Catch up with New Year Plant Hunt on BBC Countryfile

Anita, Ciara & Ellen
Image: A. Rani

If you missed BSBI's New Year Plant Hunt on BBC Countryfile earlier this evening, you can catch it on iPlayer here. 

Five minutes of footage at the beginning of the programme features our two New Year Plant Hunts in Leicestershire, one in the countryside and one in the city. 

This section shows plant-hunters including nine-year old Elizabeth Widdowson, who still holds the record as the finder of the biggest Shepherd's-Purse plant in Europe; Jack Riggall who spots male and female hazel flowers; Richard Mabbutt, who talks about how plant hunting helps him deal with stress and anxiety; and Russell Parry, herbarium volunteer and one of Leicestershire's County Recorders, who reminds us how important it is to take specimens of interesting plants and preserve them in herbaria.

Ready to botanise!
Image: J. Clough

Presenter Anita Rani also talks to Ciara Sugrue and Ellen Goddard from the New Year Plant Hunt Support Team and sees some of the other unusual finds that plant hunters across the country spotted and shared via social media. This section starts at 2:15 and ends at 7:10.

The next botanical section starts at 54:15 and ends at 58:10 It features a few more shots from the two New Year Plant Hunts leading in to presenter Anita Rani's visit to the Herbarium at the University of Leicester with the specimen she collected earlier that day with Russell. This leads into a section with Pat Heslop-Harrison showing Anita how to press her specimen and Anna Farrell talking about Genebank55. 

Read more about this section of the programme on the BotanyOne blog here.

The analysis of all your New Year Plant Hunt records (almost 10,000 of them) by Kevin Walker, BSBI Head of Science, will be published here tomorrow 22nd January.