in yet - people have until midnight on Sunday 5th January to send us any outstanding records. 

This was the first year when people have been able to submit their records using the BSBI recording app which we launched to BSBI members last summer after several years of consultation and development. All the New Year Plant Hunt records went, via the app, into a separate "fenced-off" part of the BSBI Distribution Database - it's one of the largest such databases in the world, currently holding more than 56 million plant records, many of which fed into Plant Atlas 2020. Most people found the app easy to use, while the feedback we received from people who weren't so keen has helped us to make a few small tweaks.

Young plant-hunter Theo was
chuffed to find his first daisy of the year!
Image M. Harding

Another new thing this year was that we have expanded onto a some new social media platforms which allowed us to reach more audiences - and more diverse audiences -  than ever before. There were New Year Plant Hunt videos on TikTok and posts on Bluesky, augmenting our more established presence on Instagram, Twitter, Threads and Facebook. 

New Year Plant Hunt founders Tim Rich and Sarah Whild, who did the very first Plant Hunt back in 2012, have been very active on our New Year Plant Hunt (private) Facebook group which the fabulous Moira (aka Nature Lark) set up and administers for us. They sent these messages to all this year's hunters: 

Sarah: "BSBI is hugely grateful to all of you energetic flower spotters for giving up valuable mince-pie munching time to count flowering plants in every corner of Britain and Ireland. Thanks for turning our mad dash round Cardiff in 2012 into an annual significant record collecting event, recruiting fresh new botanical faces AND making a contribution to our understanding of climate change impact on flowering plants".

Tim & his team with Corsican Hellebore,
found on their Hunt in Pagham
Image: T. Rich

Tim: "The number of botanists out recording over New Year never ceases to amaze me, thank you. They braved the cold, the rain and the wind! And so did the flowers". 

Huge thanks to both of them for starting something so amazing! 

The Hunt is both a fun, joyous experience - being out in nature and looking for flowers - and a sobering one. Chris Gibson, whose superb photographs appear on the Plant Atlas website, voiced what many of us were thinking when he blogged about his list, the longest he had recorded in five years of the Hunt, saying "one should fall short of celebrating - many of these plants should not be flowering now, and are only doing so because of the harm we have inflicted upon our climate..." 

Sarah Watts, Chair of the
Mountain Woodland Action Group,
was chuffed to find Bell Heather blooming
up Glen Quoich in Deeside
 

Wendy Tagg, who has also been taking part in the Hunt for several years and has now joined the BSBI, used her blog to note that "For some species that I usually expect to find easily, I had to search really hard to find one or two blooms" - an experience that many others shared. 

A third Plant Hunter used her 'Inside the petri dish' blog to report on her "relish" at taking part and how "hugely useful" she found our spotter sheet. She also called the BSBI "awesome" but we couldn't possibly comment ;-)

As the Hunt has grown, so has the Support Team! This year there were 21 of us working shifts across the four days: identifying tricky plants, promoting the Hunt across all our social media platforms, helping people with data entry and answering questions from hunters. One question that kept coming up was, does this plant count as wild, or naturalised, or is it planted and therefore can't be included on a Plant Hunt list? This can be a grey area so it was very helpful to be able to point people to our Definitions page. 

Joni Cook, Secretary of 
BSBI Events & Comms Committee,
 has done superb work on the Support Team!
Great that she managed to nip out
and do a quick Hunt  in NW Leics today -
14 species inc the above 

Lots of people said that the Hunt is a "lovely way to start the New Year" and they expressed a desire to see, and learn more about, our wonderful wildflowers over the coming months. 

We're reminding everyone about our plant ID resources (many of which are absolutely free) and the short training courses on offer both from BSBI and from external providers - although these are not free, anyone can apply for a BSBI training grant of up to £250 to help cover the costs. Application forms are here and the deadline to apply is end of January. 

Once we've received everyone's Plant Hunt records - and a reminder that the deadline is midnight this Sunday, 5th January - we'll analyse the results and report back here. 

Until then, we'd just like to say a huge thank you again to all of you for taking part and helping the BSBI build up and deepen our knowledge of how wild and naturalised plants across Britain and Ireland are responding to a rapidly changing climate, with all the knock-on effects that may have for the many species of wildlife that depend on our plants. Collecting robust evidence and understanding what's going on is essential for us as we work with other organisations to do something about it.

New Year Plant Hunt 2025: Day Three

Day Three of this year's New Year Plant Hunt and with the Met Office forecasting heavy rain and strong winds on the way, the race was on to get out and hunt for wild or naturalised plants in bloom across Britain and Ireland. By the end of the day, the Results website was showing more than 15,000 records from 1,195 separate Hunts, and 546 different species recorded so far. Matt Harding, BSBI Scotland Officer, led a Hunt in Stirling and has sent a short report and some tips for Plant Hunters, but first I'd like to feature a couple of inspirational young botanists who are causing quite a stir.

One of our favourite photos from last year's New Year Plant Hunt was of Michael Jones' daughter Ezri, then aged just eight months old, examining one of our newly-launched spotter sheets. We're delighted to report that a year on, Ezri is still enjoying her botany (particularly white and purple flowers) and has graduated to the more targeted 'England's Top 20' spotter sheet (image above right). As proud dad Michael says, the New Year Plant Hunt is a "fab family thing to do".

Our other botanical Hunt Heroine is Ada, who James told you about in last night's blogpost. She was out plant hunting again today with proud dad Dan Ryan and her fashion sense is causing as much of a stir as her botanical expertise. 

Whether she's examining Three-Cornered Leek (image on left), checking out a patch of sweet-smelling Winter Heliotrope or zooming in on a Daisy, with her fabulous 'winged unicorn' coat, teamed with colourful leggings and a selection of bobble hats, Ada's status as a style icon is now firmly established and we are all upping our game to try to be more like Ada. 

But the New Year Plant Hunt isn't just about inspirational young female botanists - it's also about the dogs and horses who join us on our Hunts and oh yes, it's also about the plants - I haven't forgotten them! 

In Ireland, Oisin and Mairead reported "slim pickings" on their Hunt up in Donegal but down in Cork City, where it's considerably warmer, Finbarr notched up 46 species, including Common Whitlow-grass and Greater Burnet-Saxifrage. 

Botanists in Cornwall, with the 'seaside version'
of Wild Carrot in the foreground
Image: Dave Steere

Lizzie found 29 species in bloom in Ammanford, West Wales; in South Wales, Peter spotted Lesser Celandine in bloom and in mid-Wales, Hilary did her first ever Hunt and decreed it "a great end to a good year". 

Notable finds in England today included Sea Campion and Rock Samphire in Cornwall; Hemlock in Kent; Annual Bugloss near London; Sweet Violets and Snapdragons in Cambridge; Annual Knawel in Bedfordshire and Small Nettle in Whitby 

Further north the weather was less kind to plant hunters - it was "blowing a hoolie" in the Borders - but let's go over to BSBI Scotland Officer Matt Harding for his update:

Rosy Cress in Stirling today
Image: Matt Harding

"Seven hardy souls braved the biblical forecast, and after a grotty first hour were rewarded with blue skies, flowers galore and a wind that nearly blew us off the top of the Stirling volcanic plug.

We managed to search out a whopping 45 species in flower, beating our 2024 total by three species! This total might be the work of a moment as you potter along the Dorset coastline, but in Scotland is quite a result. Last year the average Plant Hunt list in Scotland was six species long…

Compared to last year, we missed several larger-leaved species that the recent frosts had knocked back, e.g. Hawkweeds, Prickly Sow-thistle, Red Valerian and Scentless Mayweed. However, these were more than compensated for by new finds such as Henbit Dead-nettle, a locally scarce species, Canadian Fleabane, a recent colonist, Sticky Groundsel and Barren Strawberry.

Matt's Top Tips for Plant Hunting in Scotland (and beyond?):

• Head for the towns and cities: The urban heat island effect is incredibly helpful for prolonging flowering times. It’s all very well walking through beautiful countryside with glorious mountain views, but chances are you’ll just have Gorse to show for your efforts.
• Go for grotty spots: The most productive areas are often sheltered corners of wasteland, lurking behind walls, along road verges etc. If it is the kind of spot that will have Annual Meadow-grass, Petty Spurge, Groundsel, Thale Cress and Smooth Sow-thistle), then there is a pretty good chance that some or all of them will still be in flower, mixed in with the abandoned bottles of Buckfast. Don’t forget to check the walls as well – species such as Yellow Corydalis and Wood Meadow-grass can be spotted, as well as more familiar species like Ivy-leaved Toadflax.
• Do some prep: Build in some poking around time during your Christmas shopping, to reccie likely spots. This year a little preparation in the run-up to Christmas allowed us to focus on more productive wasteland corners and car park margins, and avoid previously rewarding spots that had been stripped of flowers by the recent frosts. I also spotted Rosy Cress in bud in early December on King’s Park walls on the edge of Stirling, and a quick visit on New Year’s Eve revealed one plant in rather glorious flower for the Plant Hunt.
• Think about aspect and potential sun traps: In Stirling, the Back Walk consists of a rising path below basalt cliffs facing south-west, sheltered by woodland on one side and the old town walls on the other, creating optimum conditions for late flowerers. This is always a productive area for our Plant Hunts, with highlights including Hare’s-foot Clover, Holly and Ivy, otherwise in bud, are good bets for flowering along this section
• Get a group going: The more pairs of eyes, the more you will spot.
• Above all, look closely: It’s surprising how many flowers have visible stamens when you double-check with a hand lens".

Thanks Matt! So, if you're going out plant hunting tomorrow for our fourth and final day of this year's New Year Plant Hunt, do follow Matt's tips, do check the weather forecast (and the Group Hunts listing if you were planning to join a group Hunt, just in case it had to be cancelled due to bad weather) and finally, do use the BSBI recording app to upload your records. 

Good luck, Happy New Year and we hope to see you back here tomorrow night for our final round-up.

New Year Plant Hunt 2025: Day Two

James (in green) and NHSN botanists
 ready for their Hunt at St. Peter's today
Image: Matt Williamson

For tonight's round-up of New Year Plant Hunt results across Britain and Ireland, I'm handing over to the fabulous James Common. James is one of BSBI's County Recorders for North Northumberland and works as Senior Naturalist with the Natural History Society of Northumbria (NHSN). His main interest is urban plants and he is currently working on an urban Flora covering Newcastle and North Tyneside. If you attended last year's British & Irish Botanical Conference, you'll have met James: NHSN co-hosted that event, at University of Newcastle, and James' presentation on the urban flora of Newcastle was one of the day's highlights. 

So without further ado, over to James:

"Today marked Day Two of the fourteenth New Year Plant Hunt (NYPH), with botanists from all corners of Britain and Ireland flocking outdoors to find, record, and importantly, enjoy the wide variety of wild and naturalised plants to be found in bloom during winter.

Pale Pink-Sorrel spotted on today's Hunt
Image: James Common

As an enthusiastic follower of BSBI’s New Year Plant Hunt, it has been inspiring to see so many people engaging with the project on social media and even better to peruse the wonderful lists shared from what seems like every corner of Britain and Ireland. From Thurso in Caithness all the way south to Scillies, how fantastic it is to see the NYPH making a difference on a national scale and growing larger with each passing year.

Once again, today there have been some impressive totals shared. Take Helen Dignum and team’s list from coastal Pagham, West Sussex, where 66 species were spotted in bloom including natives such as Sea Samphire and opportunistic neophytes including Corsican Hellebore. As Louise Marsh mentioned yesterday, mild coastal areas tend to yield more species at this time of year - further demonstrated by Dennis Kell’s list from Felixstowe where exotics in bloom included Sicilian Chamomile and Seaside Daisy.

Narrow-leaved ragwort at St. Peter's
with passing botanists
Image: Matt Williamson

Big lists were not restricted to coastal areas, however. Over in County Limerick, Paul Murphy and the Raheem Ramblers notched up an impressive 59 species including White Ramping-fumitory, and in Newcastle, a group from the Natural History Society of Northumbria led by yours truly managed 57 species along the banks of the Tyne. These included surprises such as Black Horehound and Viper’s-bugloss, and new arrivals to the region in Guernsey Fleabane and Narrow-leaved Ragwort. As you’ll see from the group shot (above right), it was great to have local people of all ages, backgrounds and experience levels along for the trip – that’s what the NYPH is all about!

Black Horehound
Image from Plant Atlas 2020
Image: Chris Gibson & Rob Still

Down south in Peterborough (please bear in mind a Geordie is writing this) a list shared by Sarah Lambert demonstrated perfectly the diversity of urban areas with neophytes such as Hare’s-tail, Sweet Alison and Narrow-leaved Ragwort blooming alongside hardy natives in Round-leaved Crane’s-bill and Butcher’s-broom. This and other submissions from towns and cities across the Britain and Ireland contrast starkly with those from rural areas where neophytes can be rather hard to come by. This contrast was noted in the results of in last year’s survey (available here).

Large lists and rare plants are not the aim of the NYPH, equally important is the chance to spend time in nature and connect with the natural world, often in good company. So many examples of this have been shared over on social media that it is difficult to keep track but a couple of things that made me smile when researching for this post included Debbie Alston’s Butcher’s-broom (and super afternoon tea) in Eastbourne, East Sussex and Charlotte Rankin’s fun day out with the team from Cumbria Wildlife Trust (image below left).

Six-year-old botanist Ada getting
 to grips with Winter Heliotrope
Image: Dan Ryan

Dan Ryan also shared some glorious pictures of himself and six-year-old botanist, Ada, enjoying Winter Heliotrope and lots more beside on their local walk. Incidentally, one simply has to compliment Ada on her floral fashion sense. Such is also the case with NYPH stalwart, Moira O’Donnell, too whose botanical boots are sure to bring a smile to your face on a dreary winter’s day.

It is always interesting to keep an eye on the most ‘frequent plants’ observed as part of the survey. Often there are some changes from year to year as different species react to variable weather conditions. Interestingly, so far this year, the top seven plants observed by botanists mirror exactly those from last year. It is only after that that changes become apparent with Yarrow dropping six places to number fourteen on the list. Hazel too has fallen a few places and sightings of Smooth Hawk’s-beard are scarcer this time around – indeed, it has been conspicuously absent from both NYPH walks I have attended here in the North East. I wonder how this will change as more lists are submitted over the coming days?

Staff and volunteers from Cumbria Wildlife Trust
 on their New Year Plant Hunt
- with one of our New Year Plant Hunt
spotter sheets! 
Image: Charlotte Rankin

At the time of writing this, 645 surveys have taken place so far in just two days, revealing 466 species of wild and naturalised plants in bloom this winter and representing no less than 8602 valuable botanical records. Whilst great fun, the survey serves an important role by drawing attention to how our flora is adapting to changing weather patterns. It would be amazing to think that with your help, the fourteenth New Year Plant Hunt could be the biggest yet. You can do it…"

Huge thanks to James for this round-up! James' blog about his wildlife finds in North East England is well worth a read and you can follow his wildlife posts (always illustrated by some great photos) on Twitter and on Bluesky. You can also book now for the Botanical Skills webinar on Cotoneasters which that James is giving for BSBI on 28th January.

Good luck to tomorrow's plant hunters and let's catch up again here tomorrow to check out what they found where!

New Year Plant Hunt 2025: Day One

Today was the first day of the BSBI's fourteenth New Year Plant Hunt, when thousands of botanists head out to look for wild or naturalised plants in bloom in midwinter. 

It was wonderful to see plant records flooding in to our Results website, from plant hunters across Britain and Ireland: whether 48 species recorded on Jersey (the southernmost Hunt of the day) or seven records from chillier Inverness (the northernmost). 

As always, coastal areas yielded more species: 81 species, including a gorgeous Fumitory (below left) recorded by the Norfolk Flora Group Team B, currently in pole position on the list of Longest Lists. Down in Mevagissey in Cornwall, where the weather was mild enough for some plant-hunters to wear shorts, Dan Ryan's team notched up 78 species, including some "arable lovelies" against a stunning backdrop (on right) and he declared the Hunt "the best event of the year". 

Over in Portaferry, Co. Down, Graham Day - who has recently published an excellent new Rare Plant Register - recorded 57 species, including Stinking Chamomile, Tall Ramping-Fumitory, Shrub Ragwort and the invasive Three-cornered Leek. The Glamorgan Botany Group, which included star botanist Tim Rich, one of the two original New Year Plant Hunters (along with the fabulous Sarah Whild) and winner of our latest 'Outstanding Contribution to British & Irish Botany' award, found 72 species in bloom, including five different Speedwells as well as three delicious edible plants  - Fennel, Wild Parsnip and Wild Carrot - which we assume they weren't tempted to forage! 

But the Hunt isn't just about long lists: the aim is to find out how our plants are responding to a rapidly changing climate, with warmer wetter autumns and winters, and fewer frosts, so the reports from people who went out hunting and found very few, or no species at all, in bloom are just as important. The BSBI recording app makes it possible to report 'nil records' and that all goes into the mix when we come to analyse the results.

The Hunt is also about blowing the cobwebs away and enjoying getting out in nature, whether with friends and family, on your own (to enjoy some quiet time after a busy Christmas), or on one of an ever-growing selection of Group Hunts. Kim, Shane and their team enjoyed a "happy morning" on their group hunt in Portrane, County Dublin and found 18 species in flower including Tree Mallow. BSBI Chief Exec Julia Hanmer had a "fantastic" day out hunting with the Gloucester Naturalists and Tristan Norton in Southampton reported a "satisfying" New Year Plant Hunt, with 34 species in bloom including Musk Stork's-bill and Sea Mayweed. 

There were fewer wild plants in bloom inland, although the recent mild weather meant that many of us following the same routes as on previous years' Hunts recorded way more species this year. Markus and Nadine were out in Brightwell, near Wallingford, and logged a "personal best" of 52 species including Great Mullein, Sweet Violet and Stone Parsley. The South Lincs. Flora Group notched up 48 species in Sleaford, including Grey Willow and Upright Hedge-parsley. 

I was out in inner city Leicester (on left) with our urban botany group, where 15 of us recorded 43 species in bloom, twice as many as we found following the same route last year after heavy frost. We also came across a patch of verge with three species in bloom which haven't been recorded at all in that 1km x 1km square for eight years: Field Madder, Eastern Rocket and Yellow Oat-grass. 

There's nothing like a New Year Plant Hunt for teaching you something new about an area you thought you knew like the back of your hand! Thanks also to three members of Leicester Friends of the Earth (above right) who joined us to compare notes on how our wild plants are responding to climate change and the knock-on effects this might have for all our wildlife. BSBI is not a campaigning organisation but our data underpin nature conservation projects across Britain and Ireland. 

Many people reported seeing the 'usual suspects' in bloom - the species that feature in the list of most frequently-recorded plants and which we put onto our spotter sheets, to help people just getting started with plant-spotting. 

There were a few surprises though - for example, both Debbie & Dave Alston in East Sussex and James Common in Newcastle found Viper's Bugloss (on right) in flower. We'd usually see that flowering in late summer and presumably it hadn't been knocked back by frost so it just kept right on blooming. In previous years we've found that more than half the species recorded during the Hunt are in this category, late bloomers who have kept going - will that be the case again this time? We won't know for sure until all the data are in. 

The first day of the Hunt is usually fairly quiet but even so, by the end of the day, we had received more than 4,200 records from 300 Hunts, and 368 species had been recorded in total. What will tomorrow bring? Watch this space!

British & Irish Botany: issue 6.2 published

We have just published the latest issue of British & Irish Botany, the BSBI's online, Open Access scientific journal. This new issue of the journal, with Stuart Desjardins (University of Leicester) now firmly bedded-in as Editor-in-Chief, features six papers which we are confident will be of interest to botanists across Britain and Ireland.

Sambucus canadensis x nigra
Image: A. Amphlett

First up is a paper by Andy Amphlett, joint BSBI County Recorder for Easterness, of a hybrid Elder reported from four locations in northern Scotland. There are no other confirmed reports of hybrid Elders in Britain or Ireland, so this is exciting! We all know the common native Elder Sambucus nigra but S. canadensis, the other parent of this newly-recorded hybrid, is a scarce alien in the UK and isn’t known at all from Ireland. Andy’s paper is beautifully illustrated with photographs showing the diagnostic characters of both parents and their offspring, and he has prepared helpful tables comparing the diagnostic features, making it much easier for any of us to go out hunting for this new hybrid.

Next up we have a paper from David Wilkinson and Janet O’Regan about the life and work of Emily Margaret Wood, a pioneering C19th botanist, illustrator and ceramicist. In her short life – she died at the age of just 42 – she made a huge contribution to botany and other natural sciences in the Liverpool area.

Emily Margaret Wood's
orchid illustrations for the
Flora of Liverpool
Image courtesy of
Wirral  Libraries

Our third paper, by Dan Minchin and colleagues, tells the remarkable story of buoyant bindweed seeds traveling thousands of miles across the North Atlantic. Starting their journey in the Americas, these drift seeds ended up stranded on a beach on the southwest coast of Ireland. Five seeds with a similar outward appearance were collected from St Finnan’s Bay (Co. Kerry) and, despite their long journey, three were successfully germinated and grown into plants. Scientists at the Natural History Museum in London then extracted DNA from their leaves and used barcoding techniques to identify them. The seeds were found to belong to the exotic Ipomoea tiliacea (Convolvulaceae), which is the first recorded instance of this species demonstrating such long-distance dispersal.

This article builds on Dan’s earlier work from 2023, which documented the first record of seed from the pan-tropical Yellow Water Pea Vigna luteola washing up on a European shore. Botanists along the coast are encouraged to be on the lookout for both of these taxa. While there is currently little evidence that these distant propagules can become established on our shores, they may represent future additions to our flora, particularly as our climate continues to warm. 

For those wanting to explore this interesting topic further, the BSBI Handbook on exotic drift seeds and fruits stranded on beaches in north-western Europe is now available as an eBook.

Clematis vitalba invading fixed dunes on
the Sefton Coast
Image: P. Smith

The fourth contribution is from Phil Smith who reports on how Traveller’s-joy Clematis vitalba has become invasive on the Sefton Coast sand-dunes. As its Plant Atlas entry shows, this widely naturalised garden plant has expanded its range in recent years, especially in western and northern Britain and Ireland, and especially in ruderal habitats and on base-rich soils. Phil’s paper sets out the impact this plant is having on both fixed and semi-fixed dune habitats, and discusses the various control methods being trialled, both on the Sefton Coast and in New Zealand where biological control has also been attempted.

Next up we have an account from Tim Rich of an Endangered hawkweed, Hieracium mammidens, from south-east England. This latest paper by Tim, author of many such contributions to this journal and several BSBI Handbooks, adds to the already considerable BSBI resources on hawkweeds. But Tim turns his attention to many other taxa apart from hawkweeds; check out the video of his talk at the recent BSBI AGM about his research into Wild Asparagus. Tim was invited to give this talk in recognition of his becoming this year’s recipient of the BSBI Award for Outstanding Contribution to British and Irish botany.

NHM Herbarium specimen of
Campanula medium collected in 
Edinburgh, 1841

Our final paper in this issue is from Chris Dixon, Curator of British and Irish Seed Plants at the British & Irish Herbarium in the Natural History Museum (NHM), London. Chris is also BSBI Vice-County Recorder for East Gloucestershire and his paper ‘Bellflowers as bellwethers’ draws together these two parts of his botanical life. He asks ‘how many unappreciated early records are there in herbarium collections?’ and compares recently-digitised specimens of bellflowers (the family Campanulaceae) from the NHM Herbarium against first vice-county records in the BSBI Distribution Database (to which BSBI members have access) in order to demonstrate how herbarium specimens, when cross-referenced with BSBI’s plant records, can lead us to a fuller understanding of the British and Irish flora. The value of herbaria has long been under-appreciated but it seems the tide may be turning.

We already have nine papers in the pipeline for issue 7.1, coming to you early next year, and we are always keen to hear from any botanists interested in submitting a manuscript. We’re especially keen to help students and early-career botanists looking to publish their first paper in a scientific journal – we can guide you through the process and help you learn the ropes! Here are the subject areas we cover and here are the submission guidelines, or you can email me and Stuart if you'd rather have an informal chat before submitting. But for now, we hope you will enjoy this latest issue of British & Irish Botany.