The last of the winter meetings. 

The winter season of London meetings closed the other week with BSBI Council, which met in a room at the Astronomical Society (hence the telescopes in the photo on the right) to grapple with a packed agenda. Subjects ranged from recording for a proposed Atlas 2020 to reports from the Committees and Officers, from ash die-back to the society's change of governance, and there was close scrutiny of accounts and budgets. Trying to distil everything you want to say about your area of expertise into a few minutes is quite a challenge, but the feedback from other Council members is always constructive and we managed to get through the whole agenda in three hours, under the skilful chairmanship of our President, Ian Bonner.

This was the final meeting with Ian in the Chair, as he stands down from the Presidency in June, on his home turf in Anglesey, where our AGM is being held from 11th-13th June at Beaumaris. Details of the AGM and the associated fieldtrips are here and you can see the Anglesey homepage here: Ian is one of two VC Recorders for Anglesey and is seen here (photo on left) looking at a population of Saxifraga granulata at Abermenai Point. Ian told me he was "delighted and slightly awe-struck by the high number of bookings" for the AGM and pointed out "the success of the whole event will rely upon help from many people and I'm very grateful for so many offers of assistance. Of course the weather is also going to be crucial!"

During his two years as President, Ian has overseen the blossoming of the Plant Unit and the launch of New Journal of Botany, encouraged all our publicity and outreach initiatives, and guided us towards this year's change of governance. I know Ian will thank everyone who helped him in these endeavours, but he will be too modest to mention what a pivotal role he played himself. So I'm happy to blow the trumpet for him!