BSBI Recording Weekend: Inishowen Peninsula, Co. Donegal

Purple Saxifrage, Inishowen 16/8/2015
Image: O. Duffy

Reports are coming in from this weekend's Atlas 2020 recording meeting in under-recorded parts of the Inishowen Peninsula, Co. Donegal. 

The weekend was organised and led by John Conaghan, Oisin Duffy and Mairead Crawford. John is County Recorder for West Galway (VC H16) and Oisin and Mairead - who have featured on these pages before - are keen young naturalists who are making rather a name for themselves as ace botanical recorders, active across Ireland from Wexford in the south-east to Donegal in the north-west. Our next generation of BSBI botanists in Ireland!

Irish Spurge, Inishowen 14/8/2015
Image: O. Duffy 

Over three days, the team visited habitats including sand dunes, coastal heath and blanket bog and were particularly keen to re-find two rare species known from the area: Purple saxifrage (Saxifraga oppositifolia) and Irish Spurge (Euphorbia hyberna). 

Oisin is a superb photographer and it was difficult to pick just a few images from the many he has posted on his Twitter page over the weekend. So I'll limit myself to his pix of these two target species which the recording team did manage to re-find. Purple Saxifrage had not been seen in this part of Donegal for over a century so re-finding it was quite a coup!

Fingers crossed that Oisin will write one of his excellent blogposts on the weekend's activities. For now I'll leave you with this classic tweet and pic from Mairead at lunchtime today:

1. Mairéad Crawford ‏@MaireadCrawf  10h10 hours ago

   Botanists break for lunch beside scots lovage (let's hope no one eats it!) #inishowen #H34 @BSBIbotany @OshDuffy

   
   

   

   
   

   3 retweets7 favorites