It's nearly time for BSBI's New Year's Day Plant Hunt.  

Might this be in flower on New Year's Day?
Image: C. Ferguson-Smyth

Ok, diaries out: Tim Rich has been in touch about the New Year's Day Hunt 2014 and we can pick a good day for recording - it doesn't have to be New Year's Day. 

Tim says: "Please join us for the third New Year's Day wild flower hunt to record as many species as you can in flower".

The rules are simple:

1. Pick one day between 28th December 2013 and 1st January 2014, when the weather is decent enough to record in.

2. Record wild and naturalised plants (but not planted) in flower.

3. Record for up to 3 hours. 

4. Email details (number of species, time and location) to Tim or Sarah. 

Tim add "After our amazing 63 species in flower on 1/1/2012, we had fewer species last year (see BSBI News 123:40) and suspect that there will be fewer this year, too".

The value of local site Floras. 

There are lots of county Floras and Rare Plant Registers around - which is great - but a Flora covering a smaller area can also be very useful. John Crellin, VC Recorder for Brecknockshire, emailed last week to tell us about a local Flora he helped out with. John did some surveying and "wrote a page on plants" for The Paramor Orchard: an illustrated flora. 

The orchard is part of the Marcher Apple Network which aims to revive old apple and pear varieties in the Southern Marches. The authors of the Flora are Margaret A.V. Gill (illustrator), Sheila Leitch and John, who told me "The authors would like a copy to go to the BSBI".

I know how much Kevin Walker, our Head of Research & Development, values local Floras, so a copy of The Paramor Orchard is now en route to Kevin at his Harrogate office. And when I asked Kevin what he would be doing with it, he explained "Having a copy of local Floras is vital for our work within BSBI. Although the Big Database provides us with the records, it is often the extra information that a Flora provides that helps to inform decisions that underlie research, such as the production of the new England Red List".

One of the plates in The Paramor Orchard. 

I asked Kevin for a good example of a local Flora that had proved particularly useful, and why. 

He said "The Flora of the Black Country - completely new information is presented about the ecology (regeneration, habitats etc.) of alien species that have been scarcely covered in previous works. 

"This is proving vital in a new compilation of traits we are doing for alien species (Alienatt). So when recorders send us complementary copies, they can be assured that they are contributing to BSBI research". 

So please - send us your local Floras! As books or leaflets, as pdfs, on parchment... if you've written one, used one or contributed to one, we'd like to see it! And it's another great way to make a contribution to BSBI research.

That was quick - 23! 

Field in Pentire
Image: I. Bennallick

Ok, no more countdowns, this is getting silly! 

Thanks for pointing out that I'd overlooked Ian Bennallick's Cornish Blog. Which has some very pretty flower pix. 

Click on this one to enlarge it and see Viccia cracca, Glebionis segetum and Papaver rhoeas in a field in West Pentire. And look forward to next summer's botanising!

Do take a look at the Blog for botanical recording in Cornwall:  http://www.botanicalcornwall.co.uk/blog/ 

22nd Blog...

Meconopsis cambrica - as seen on FloralImages Brecon
Image: J. Clark

No sooner do I post that there are 21 Blogs by BSBI members... than an email comes through confirming that another excellent Blog that I've been looking at recently turns out to be by a BSBI member! 

Check out the Bristol Wildlife Blog, which focuses on wildlife in and around the city of Bristol.

If you have a botany Blog and are a BSBI member, please get in touch and we can make it 23!

BSBI members' Blogs: 21 today! 

Broad Bean flower
Image: P. Gates

I hope you are all enjoying some botanical Blog-browsing via the links on the right. I've been adding Blogs by BSBI members as I hear about them and there are now 21 on the list.

The subjects covered by the Blogs shows the broad range of interests from among our membership, from local field meetings and duckweeds people have fished out of ponds to mapping software and genetics, taking in climate change, edible plants, stinky plants... 

There are seasonally-appropriate mistletoe posts from Jonathan Briggs - yes, "Mr Mistletoe" is a BSBI member - note the attention to botanical detail and taxonomy and you won't be surprised! 

Bonane Heritage Park
Image: J. Crellin

There are also posts that go beyond vascular plants, straying into bryophytes and even tardigrades, the famous water-bears who were sent into outer space but are more usually glimpsed when you apply lens to bryophyte specimen for ID and a tardigrade lumbers into view through the forest of moss stems. Sometimes you can't help briefly noticing things that aren't plants...

And there are some great photos - BSBI Blogger John Crellin took the one on the left, while in Ireland. 

Batemania breaks out: BSBI botanist in the spotlight.

Classic habitats of the Azorean Platanthera species
Image: P. Rudall

Great to see Prof Richard Bateman all over the media in the past 24 hours, having rediscovered what may be Europe's rarest orchid.

Richard, based at Kew, is our most popular* New Journal of Botany author and - along with BSBI President Ian Denholm - one of BSBI's Orchid Referees.  
A report on the BBC website, 'Europe's rarest orchid rediscovered in the Azores' tells how Richard, Paula and Monica went out expecting to find two species of Butterfly-orchid Platanthera rather than one and actually found three species!  

Their paper, which is causing such international interest, is published in the open-access journal PeerJ, so we can all read it free of charge. The title is 'Systematic revision of Platanthera in the Azorean archipelago: not one but three species, including arguably Europe's rarest orchid'. 

Prof Richard Bateman
Image: P. Rudall

Richard says,"I was even more astonished when my subsequent studies in herbaria and libraries showed that this exceptional rare orchid, found only on one mountain-top on a single Azorean island, had in fact been found by the very first serious botanist to visit the Azores, in 1838." 

He added, "It is a welcome bonus that the overlooked species has proven to be so informative about how evolution takes place."

Although journalists and  broadcasters have been beating down Richard's door for an interview, he responded to my congratulatory email with typical modesty and focused instead on conservation and the hope that "the current media frenzy may bring the appallingly threatened Azorean flora some genuine benefits".

You can read more about Richard's work here and here, and you'll be glad to know that when I sidled up to him after the recent AEM and asked if we might have another submission for NJB... well, he's thinking about it, so fingers crossed! 

Richard and Ian orchid-hunting in Ireland

And in the meantime, any BSBI member who has lent out their back-copies of New Journal of Botany (you don't really expect to get them back, do you?) can log in now and re-read all Richard's orchid papers in NJB. Email Alex if you can't remember your password. 

If you're not a member - well, receiving three glossy print copies each year of NJB, and on-line access whenever you like, is one of the perks of BSBI membership. So if you want to read more than the abstract of Richard's Platanthera paper for NJB, you'll just have to join BSBI. And why not? Prof Bateman joined and look at him now ;-) 

* based on number of downloads, not just because we like him!

Take a botanical tour of Berwickshire... from your armchair

Vicia orobus  

If you want to know which plants grow where, there are lots of ways to find out: the BSBI database, county Floras and Rare Plant Registers. But what if you want to virtually zoom in to a particular site and get a bit more detail? Such as "The River Tweed turns south above Mertoun Bridge and near there, at the turn, steep eroding banks provide a habitat of interest". 

Or how about if you want to know which "weeds" have turned up in a county and how this might relate to previous history of a particular site? Then you want a detailed description like this: "Ruderal habitat of great interest was discovered in 2011 on an eroding bank at Dalcove. Here there is a large colony of Hyoscyamus niger with Ballota nigra, Conium maculatum, Echium vulgare, Malva sylvestris and Reseda luteola. All these plants were once used medicinally and their association is strongly suggestive of a link with the mediaeval hospital dedicated to St Mary Magdalene that stood near this spot and was destroyed by the English in 1544".

Astragalus danicus at clifftop by 
foot of Dowlaw Dean, 
looking east to St Abb's Head. 

These quotations come from a new publication by former BSBI President and VC Recorder for Berwickshire, Michael Braithwaite. His 440 page Berwickshire BSBI Botanical Site Register 2013, has just been privately published and circulated, but Michael has also decided to make an edited version of this superb publication available free of charge as a pdf. You can now download a Botanical Tour of Berwickshire here.  It brings together all the site descriptions from the Register - these include all the rare or scarce species present in each site.

Michael told me "I believe BSBI is overly obsessed by distribution maps and species accounts. Even the most expansive County Floras are dominated by them, leaving site descriptions as an afterthought. I have now carried out two successive sample surveys of Berwickshire at 1km scale (2km is not fine enough for conservation purposes) with very much detail at finer scales, all with a Site Register in view". 

In the Botanical Tour of Berwickshire, Michael also tells us about the changes he - and fellow botanists - have noticed over time. As Michael has spent 35 field-seasons as Berwickshire's VCR, he can offer us observations such as "The rest of the moor is over-managed grouse moor where the temporary reappearance of Genista anglica in 2002 and Platanthera bifolia in 2000 are but poignant reminders of what might have been".

Luke Gaskell at Vicia orobus site, Wrunklaw

Michael's long history of voluntary service in wildlife conservation and botany includes 25 years service as either Secretary or Chairman of the Scottish Wildlife Trust, Tweed Valley branch, so he knows his area. 

And I was intrigued by this comment: "The Blackadder Water is now too eutrophic for most aquatic species and Ranunculus circinatus was last seen there in 1973. However an enigmatic hybrid clone of Ranunculus is still quite frequent whose parents have been repeatedly suggested to be R. circinatus and R. fluitans. No molecular studies have been made to confirm this. This clone is not known elsewhere in Britain or further afield". One for further study, perhaps? 

Michael Braithwaite

Michael graciously acknowledges all the local and visiting BSBI botanists who contributed to the Tour, including VC Recorders of neighbouring counties, like Rod Corner, David McCosh and Luke Gaskell. He also admits "My Site Register is quite elaborate, but the essentials are much more achievable: a map of each site and a short description including a note of some key species present. Every vice-county where there is not an adequate wildlife site system in place should have one!" 

There is a Local Wildlife Site (LWS) system in operation in VC55 and, in my experience, the use of criteria species/axiophytes works extremely well as a way of notifying LWSs. The criteria species are easy for less experienced recorders and conservationists to identify. And I agree strongly with Michael - if you don't have a LWS system in your county, then you really need a Botanical Site Register. 

But if there were such a system in Berwickshire, we might not have gems like "At Petticowick, the north end of the geological fault defining St Abbs Head is reached and Silurian rocks follow northwards. Juncus ambiguus occurs by a seepage on the beach where occasional plants of Puccinellia distans subsp. borealis may be found". You almost feel as if you are there...