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.