BSBI at the 2024 International Botanical Congress in Madrid: Days 3&4

Following on from his first report from the XX International Botanical Congress in Madrid, we have another report from BSBI trustee, Richard Allanach. But first, a correction: we said that there were three people in the BSBI delegation: BSBI President Dr Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, Richard himself and fellow trustee Dr Sandy Knapp OBE, but Richard tells me that Prof Pete Hollingsworth CBE, Director of Science at RBG Edinburgh (and also a BSBI trustee), and Prof Paul Ashton, Professor of Botany at Edge Hill University and BSBI President-elect, are also attending the Congress. It's great to have such strong BSBI  representation at such an important event!

So, over to Richard for his latest report - and he also took the photos on this page:

"The issue of how Ireland was revegetated following the last Ice Age was one of the exciting topics addressed at the XX International Botanical Congress on Tuesday. Reviewing Ireland's tree species, Colin Kelleher of the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland, concluded that the majority of trees would have arrived from the continent via Britain. 

"It was left to BSBI President Micheline Sheehy Skeffington (image on left) and her research colleagues from the Universities of Corunna and Santiago de Compostela to reveal the origins of the Irish population of Arbutus unedo (the strawberry tree) which in all probability arrived with copper prospectors from the Iberian peninsula around 2000 BC. 

"Whilst this was news to the delegates at the Congress, BSBI members had advance notice of their findings: Micheline gave a short talk on her findings to the 2023 British and Irish Botanical Conference in Newcastle, and also published a paper in British & Irish Botany, the BSBI's online scientific journal.

"On Wednesday the XX International Botanical Congress's programme of talks, workshops and symposia stopped at lunchtime. For some delegates this was an opportunity to take a siesta in Madrid's sweltering 35 degree heat. However for many of the ardent young botanists attending - including four of the British delegation, workers at Kew Gardens and Sheffield University - it was just swapping one type of work for another and a chance to visit Madrid's Botanic Gardens. The three pictured (image on right) were examining the nut-like cones of Taxodium distichum, a much finer tree than its cousin, the all too common Leylandii. An example of a blooming international co-operation stemming from this Congress, we have (from left to right) a delegate from Spain, from Colombia and from Germany".

Many thanks to Richard for this latest report from Madrid. If you're also following latest updates on X/Twitter at #IBC2024, you may spot a few other notable British and Irish botanists/ BSBI members, including Dr Jonathan Mitchley, of Botanical University Challenge fame, and agricultural geneticist Prof Pat Heslop-Harrison; their Twitter accounts will keep you updated on what these luminaries are hearing, seeing and talking about at the Congress. 

BSBI at the 2024 International Botanical Congress in Madrid: Days 1&2

The Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland is honoured to support - and attend - the 20th International Botanical Congress in Madrid this week. 

Our President, Dr Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, and two of our trustees - Dr Sandy Knapp OBE and Richard Allanach - are present, and Richard has sent the following report and photographs from the first two days of the Congress:

"Three thousand botanists gathered together (image on right) in Madrid yesterday for the opening of the twentieth International Botanical Congress. The opening address was given by Sandra Knapp (image below left) of the Natural History Museum in London, who among many other roles is also a trustee of the BSBI. Sandra's title was 'Why Botany, Why Now?' She spoke for an hour throwing out ideas as rapidly as a bank of gorse throws out seeds on a warm summer's day. 

The International Botanical Congress only takes place every six years. The last event was in China and the next will be in South Africa. Botanists from Britain and Ireland make up the fourth largest delegation to the Congress.

The BSBI's poster (image below left) on our Plant Atlas 2020 project was unveiled at the XX International Botany Congress in Madrid on Monday. It immediately caught the interest of two passing specialists in the Droseraceae. The Australian botanist was interested in the contrast between the distribution of sundews in our islands and those in Australia. 

Whilst here sundews seem to prefer the wetter, colder areas where the botanist's boot sinks deep into the underlying bog, in Australia they have a much wider distribution with some establishing themselves on rocks where they are exposed to drought for months at a time. The word from our Trans-Atlantic sundew expert was that our Plant Atlas was 'cool'."

Many thanks to Richard for this report! Readers of this blog already know that Plant Atlas 2020 is very cool, but it's good to know that botanists from the other side of the world are in agreement. You can follow the latest news from the Congress on X under the #IBC2024 hashtag.

New pocket guide to British and Irish Wild Flowers and Plants

A new ID guide to the British and Irish flora has just been published in the WILDGuides series from Princeton University Press, who published both Plant Atlas 2020 and popular recent titles such as Britain's Orchids. 

British and Irish Wild Flowers and Plants: A Pocket Guide is available now, and covers more than 1,000 of our most common wild plants. It also features BSBI plant distribution maps (and the eagle-eyed among you will spot the BSBI logo on the book's cover!); the authors are Rachel Hamilton, Chris Gibson - both longstanding BSBI members and highly respected field botanists - and Rob Still, the man behind WILDGuides. With more than 3,000 colour photographs, plant descriptions and simple visual keys to families, the authors are confident that this new ID guide will provide a "springboard into the wider world of botanical identification".   

British and Irish Wild Flowers and Plants: A Pocket Guide retails at £12.99 and is available to purchase now from natural history booksellers such as Summerfield Books who are offering it for only £7.95 (excl. P&P). 

This softback book has 320 pages and weighs just over half a kilo, so it should slip nicely into the pocket of anyone keen to get started on identifying some of our commonest wild plants. If that's you, then why not give the book a go and leave a comment below telling us what you thought? Or, if you're already a seasoned botanist, this book might be the ideal present for you to give to any plant-loving friends keen to take the next step into plant ID! 

Pseudonyms and the BSBI Distribution Database

Bee Orchid Ophrys apifera
submitted on iNaturalist by 'hemipepsis'  

In this blogpost, BSBI Countries Manager James Harding-Morris sheds light on the issue of botanical recorders using pseudonyms Over to James:

"In the past, BSBI's County Recorders (VCRs) would largely receive records from a known network of individuals allowing a fine-tuned understanding of their botanical abilities. With the growth in recording technology (such as iRecord) this has allowed any enthusiast to generate biological records for any taxa. This increase in accessibility has allowed a broader range of people to take part in recording, but means that our approaches to working with this data need to evolve.

We are all familiar with the rule that a biological record is composed of four key parts; the Who, What, When and Where. When working with data from certain sources, however, some records are submitted under a pseudonym. This has led to some discussion around the treatment of pseudonyms on the BSBI’s Distribution Database (the DDb). To help VCRs make decisions on what data they chose to move into the DDb, we have drawn together some information into this blog post.

Sources of records with pseudonyms

Great Forget-me-not
Brunnera macrophylla
 

Pseudonymous records are most likely to be encountered when working with data submitted by the general public through iNaturalist and, to a lesser extent, iRecord. These records enter a separate holding pen on the DDb after a transfer and can be moved into the live DDb at VCR discretion. See full guidance on that process here.

To take "my" vice-county North Lincolnshire (VC54) as an example, the vast majority of records submitted via iRecord have been submitted with full, personal names. With iNaturalist, the incidence of pseudonyms is higher - perhaps 10% of records. These proportions may and probably will vary from county to county, but in my experience the records I have received from pseudonymous users are no less serious or valuable than those from people who appear to be using legal names. For example, the record I received of Brunnera macrophylla (on left) submitted on iNaturalist by 'giles63' - this is an unusual alien for VC54. 

A benefit of iNaturalist is that nearly all records will have an associated image, allowing the identification to be confirmed. Pseudonyms are also stable and unique - as in, a person will be associated with an unchanging name - and can allow development of a long-term perspective of a recorder’s ability.

Why do people use pseudonyms?

People may use pseudonyms online for a number of reasons:

Trailing Bellflower
Campanula poscharskyana
submitted on iNaturalist by 'biomel'

Internet safety: Young people, when first learning about internet safety, are told not to share personal identity data online. There are now generations of people who have grown up with this advice, making online pseudonyms second nature.

Uniqueness: Pseudonyms are unique. When registering for an online account, you can’t have the same name as someone else, which can compel people to use something other than their legal name. There is value in this, as pseudonyms tend to be stable and unique, unlike real names. Matt Harding, BSBI Scotland Officer, recently pointed out that there are a number of records on the DDb for ‘M. Harding,’ not all of which are his.

Protection of vulnerable people: Pseudonyms can protect the identities of vulnerable individuals or those responsible for them, who may not want to disclose their real names for personal or safeguarding reasons. This is something to be aware of when considering the use of pseudonyms in a public-facing forum such as iRecord or iNaturalist, where anyone with an account can see the names (or pseudonyms) of other recorders.

What are the risks of ignoring pseudonymous records?

The risk of trying to identify pseudonyms is that some people simply have names that might look like pseudonyms - Monte-Carlo, Dreamy, Alloy, Costly, Arwen and Eowyn could appear as unlikely real names but were all given to children in 2023. Conversely, the name Colin Robinson could appear a perfectly reasonable name but may actually be the pseudonym of a What We Do In the Shadows fan. Ignoring records with (perceived) pseudonyms runs the risk of accidentally excluding records from genuine recorders with unique or unusual names.

Colin Robinson (on right) alongside
 his other vampire companions 

Another risk is that valuable plant records could be missed. By simply discounting records on the basis of a pseudonym then unusual or exciting records could be eliminated before consideration.

Final points

Feedback mechanism: Working with records in the DDb holding pen does not (yet) allow feedback to the users of iRecord. However, if you or a member of your VCR team verify records within iRecord itself, there is an opportunity to exchange messages with users, which could include asking whether they’d be happy to provide a legal name - which they often are! Of course, given some of the reasons mentioned above, a few people may have a good rationale for remaining pseudonymous.

Support for record verification: If you would like to start verifying records in iRecord for your VC, or would like to find someone else to support you by verifying records, then please contact your Country Officer or email me, James Harding-Morris, who will support you in getting set up.

VCR discretion: VCRs have final say on which records enter the live DDb for their vice-county and hopefully this blogpost will support VCRs with that decision making process. That said, no records should be rejected on the basis of a pseudonym, and instead should be left in the ‘holding pen’ and not moved to the live DDb.

British & Irish Botany: issue 6.1 published

Dr Stuart Desjardins

We have just published the latest issue of British & Irish Botany, the BSBI's online, Open Access scientific journal. It's been six months since our previous issue, the final one with Ian Denholm at the helm as Editor-in-Chief. Work has been going on behind the scenes in recent months as Ian handed over to his successor, Dr Stuart Desjardins, an Early Career Fellow in Plant Biology at the University of Leicester. Stuart's research interests include plant molecular phylogenetics and taxonomy, as well as evolutionary processes such as speciation and hybridisation.

This new issue of the journal, with Stuart as Editor-in-Chief, features six papers which we are confident will be of interest to botanists across Britain and Ireland. 

First up is a paper by David Green (BSBI County Recorder for North Wiltshire from 1982 to 2003) describing the Wynd Cliff whitebeam; a new species of Aria (formerly Sorbus subg. Aria) endemic to the Wye Valley, Wales. Next is an account by Andy Amphlett, joint BSBI County Recorder for Easterness, of the tree and scrub species of the treeline ecotone in the Cairngorms National Park, Scotland. Andy discusses the 36 species which occur in the Park at >500 m altitude, compares them with the 'birch belt' species found in Norway, and considers the implications for conservation management. If you enjoyed Sarah Watts' recent paper in British & Irish Botany on 'High mountain trees: altitudinal records recently broken for 11 different tree species in Britain' and have been following David Pearman's work on altitudinal data, then this paper is for you. 

Wynd Cliff Whitebeam
Image: D. Green

Next up we have a paper by Dr Tim Rich describing two new hybrid species of scurvygrass Cochlearia; Tim has named one of them Cochlearia x stacei in honour of Prof Clive Stace, "for his authoritative work on the British and Irish floras for the last 50 years". Tim is a frequent contributor to our journal, an Honorary Member of BSBI and earlier this year he became the second recipient of the BSBI Award for Outstanding Contribution to British and Irish botany. 

The fourth contribution is from Jim Bevan, whose detailed account clarifies the occurrence of a lesser-known species of hawkweed Hieracium gothicum in Britain. As you will be able to tell from the paper, H. gothicum has clearly been a much-confused taxon, but Jim’s meticulous work has shed light on this almost forgotten species and adds to the already considerable BSBI resources on hawkweeds.

Salix lapponum at Drumochter Pass
Image: A. Amphlett

One of the roles of British & Irish Botany is to provide an outlet for British botanists to make taxonomic revisions and to update plant nomenclature, and a perfect example of this is included in the current issue: a short, but necessary, validation of three of P.D. Sell’s Hieracium binomials from Sell & Murrell’s Flora of Great Britain and Ireland, prepared by Dr Tim Rich and Jim Crossley.

While British & Irish Botany's main aim is to provide a forum for publishing papers and articles relating to the vascular plants and charophytes of Britain and Ireland, including descriptions of new taxa, we also cover historic botany. So we are delighted to publish a paper by Frank Horsman about the Westminster Physic Garden - which attracted many 17th century botanists such as John Ray, aka the 'father of English natural history', John Tradescant who introduced magnolias and asters to English gardens, and John Evelyn, whose Sylva is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential books on forestry ever published, as well as eminent visitors such as diarist Samuel Pepys - but about whose precise location there has long speculation. Frank's deep dive into historic literature sources has yielded a likely site for the Garden, and follows on from his previous paper for us on the C17th botanists Edward Morgan and Edward Lhwyd.

Many thanks to Stuart and congratulations on his first issue as Editor-in-Chief! We already have seven papers in the pipeline for issue 6.2, coming to you in the autumn, and we are always keen to hear from any botanists interested in submitting a manuscript. Here are the subject areas we cover and here are the submission guidelines, or you can email Stuart if you'd rather have an informal chat before submitting. But for now, grab a cuppa, make sure you're sitting comfortably, and then you can start enjoying this latest issue of British & Irish Botany.

Interview with BSBI President Micheline Sheehy Skeffington: Part One

BSBI President Micheline Sheehy Skeffington

BSBI has welcomed female members since its inception in 1836, although this hasn’t always been reflected in the choice of President – there have only been three women Presidents so far: Mary Briggs, from 1998 to 2000; Lynne Farrell, from 2019 to 2022 – here is the interview with Lynne, whose monthly blogposts helped botanists stay in touch while we couldn’t meet in person because of the lockdowns; and then in November 2022, Lynne handed over to Micheline Sheehy Skeffington.

Micheline is both the third female BSBI President and the second from the Republic of Ireland (David Webb was the first, from 1989 to 1991). At the 2023 British & Irish Botanical Conference, Micheline delivered the keynote presentation on ‘Ireland’s Lusitanian Flora – mining, smuggling, pilgrimages and the Ericaceae’. If you were unable to attend the Conference, you can watch this video of Micheline’s presentation.

Micheline's presentation at the
2023 British & Irish Botanical Conference
Image: J. Common 

I caught up with Micheline to find out more about her back story and to hear what she’s been up to in her first year at the helm of the leading botanical society in Britain and Ireland. Here is the first instalment of my interview with our President.

LM: So Micheline, before you tell us about your Presidency, could we go right back to the beginning and ask how you first got interested in botany – has it been a lifelong passion? How did you get started?

MSS: Well I grew up in a converted gardener’s cottage and garden behind a big house and grounds. So as kids, myself and my brothers were always sent outdoors, where we climbed trees and explored hidden corners. I always retained that enjoyment of being outdoors. We were also members of the Dublin Naturalists’ Field Club and would go on outings exploring the habitats, flora and fauna of County Dublin.

LM: That sounds like the ideal childhood for a future BSBI President! How about indoors, at school and later at university?

Micheline in a tree after canoeing on Lough Derg
Image: N. Scott

MSS: Yes, I enjoyed science in school and studied Natural Science in Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where I was lucky to be able to study Geography/ Geology, as well as Botany and Zoology. In the final years, Botany seemed to offer the more interesting courses, so I chose that as my main subject. My fourth-year project was on the contribution of the lichen Peltigera polydactyla to sand dune nitrogen budgets on N Bull Island, Dublin Bay.

In my final year, I became interested in studying in France, since my mother was French. I won a bursary and spent a year in Montpellier studying plant ecology and living for a while in the Camargue, working on lagoonal flora alongside the flamingos. With friends, I explored the countryside around Montpellier and learned the local flora -and birdlife. At some point, I realised I wanted to do more for conservation and that I probably needed a PhD for that. So, I returned to TCD to take up my last years as a TCD Scholar and continued my interest in coastal systems with the study of nitrogen budgets in salt marsh plants, publishing several papers and enjoying giving talks at conferences.

LM: Ok so that’s you back in Ireland, studying and you mentioned the legendary Dublin Naturalists’ Field Club earlier – so did you get involved with them again?

Screenshot of a
Dublin Naturalists' Field Club
walkabout, inner north Dublin, 1981:
as reported in the Irish Times 

MSS: Yes, when I returned from Montpellier in autumn 1977, I met up with some Field Club members who encouraged me to join their committee, which I did. Not long after, while planning future field excursions, we realised that the on-going petrol crisis could seriously affect our ability to travel outside the city. Maura Scannell, Head of the National Herbarium at Glasnevin, suggested we work on the flora of inner Dublin. This caught our imagination and a small group came together, dividing the inner city, conveniently bounded by its two canals, into 14 districts overseen by a range of botanists, notably Jonathan Shackleton, a classmate of mine in TCD and later one-time County Recorder for Cavan; Peter Wyse Jackson, now President of the Missouri Botanical Garden; John Parnell, TCD lecturer in plant taxonomy; and contributions from Maura Scannell, Paddy Reilly, Declan Doogue, John Akeroyd and many more. It was great fun and eventually Peter and I put all the data together and the Flora of Inner Dublin was published in 1984. I’ve never lost my interest in ruderals and wasteland since those heady days when the latter were a blight on Dublin’s streetscape for all but us keen botanists.

Micheline plant recording in
Connemara National Park,
September 2016

LM: Ah that explains why you are always so great at flying the flag for urban botany and the so-called weeds that turn up on our city streets! So, you were out with the Field Club members, publishing the Flora, still working towards your PhD… were you also job-hunting?

MSS: As postgrads, we regularly scoured the pages of the New Scientist for jobs and, having travelled throughout Europe on interrail, I was keen to explore even wider, applying for jobs inter alia in Wales, Mauritania and Zambia, as well as in Ireland. Incredibly, in 1980, I landed a lectureship in plant ecology in the Botany Department of then-named University College Galway (UCG). Luckily, academia was less pressurised then and I spent two summers analysing my data and writing up my PhD, awarded in early 1983. The next week I was taking my colleague Michael O’Connell’s palaeoecology and bryology courses as well as mine, while he took a year’s sabbatical! On his return, I promptly handed him my lecture notes and took up my side of the exchange, choosing to go to Indonesia for a year. I was very lucky to be able to do this, as neither of us had to raise funds for our respective sabbaticals.

Having attended famous French tropical botanist Francis Hallé’s lectures in Montpellier, I was bitten by the bug to see tropical rainforest first-hand. Based in the SE Asian Regional Centre for Tropical Biology in Bogor, Java, I chose to work on the programme to find sustainable ways of using the rattan Calamus manan, prized for its high-quality cane for furniture. This took me with the team to Kalimantan in Borneo and to Sumatra, learning even then of the tragic destruction of the rainforest by timber loggers. Tropical rainforest is an incredibly rich, fascinating and valuable habitat. The clearing out of the rattan vine by local villagers was but a small part of that destruction. On returning to Ireland in 1985, I vowed to raise awareness as best I could about our role in the west in using unsustainable tropical timbers. Sadly now, the ubiquitous palm oil is playing equal havoc, with seas of oil palms replacing the diverse canopies of the rainforest. 

LM: It certainly is. For any readers who aren’t up to speed with how palm oil is contributing to deforestation, this page on the World Wildlife Fund website will be very useful. 

Micheline, you’ve had such a fascinating life in botany and conservation, and travelled so widely! Here we are still in 1985, you’re back in Ireland, a passionate conservationist and there’s a huge but ultimately successful struggle ahead of you – one so important that you recently published a book all about it! Let’s pause here and pick up on the next instalment in a few days – watch this space, readers!

New Year Plant Hunt 2024: Day Three

Hello plant hunters, James Harding-Morris here, BSBI Countries Support Manager, taking over from Louise who's been out leading a group hunt in her vice-county today. Here's the list of 36 species they found in bloom.

My impression of day three is that we’ve generally had better weather than on Days One and Two. Certainly, Sarah Watts was greeted by flowering Gorse, blue skies and a rainbow at the head of Loch Tay on her New Year Plant Hunt (image on right). 

Here in Lincolnshire I had blue skies (with a cold wind) as I explored the banks of the Humber estuary. If you saw my post about Ox-eye Daisies from a few weeks ago then I can confirm that they were still in flower today (if looking a little worse for wear).

It just goes to show that going for a recce ahead of your Hunt can pay dividends. Oisín had a quick look today and spotted six species in flower ahead of their walk tomorrow, and Stuart found four – all of which were non-native naturalised shrubs. Does this tell us something interesting about the types of plants seen in flower at this time of year?

It’s been great to see brand new botanists taking part in the Hunt. Lucy Jones took part for the first time (image on left) and found a great spread of New Year Plant Hunt favourites, plus an early Daffodil.

Podling also took part for the first time and recorded a whopping 19 species including, from what I can see on this beautiful photo collage, several species that I didn’t manage to find today!

Speaking of firsts, our CEO Julia Hanmer took part in her first group hunt, organised by the Gloucestershire Natural History Society. They found an astounding 42 species in flower which must say something about the value of a lot of keen eyes. Image on right taken by Julia.

Some solo Hunts racked up big numbers. Alex Prendergast found 34 species flowering in Norfolk, including a currently unnamed elm taxon. Jon Holt reached 40 species around Bicester which feature a very showy Musk Mallow. Steve Coates got to the heady heights of 52 species in Kent, including the marvellous Toothed Medick. However, in terms of pace, perhaps Mandy Forde’s 28 species in 20 minutes by Bangor Pier is a record count?

I always enjoy hearing about the oddities still in flower. I wouldn’t have expected Harebell to be hanging on in London, or Fine-leaved Sandwort in Cambridge. However, I’m always the most impressed (and a little envious!) when someone manages to find something on their New Year Plant Hunt that I’ve never seen, like Sarah Lambert’s Crimson Flax in Peterborough. Beautiful! Image on left.

As I’m writing this – around 8.30pm on the 1st January – the number of lists we’ve had submitted has skyrocketed to over 1400 and the number of species seen in flower has shot-up to 579. We look to be on track for our biggest New Year Plant Hunt ever, so if you haven’t taken part yet, or submitted your records yet, please do! Info and links here in case you need them.

All the best to anyone out hunting tomorrow on our final day.