British & Irish Botany: issue 4.3 published

Wood Vetch in the Cairngorms
Image: A. Amphlett

We've just published the third issue of the fourth volume of British & Irish Botany, featuring eight papers by authors across Britain and Ireland. 

We have two papers from Scotland.

Firstly, Andy Amphlett, BSBI County Recorder for Easterness, reviews the vascular plant flora of the Cairngorms Connect project area, Scotland, and consider some possible implications of forest expansion to the natural tree line.

Secondly, Sarah Watts, Ian Strachan & Richard Marriott report on remarkable botanical records from Corrour in Westerness, including the creeping form of Lesser Water-plantain (which they elevate to species status as Baldellia repens) and Coral-necklace Illecebrum verticillatum, both new to Scotland.

Baldellia repens at Corrour
Image: S. Watts

From Ireland, we have a detailed review by Tony Murray and Mike Wyse Jackson's of the history, status and conservation management of Cottonweed Achillea maritima at Lady’s Island Lake, Co. Wexford, while Eric Greenwood and Hugh McAllister explore the systematics and cytogenetics of Scurvygrass Cochlearia officinalis around northern Irish Sea coasts. 

Wales is represented too, with Tim Rich's account of the endemic Brecon Hawkweed Hieracium breconense, confined to a single location in Craig-y-Ciliau National Nature Reserve in the Brecon Beacons. 

We also have three papers relevant to wild plants across the whole of Britain and Ireland. Firstly, Michael Braithwaite, our President from 2005 to 2008, reports on change in species distributions at tetrad scale – this is a supplement to the booklet Change in the British Flora 1987-2004, written by Michael with Bob Ellis and Chris Preston in 2006 and available from Summerfield Books here.

Brecon Hawkweed
Image: T. Rich

Next, Hugh McAllister and Andy Amphlett have teamed up to provide a definitive taxonomic treatment of the Tufted hair-grass Deschampsia cespitosa complex in Great Britain and Ireland.

Finally, we have a paper by Julian Shaw and colleagues at the Royal Horticultural Society describing a hybrid between the two species of Giant-rhubarbs Gunnera previously considered widespread in cultivation and proving invasive in some regions of Britain and Ireland. This previously overlooked hybrid is now considered to greatly outnumber one of the two parental species (G. manicata).

So, another fabulous issue here of our Open Access scientific journal, free for authors to publish in and for you to read - and we hope that there will be something of interest in this issue (as in all our back-issues) for every botanist across Britain and Ireland.