Back to some actual botany: Parnassia palustris

It's that time of year when we finally have a chance to write up all our botanical finds from 2013 and share them with friends. So I was delighted to hear from Dr Mary Dean, Lecturer in Biology and Associate Researcher at Edge Hill University, about some fieldwork that she and colleagues - headed by Phil Smith - carried out this year on one of our most photogenic wild flowers, Grass-of-Parnassus Parnassia palustris. 

Mary says "Grass-of-Parnassus (Parnassia palustris) is one of our most attractive dune slack plants. It is a fairly common plant in Scotland and parts of Northern England and Wales, although its range in southern England has declined recently.  It is found along the extensive dune system of the Sefton Coast in South Lancashire (VC59). 

"In conjunction with Merseyside BioBank, a survey of Parnassia palustris took place on the Sefton Coast in August/September 2013. Phil Smith organised the surveys and recruited forty-three volunteers to help with surveying to cover all the likely slack habitat in the sand-dune system.  

"Data collected included number of flowering plants, area occupied, grid reference for each colony and a range of standard habitat variables. In addition, experienced botanists recorded quadrats in representative Parnassia habitat using National Vegetation Classification methodology and took soil samples for pH determination".

Pretty impressive to get 43 volunteers out surveying Parnassia, but anyone who has read BSBI News will have noticed that there is a lot of botanical activity in the Sefton/Birkdale area - botanists as well as plants. 
I suspect that courses like the excellent MSc in Conservation Management at Edge Hill play a huge part in this. And it means that if you are visiting the area, there are lots of friendly local botanists who can advise you on where to go. In the nicest possible way!

The Ainsdale Parnassia

 Mary sent me the photos on this page (taken by Phil Smith) and has these results to report so far from their survey work: "Over 42,000 plants were counted, although it seems to have been a poor year for this species, due to prolonged deep flooding of the slacks from autumn to spring in 2012/13. Pat Lockwood [image above] can be seen counting the plants on the Birkdale Green Beach".

She continues " I surveyed slacks on the Ravenmeols Local Nature Reserve  and found a couple of cream-flowered plants. Phil Smith had recorded cream-flowered plants in this slack in 2004 and it is good to see that they or their offspring are still there". 

Mary tells me that Phil Smith (possibly with Pat Lockwood) will be preparing a report on their survey work and they hope to publish in 2014. In the meantime, I'm putting "Visit Sefton again" into next year's diary. 

Sharing the AEM experience. 

We are trying to collate all the posters and presentations from the AEM so we can put them onto a webpage and everybody can see them. Although we had a record attendance, there are still around 2,700 BSBI members who weren't able to join us at the Natural History Museum, and we don't want anybody to miss out! 

In the meantime, you can read what other members have to say about the AEM on their Blogs. Check out the links in the column on the right, where Waheed, Jonathan and Susanne talk about their exhibits for the AEM. Jonathan's Blog also has a video of his exhibit and another showing his entire presentation at the AEM.

And I'm afraid that I muscle in on the act wearing my VC55 hat - the local botany group's Blog mentions the local training opportunities on offer in the vice-county. Waheed's photograph (above) shows two exhibits on botanical training - the VC55 courses and Brenda Harold's on-line botany course, which is proving extremely popular.

If you are studying botany or plant studies in Britain or Ireland, at whatever level, why not tell us about it? If it's a great course, then other BSBI members will be interested to hear all about it! 

The photographs here were taken by Waheed, Christine and Jonathan of their "Testa yourself" exhibit, where botanists were encouraged to match the seed (or fruit) to the flower. 

Phew, what a day! 

Well, the AEM is all over and I think we can say it was a huge success. 

From left: Nichola Hawkins (Wildflower Society)
and Cambridge botanist Monica Frisch

The Flett Theatre at the NHM was jam-packed - we are perhaps a victim of our own success here? - with 192 botanists coming through the door to see 31 exhibits and hear our seven speakers. 

This looks like the highest attendance of any AEM in recent years. 

One scheduled speaker - Jill Sutcliffe - had notified us that she was unable to attend due to illness, so we were fortunate that exhibitor Jonathan Mitchley had agreed to step in and fill the gap. He then managed to delete his presentation minutes before he went onstage and had to improvise his entire talk! Amazingly, he managed to do this, including giving us a snatch of the Song of the Poaceae (a family of grasses green and wonderful!) Check out the video here. 

Richard Lansdown (centre)

A few highlights: the ID "Help!" table (on right) which attracted experts (like aquatics Referee Richard Lansdown) who could help people identify their plants. 

You can also just see another highlight on the left - a poster by Jodey Peyton about collaboration between BSBI and CEH.
Click on images to enlarge them. We are hoping to put as much AEM material  - abstracts and presentations - as possible up on the website. Details to follow.

Best bit for me: seeing Margaret Perring, widow of our late President Frank Perring, who did so much to encourage outreach before it was even called outreach! 

From left: Gwynn Ellis, Margaret Perring,
Charles Turner and new member Kristina Herz.

Frank was the driving force behind setting up the Wildlife Trusts, and tribute was paid to him by keynote speaker Brian Eversham, Chief Exec of the Beds - Cambs - Northants Wildlife Trust. Frank's obituary, by Chris Preston and Philip Oswald, says "A constant theme running through his career was his desire to communicate his love of botany and belief in the necessity of plant conservation outward to new audiences". 

The photo (on left) shows Margaret Perring with our Membership Secretary Gwynn Ellis, Cambridge botanist Charles Turner, an active BSBI member since 1959, and new member Kristina Herz, one of several botanists who joined the society at the AEM.


Feedback forms are coming in - what we did well ( most of it!) and what we could do even better (some great ideas for the next AEM!). Having done feedback breakdowns for other BSBI events, where equal numbers of people say "teabreaks too long" and "teabreaks too short", I know we can't please everybody all the time! 

Breakdowns on the Tube caused a few problems and apparently some people called Beckham were in the Museum that day, which made it difficult to elbow through the throng and nip to the cafe for a quick cup of tea and a bun!

Any venue selected has its own advantages and disadvantages, but it looks like an honest appraisal of the AEM will be: 90% brilliant day for botanists, beginner or expert; 5% room for improvement: BSBI members have good suggestions for this; 5% wishlist/impossibilities. 

John Poland (left), Brian Eversham (right)

In this latter category I would place the 7 people who, after the AGM in Beaumaris, responded to the "What can we do better" question with "arrange better weather". Still working on that one...

But it's becoming a tradition on this Blog for me to show you a pic of the "post-event debrief" and next year, we are wondering about booking some space so more of us can eat, drink, relax and chat after the event. Like Brian Eversham and John Poland!  

Plants - Publicity - People: the theme for this year's AEM. 

Field meeting to Coronation Meadows, Beaumaris
Image: T. Rich

The final programme is now available for this Saturday's AEM, where botanists will be offered a range of talks and presentations on our theme of Plants - Publicity - People.

We have three presentations by BSBI staff (Irish Officer Maria Long, Head of Ops Jane Houldsworth, and me), and a talk by our President, Ian Denholm, who tells me he will be focusing on "plants rather than people - and I have lots of great wild flower photos!" Ian has been on quite a few BSBI fieldtrips this year - like the ones following this summer's AGM in Beaumaris. Attending our fieldtrips is probably the best way for a botanist to see some really nice and unusual plants - and in great company.

BSBI at the NHM Campsite, October 2012
Photos: L. Marsh

The after-lunch speakers include Jill Sutcliffe (BSBI Field Meetings Secretary) on the work of the Manhood Wildlife and Heritage Group, with which she is involved. This looks like an excellent example of outreach at a local scale, so it will be interesting to find out what they are doing, ie to hear Jill's good ideas and pinch them shamelessly for our own local initiatives! 

Our speakers are all BSBI members, but the final two talks are offered by members "wearing other hats" - both speakers will consider how conservation bodies and natural history societies like BSBI can help people re-connect with the natural world, learn more about botany and get started with biological recording. 

I've already posted about our closing speaker, Brian Eversham, but before him we will be able to hear John Tweddle, Head of the Angela Marmont Centre at the Natural History Museum and OPAL Project Manager. He will be talking about public engagement at the NHM: they are particularly good at this so it will be interesting to find out how they do it. And, of course, nick all their best ideas for BSBI.  

These snaps (taken on phone, sorry!) show the BSBI stand at last autumn's 'Campsite' event at the Angela Marmont Centre, designed to engage young recorders. 

Three of us collected specimens of duckweeds for ID by the children, using the excellent duckweed ID sheets prepared jointly by BSBI and NHM. I'll bring some of these laminated sheets along to the AEM so you can all have one - they really are rather good, whatever your age. 

Dactylorhiza - species or hybrid?
 Ask the orchid referee!
Image: I. Denholm

We also exhibited some conifers, so people could 'scratch and sniff' using the John Poland 'which tropical fruit does it smell like' method of ID: find out more about this on John's Vegetative ID table at Saturday's AEM. The children attending the NHM event that day were able to see the biggest plants in the world (giant redwoods) and the smallest: Wolffia arrhiza, the Rootless Duckweed. 

There were quite a few "wow" moments as they looked down a microscope for the first time or held a jar of duckweeds up to the light to count the roots. So, fingers crossed we can also offer you a few "wow" moments on Saturday, whatever your age.

Here's a pretty flower to close with - just to remind ourselves why we're bothering with all this outreach business. In the end, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, "It's all about the botany, stupid!"

Wildlife Trust Chief Exec is keynote speaker at AEM. 

I hope you will be as pleased as I am that the closing presentation at this year's AEM will be given by a BSBI member who is also Chief Executive of possibly one of the most dynamic of the Wildlife Trusts. Brian Eversham (Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire & Northamptonshire) will be talking to us on the subject 'Local Training courses: we can all benefit'.

He will also be offering an exhibit on using local keys and checklists to encourage beginners, just starting out in wildlife recording. How we can best encourage beginners and pass on essential field skills is emerging as a strong theme in many of this year's exhibits. And this post on Brian's Blog tells how his own early interest in wildlife recording was encouraged by some "superb natural historians".    

Brian told me " I'm really pleased to be at the BSBI AEM. A Wildlife Trust needs to know where species are, and how they are changing, to be sure we are doing the right thing, and botany forms the basis for most other wildlife. That's why the Wildlife Trust is so committed to outreach and training - the next generation of naturalists will be the lifeblood of conservation, and of societies like BSBI, too." 

It's great that Brian is highlighting the extent to which botanical recording underpins nature conservation in the 21st century. When writing a management plan for a wildlife site, or assessing its status, you first need to know what grows there and how that is changing over time. 

As Ian Denholm said in a recent State of Nature press release, "We can't conserve wildlife if we don't know what we have or where it occurs, so accurate data on frequency and distributions of species are essential. As one of the world's largest contributors of biological records, BSBI is keen to work with partners to highlight and monitor the decline in our most threatened wildlife and, hopefully, to work together towards reversing it".  

Looks like it will be a really good AEM this year - are you coming along?

On the trail of wild orchids in Turkey...

Orchis anatolica
Image: S. Masters 

... Step 1 is to visit a British herbarium! Ethnobotanist and BSBI member Susanne Masters has been in touch about the poster she is exhibiting at the AEM on the 23rd November, and she has a request for her fellow BSBI members.


Susanne says "I am currently working on research assessing the impacts of both collection and habitat loss on edible orchid populations in Turkey. 

Ophrys lutea
Image: S. Masters

"Reports of declining Turkish orchid populations attribute this biodiversity loss to their tubers being collected for consumption as salep, a hot drink with medicinal properties, and maras dondurma, a chewy ice cream. On a global scale, however, habitat loss is considered the greatest threat to orchids."


So how can BSBI botanists help Susanne in her research, and where do herbaria come into it?

"Luckily there is a vast but fragmented data set that can be used to measure the impact of habitat loss on orchid populations: herbarium specimens. Not all sheets give locations specific enough for the site to be revisited, but many do, making it possible to return to locations where orchids once grew - according to herbarium specimen records - and evaluate whether those locations still support habitats in which orchids might grow now". 

Susanne plans to start with specimens in RBG Kew, but says "I would also be delighted to hear from anyone who has herbarium specimens of orchids that were collected in Turkey". You can email Susanne if you know of any such specimens, or talk to her at the AEM. 

You will be able to recognise her from the photograph on the left, showing Susanne manning the BSBI stand at this summer's annual conference of the Society for Economic Botany, held in Plymouth.   

Another excellent botany Blog by a BSBI member.

Water Bent Polypogon viridis
Image: O. Pescott 

Jonathan Mitchley has been in touch from the University of Reading, where he teaches botany to all who want to learn, from beginners to MSc students, like BSBI member, Blogger and herbarium volunteer Waheed Arshad. 

Jonathan asked if he could reproduce Philip Oswald's lovely photo (below) of Peter Sell and Gina Murrell, in the Herbarium at Cambridge last summer, to illustrate a short tribute to Peter following last Thursday's funeral. 

I'm hoping to find out more about Jonathan's courses at the AEM on 23rd November. He will also be offering us an exhibit called "Dr M's eXtreme botany manifesto". Jonathan's Blog suggests he's also a big fan of herbaria so I'll be finding out what goes on in the Herbarium at Reading. Any spilt beans will be served up here asap!

Gina Murrell and Peter Sell
Image: P. Oswald

Jonathan has just joined BSBI so I can add his Blog to the list on the right. He also has some great botany videos on his website - I've just been looking at his grass ID video, wish I'd been in that class when I was first struggling with grasses, he makes it seem easy and fun! Next free evening, suspect I'll be browsing Jonathan's Blog and website until way past bedtime..

Thinking a lot about grasses because I am a little odd that way but also because I see that Oli Pescott is having an exhibit at the AEM on occurrence of Polypogon viridis in the Sheffield area. Hence the photo and a follow-up post on Oli's discoveries as soon as I have a moment. We've also recorded this distinctive grass in Leicester - have you spotted it too, in a pavement crack or the edge of a patch of wasteground? Let us know at the AEM or email me!