Hurrah for herbaria!

Martin Godfrey has been in touch to tell us what's going on in his local herbarium:

"What can botanists do in those chill, damp, days at the end of winter when they are just twitching to find something in flower – how about a herbarium visit? 

"On 16th February, 18 members of the Litchfield Botanical Society visited the herbarium at the Potteries Museum, Stoke on Trent for a tour and talk about herbaria and their uses. 

"After coffee and a chat we first had a look at the lab and talked about specimen preparation and some of their scientific uses as well as just permanent biological records and ID aids. 

"Then over to the natural history store in the basement where the herbarium is housed – there to look at a few specimens, including a recently found mid-19thC Cypripedium specimen from Cumbria and some Rubus type specimens – leading naturally to a discussion on the values (or otherwise) of collecting and the role of herbaria in taxonomy. 

"Herbaria don’t just contain dried plant material and we looked at spirit based specimens and also documentary material – records, catalogues and botanical correspondence and ephemera to round out our knowledge of local plants.

"Finally a number of the visitors were keen to look at some of the less “obvious” members of the Asteraceae (image on left) – both for their own benefit and to photograph for a training session for beginners at the club".

BSBI Training Grants help botanists in 2016: Part Five

Herb Paris seen on the 'Woodland' module
Image: Vanessa Reeves

Following on from last month's post about the sedge ID course which Pete was able to attend last year thanks to a BSBI Training Grant, this month we feature a report by another budding botanist, Vanessa, who also benefited from a Training Grant. 

This one is a little embarrassing for me because, for the first time, the course discussed is one that I tutor for University of Leicester Botanic Garden. Details of the course are here and the report below is printed verbatim - no money or other sweeteners changed hands! 

Over to Vanessa:

"I’ve had an interest in plants for several years which stemmed from working as a Field Ecologist at an ecological consultancy. 

Pepper-saxifrage seen on
the Summer Meadow module
Image: Vanessa Reeves

"I had learnt most of my plant ID from assisting on Phase 1 surveys; however, before I received the BSBI Training Grant, I couldn’t have recognised what family a specimen was from, or the characteristics which make it the species it is. I had tried using keys before, but always struggled with the difficult terminology.

"I was fortunate enough to receive a grant of £200 from the BSBI, which allowed me to take the ‘Botany for Beginners’ course at The University of Leicester Botanic Garden. 

"The course is made up of 7 modules, and you can choose to do as many as you like within the year. The grant allowed me to take 4 of the 7 modules (although I enjoyed them so much I ended up doing 5!).

Yellow-rattle seen on the
Summer Meadow module
Image: Vanessa Reeves

"These modules were ‘Getting Started with Plant Identification’, ‘Spring Woodland Flowers’, ‘Summer Meadow Flowers’, ‘Plants In and By Water’, and ‘Trees, deciduous and evergreen’. 

"The course was led by tutor Louise Marsh, who is incredibly enthusiastic about botany and made the course thoroughly enjoyable.  

          

"Each module took place over a weekend. The Saturday was usually spent in the classroom identifying specimens, as well as occasional walks around the Botanic Garden, and on the Sunday we went on a fieldtrip to places which contained some of the species we had seen in the classroom, as well as many more, including some rarities. 

"One important thing Louise taught us about botany field trips is to never leave your lunch in the car – as you will undoubtedly get carried away by spotting new species and rarely make it back in time!" 

Tubular water-dropwort on the
'Plants in & by water' module
Image: Vanessa Reeves

[LM: this tip was passed on to me by none other than Clive Stace, when I asked the great man one day for advice on how to become a successful field botanist - it's the best advice I've ever had!]

"We often worked in pairs or groups during the course, and used keys to identify specimens. I found working with other botanists was really useful, as it helped to share ideas and tackle the sometimes tricky terminology. 

"Louise shared with us some brilliant mnemonics, rhymes and phrases to help us remember key characteristics of some species.

"I have learnt a huge amount over the course, and am soon hoping to carry out Phase 1 surveys on my own using my new botanical skills. I hope to attend more of the BSBI field meetings and contribute to local recording for Atlas 2020. 

Some of the species seen during the Trees module
Image: Vanessa Reeves

"I am currently taking the intermediate level course at the Botanic Garden this academic year, ‘Plant Identification Skills’, which follows on from the ‘Botany for Beginners' course’. 

"All in all a big thank you to the BSBI for the Training Grant!"

Many thanks to Vanessa for sharing her experience of the Botany for Beginners course - I'm very glad (and relieved) that she enjoyed it! 

Applications are still being accepted for this year's round of BSBI Training Grants but this may not be the case for much longer and the next round doesn't start until January 2018. So if you are interested in applying, please do so as soon as possible.

Finally, I'm wondering if there's a way we could share those mnemonics for ID more widely - what do people think?

Caring for God’s Acre: biological recording in burial grounds

The churchyard, St. Mary's, Whitton, Shropshire

In this guest blogpost, Andrea from the national charity Caring for God’s Acre tells us more about plans for a new project to to encourage and support biological recording in burial grounds. 

If you've ever botanised in a churchyard or green burial ground, you will know that, when sensitively managed, such sites can support many species. Over to Andrea to tell us more: 
   
"Caring for God’s Acre is the national charity dedicated to conservation within burial grounds. We encourage and support communities to protect and enhance the wildlife value of these unique sites and also to preserve the built environment within them.

Westall Park Green Burial Ground

"There are about 20,000 burial sites within the UK ranging from quarter of an acre to over 140 acres. They are more valuable for biodiversity than their size suggests due to their longevity and continuity of management. The oldest sites may have been enclosed for over a thousand years and most have never been exposed to either intensive management or widespread chemical use.  

The Beautiful Burial Ground Project 

St. John the Baptist Church,
Hope Bagot, Shropshire

"We have been working in burial grounds for nearly 20 years and feel the need to address a large issue. Burial grounds are surprisingly under-recorded and even when they are surveyed, records usually go into national systems that are not site specific. 

"This means that the managers of these sites rarely have access to species data that could inform their decisions and help them interpret the importance of the site to the wider community.

"We plan to address this by literally putting burial grounds on the map. We plan to create a bespoke database and work with NBN on an interactive map where:

• individual burial sites can be located,
• records can be linked to a particular site,
• information is validated and easily accessed by all.

Longden Rd. Cemetery, Shrewsbury: designated
 a Local Wildlife Site after local recording
groups undertook surveys in 2016

"Funded training sessions and travel expenses for recorders, initiatives such as ‘the Year of the Burial Ground’ and guides to existing identification resources are just some of the ideas within our application to the Heritage Lottery Fund. 

"We have passed the first stage of the application process and would value your input in order to shape the project as it develops.

"If you have 2 minutes to spare, we would love to hear your views."

Many thanks to Andrea for telling us more about this new project. You can also email or phone her on 01588 673041 if you have ideas or would like more information about the Beautiful Burial Ground Project.

New Year Plant Hunt 2017: the first of the prizewinners

Seeds in the vaults of the Millennium Seed Bank
Image: L. Jennings

In recent years we have started the tradition of awarding prizes to New Year Plant Hunt recorders - the prize is a chance to tell people about your Hunt and/or to share your three botanical wishes for the year ahead.

This year, several people spent up to three hours hunting in their local patch and found absolutely nothing. But records of absence are just as valuable as records of presence so we are delighted to offer recorders who found nothing in bloom, the consolation of a BSBI Valiant Effort Award. First up is Laura:

Group from Kew assessing 

Prunus avium seeds for collection

Image: L. Jennings

"Many thanks to BSBI for granting me the chance to share my three botanical wishes for 2017 as a prize for achieving a score of zero in the New Year Plant Hunt. I went plant hunting on New Year’s day around the National Trust’s Ankerwyke site, which is a mix of woodland and grazed grassland next to the River Thames, and most notable for the incredible, 2500-year-old Ankerwyke yew tree.

Plants are my day job as well, as I’m a botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. My work is part of the huge, global, Millennium Seed BankPartnership which is aiming to collect seeds from 25% of the world’s plant species by 2020. The many seed banks around the world are an ex situ insurance against extinction for wild plant species, and they are complementary to in situ conservation work in species’ natural habitat. Both types of conservation are becoming more important than ever with so many plant species in danger of extinction. My job is to identify the herbarium vouchers which are collected along with the seeds to species. We need to make sure that the seeds stored in the seed bank at Wakehurst Place in Sussex are linked to the current, accepted name for that species, otherwise they are just a load of very attractive seeds in jars.

Herb Paris Paris quadrifolia 
at a perfect stage of ripeness
Image: L. Jennings

So, I would like my first botanical wish to be connected to my work: I wish for a successful field season for us and our partners all over the globe, to find and safely bank seeds from as many species from our target species lists as possible. It’s a huge amount of effort to make a single quality collection, so good luck to all the seed collectors out there, I hope that the weather is kind to you and the plants are at the perfect stage of natural dispersal!

My second wish would be for a complete cure for plant blindness, the cognitive biases that cause many people to ignore plants. As reported by Balding and Williams in 2016, for many people plants are a blurry green backdrop to the furred or feathered creatures they’d rather focus on. However, plants are the vital life support for most land-based ecosystems, and deserve more attention, and more funding for their conservation.

My third wish would be for BSBI to ask their members to look out for a rare UK chalk grassland plant, the fringed gentian, Gentianopsis ciliata. Personally, I’ve only ever seen herbarium specimens, as it was last recorded in Buckinghamshire in the late 1980s. The team at the Millennium Seed Bank would very much like to collect seed from a UK population, because we have almost completely banked the UK Flora and just the very difficult to impossible species remain. I don’t have any photos of this species, but there are some excellent ones here.

New Year Plant Hunt 2017: results and analysis

Yarrow spotted on 2/1/2017
Image: Dawn Nelson

The results are all in for BSBI’s sixth New Year Plant Hunt, when plant-lovers across Britain and Ireland head out to see what is flowering in their local patch. 

More people took part this year than ever before, hunting for up to three hours between 1st and 4th January, but fewer wild or naturalised plants were recorded in bloom compared to last year:

• A total of 7,123 records of plants in bloom across Britain and Ireland.
• 492 different species were recorded, compared to 611 last year and 366 in 2015.
• More than 400 lists compiled by individuals, families and botanical recording groups.
• Plant hunters joined in from the Channel Isles to Orkney, from Donegal to Norfolk, and West Cork to Kent.

Gorse flowering on 2/1/2017
Bev Bishop

As expected, the milder south and west of Britain and Ireland had the highest numbers of species in flower - 106 in West Cornwall – but nowhere near last year’s top total of 162 recorded in Berkshire.

BSBI’s Head of Science Dr Kevin Walker has analysed this year’s results and compared them with those from previous years. 

He said “People found significantly fewer species in bloom this year, an average of 15.5, compared to at least 20 in previous years. 

"This seems to be the result of lower temperatures in the last few months of 2016 but interestingly, this difference was much less marked for non-native species”.

The main findings were:

Winter Heliotrope, Sidmouth, 2/1/2017
Image: Karen Woolley 

• 58% of species were ‘Autumn Stragglers’ like Yarrow, Ragwort and Hogweed that had carried on flowering. 
• Only 15% were ‘Springtime Specialists’ like Primrose and Lesser Celandine, so there is no indication of an early spring. This proportion is similar to previous years.
• The top five species were Daisy, Groundsel, Dandelion, Annual Meadow-grass, and Gorse – almost identical to previous years and all (native) plants we would expect to be flowering at this time of year.
• 46% of species were non-natives. This includes plants from warmer climates that have escaped from gardens or cultivation and become naturalised in the wild. Some are able to extend their flowering into the winter months while others - such as Winter Heliotrope, recorded in a quarter of this year’s New Year Plant Hunt lists - can be expected to bloom at this time of year.
• As in previous years, urban areas tended to have more non-native species in flower than rural areas, as there are more sheltered and disturbed places with warm microclimates where alien plants can thrive.

Kevin said “Further work is required before we can be certain about the causes of these unseasonal events but the New Year Plant Hunt results are already helping us build up a clearer, up-to-date picture of what’s going on”. Download Kevin's analysis in full here.

New Year Plant Hunt 2017: update

A quick update for you on this year's BSBI New Year Plant Hunt. Volunteers Ryan, Ciara, Ian and Richard have gone back to their day jobs, handing over to BSBI staff members Kevin and Tom, who are hard at work behind the scenes. 

Kevin Walker, BSBI Head of Science, is working away on the analysis of 461 lists and 568 species recorded. These figures may change slightly as he is tidying up lots of little problems as he goes along. A grid ref to be clarified here, an ID to be confirmed there, lists inadvertently merged... 

Meanwhile Tom, BSBI Database Officer, the driving force behind Herbaria@Home and all-round technical guru, is going through the responses from the feedback survey about using apps for recording wildflowers, both during New Year Plant Hunt and more generally. Huge thanks to 112 people who have taken part so far and given us some very useful comments. It's not too late to take part in the survey if you haven't already. It takes about 10 minutes to fill in if you answer all the questions about the New Year Plant Hunt. Or about 3 minutes if you didn't use the app or take part in the Hunt this year, but you want to go straight to the section where you can give your opinion on apps: https://nyph.bsbi.org/ 

We'd like to get a good cross-section of opinions on which to base any future plans. So we're also keen to hear from people who don't use apps at all and don't want to, thank you very much!

We'll report back with Tom's summary of the survey results later this month once you've all had a chance to take part. Before that, there's Kevin's analysis which is due out on Monday 23rd January, but in the meantime, here's what happened when two of our more northerly County Recorders ventured out to record for the New Year Plant Hunt in pretty unfriendly weather. Francis and Margaret Higgins have only recently taken over as County Recorders and this is what they found in bloom in Berriedale, Caithness:

"We were going to venture out on January 3rd but we had gale force winds – so not a day for walking in the woods. So, as the next day was the last day to take part in the BSBI New Year Plant Hunt we set out, even though it was still very windy and as soon as we left our house we found loads of daisy plants (Bellis perennis) but realised that it was just different species we must count, not individual flowers! We walked from our house down to the bridges over both the Berriedale and Langwell rivers, and ivy-leaved toadflax (Cymbalaria muralis) was growing in the wall on one of the bridges with just one little flower. And beside the bridge we found a few ivy flowers, too (Hedera helix).

"We then made our way up through Berriedale woods, scanning as we went and found thyme-leaved speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia). At the top of the track through the woods we joined the drive that goes up to Langwell House but we turned left and followed the road back down to the main road. There was gorse (Ulex europaeus) in flower on the bushes that hadn’t been cut back. 

"Then we crossed over the A9 and looked in the waste ground near the old café where we found both Matricaria discoidea and Lamium purpureum and also lots of patches of Poa annua. On towards home, we found Senecio vulgaris and also Heracleum sphondylium. 

"On the old road that used to be the A9, outside our house, we found some pale pink Achillea millefolium by the hedge and, in our wild-flower patch at the back of the old smithy there was just one Silene dioica remaining and a very few Hesperis matronalis still hanging on, with some Cardamine flexuosa amongst the other non-flowering weeds in the garden. So endeth our first New Year’s Plant Hunt as new Joint Vice-County Recorders…"

Many thanks to Francis and Margaret for sharing their story. Their records were hard-earned and you will have noticed that the top 20 longest lists of species recorded here all come from the south and west of Britain & Ireland. But those Caithness records are just as valuable for Kevin's analysis, which is due out on Monday 23rd January. Watch this space!

New Year's Honour for BSBI County Recorder

BSBI would like to congratulate Robert Northridge, BSBI County Recorder for Co. Cavan and joint County Recorder for Fermanagh, on the award of an MBE in the New Year's Honours List.  

Before retirement, Robert was Vice-Principal of Portora Royal School, Enniskillen (alma mater of Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett). We understand that the primary reason for the MBE was Robert's involvement with rowing and coaching, rather than his botany, but botanists will know him as the co-author (joint with Ralph Forbes) of the Flora of Fermanagh which won the BSBI/Wildflower Society's Presidents’ Prize a few years ago. 

Robert has been a driving force in the Irish rowing scene for decades and continues to have a significant input. BSBI members familiar with the energy and drive he brings to the botanical scene can well imagine him bringing that same positive 'can do' attitude to his work in the rowing community. Robert's contributions to BSBI and botany are not limited to recording: he is currently serving as Chair of BSBI's Committee for Ireland and attends BSBI Council meetings in that capacity (below, next to BSBI Head of Science Kevin Walker). He was also one of the team behind the extremely successful BSBI Summer Meeting in 2015.

He has also taken on being County Recorder for Co. Cavan in the run-up to Atlas 2020, as the former VCR had retired and no one was doing any recording there. That's typical of Robert - he sees that something needs to be done and he gets on with it himself if nobody else is available. As well as all this, he has been Chair of the Fermanagh Field Club for as long as anyone can remember!

Robert's rowing prowess has proved extremely useful on botanical expeditions - the image below shows him ferrying a BSBI party to survey the islands of the Lough Derg, Co. Donegal, in June 2012. Robert's wife Hannah (also a botanist) is in the rear of the boat and fellow botanist Margaret Marshall is in the prow. The fern in the foreground is Osmunda regalis.

Robert is also at the oars in the image above right, also taken on Lough Derg, with Station Island Monastery in the background. Many of you will have heard of Station Island as the subject of one of Seamus Heaney’s better known poems.

If you are wondering why it took us until 12th January to report this award to you, that's because Robert, with typical modesty, didn't tell anybody so we had to find out by circuitous means. That gives you the measure of the man. 

BSBI is delighted to see Robert's many years of volunteering and service to the rowing community in Ireland acknowledged by this award of an MBE. It is richly deserved and we'd like to thank him for his equally impressive services to botany. Congratulations from all at BSBI to Robert Northridge MBE.