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.