New Year Plant Hunt 2025: Day Three

Day Three of this year's New Year Plant Hunt and with the Met Office forecasting heavy rain and strong winds on the way, the race was on to get out and hunt for wild or naturalised plants in bloom across Britain and Ireland. By the end of the day, the Results website was showing more than 15,000 records from 1,195 separate Hunts, and 546 different species recorded so far. Matt Harding, BSBI Scotland Officer, led a Hunt in Stirling and has sent a short report and some tips for Plant Hunters, but first I'd like to feature a couple of inspirational young botanists who are causing quite a stir.

One of our favourite photos from last year's New Year Plant Hunt was of Michael Jones' daughter Ezri, then aged just eight months old, examining one of our newly-launched spotter sheets. We're delighted to report that a year on, Ezri is still enjoying her botany (particularly white and purple flowers) and has graduated to the more targeted 'England's Top 20' spotter sheet (image above right). As proud dad Michael says, the New Year Plant Hunt is a "fab family thing to do".

Our other botanical Hunt Heroine is Ada, who James told you about in last night's blogpost. She was out plant hunting again today with proud dad Dan Ryan and her fashion sense is causing as much of a stir as her botanical expertise. 

Whether she's examining Three-Cornered Leek (image on left), checking out a patch of sweet-smelling Winter Heliotrope or zooming in on a Daisy, with her fabulous 'winged unicorn' coat, teamed with colourful leggings and a selection of bobble hats, Ada's status as a style icon is now firmly established and we are all upping our game to try to be more like Ada. 

But the New Year Plant Hunt isn't just about inspirational young female botanists - it's also about the dogs and horses who join us on our Hunts and oh yes, it's also about the plants - I haven't forgotten them! 

In Ireland, Oisin and Mairead reported "slim pickings" on their Hunt up in Donegal but down in Cork City, where it's considerably warmer, Finbarr notched up 46 species, including Common Whitlow-grass and Greater Burnet-Saxifrage. 

Botanists in Cornwall, with the 'seaside version'
of Wild Carrot in the foreground
Image: Dave Steere

Lizzie found 29 species in bloom in Ammanford, West Wales; in South Wales, Peter spotted Lesser Celandine in bloom and in mid-Wales, Hilary did her first ever Hunt and decreed it "a great end to a good year". 

Notable finds in England today included Sea Campion and Rock Samphire in Cornwall; Hemlock in Kent; Annual Bugloss near London; Sweet Violets and Snapdragons in Cambridge; Annual Knawel in Bedfordshire and Small Nettle in Whitby 

Further north the weather was less kind to plant hunters - it was "blowing a hoolie" in the Borders - but let's go over to BSBI Scotland Officer Matt Harding for his update:

Rosy Cress in Stirling today
Image: Matt Harding

"Seven hardy souls braved the biblical forecast, and after a grotty first hour were rewarded with blue skies, flowers galore and a wind that nearly blew us off the top of the Stirling volcanic plug.

We managed to search out a whopping 45 species in flower, beating our 2024 total by three species! This total might be the work of a moment as you potter along the Dorset coastline, but in Scotland is quite a result. Last year the average Plant Hunt list in Scotland was six species long…

Compared to last year, we missed several larger-leaved species that the recent frosts had knocked back, e.g. Hawkweeds, Prickly Sow-thistle, Red Valerian and Scentless Mayweed. However, these were more than compensated for by new finds such as Henbit Dead-nettle, a locally scarce species, Canadian Fleabane, a recent colonist, Sticky Groundsel and Barren Strawberry.

Matt's Top Tips for Plant Hunting in Scotland (and beyond?):

• Head for the towns and cities: The urban heat island effect is incredibly helpful for prolonging flowering times. It’s all very well walking through beautiful countryside with glorious mountain views, but chances are you’ll just have Gorse to show for your efforts.
• Go for grotty spots: The most productive areas are often sheltered corners of wasteland, lurking behind walls, along road verges etc. If it is the kind of spot that will have Annual Meadow-grass, Petty Spurge, Groundsel, Thale Cress and Smooth Sow-thistle), then there is a pretty good chance that some or all of them will still be in flower, mixed in with the abandoned bottles of Buckfast. Don’t forget to check the walls as well – species such as Yellow Corydalis and Wood Meadow-grass can be spotted, as well as more familiar species like Ivy-leaved Toadflax.
• Do some prep: Build in some poking around time during your Christmas shopping, to reccie likely spots. This year a little preparation in the run-up to Christmas allowed us to focus on more productive wasteland corners and car park margins, and avoid previously rewarding spots that had been stripped of flowers by the recent frosts. I also spotted Rosy Cress in bud in early December on King’s Park walls on the edge of Stirling, and a quick visit on New Year’s Eve revealed one plant in rather glorious flower for the Plant Hunt.
• Think about aspect and potential sun traps: In Stirling, the Back Walk consists of a rising path below basalt cliffs facing south-west, sheltered by woodland on one side and the old town walls on the other, creating optimum conditions for late flowerers. This is always a productive area for our Plant Hunts, with highlights including Hare’s-foot Clover, Holly and Ivy, otherwise in bud, are good bets for flowering along this section
• Get a group going: The more pairs of eyes, the more you will spot.
• Above all, look closely: It’s surprising how many flowers have visible stamens when you double-check with a hand lens".

Thanks Matt! So, if you're going out plant hunting tomorrow for our fourth and final day of this year's New Year Plant Hunt, do follow Matt's tips, do check the weather forecast (and the Group Hunts listing if you were planning to join a group Hunt, just in case it had to be cancelled due to bad weather) and finally, do use the BSBI recording app to upload your records. 

Good luck, Happy New Year and we hope to see you back here tomorrow night for our final round-up.

New Year Plant Hunt 2025: Day Two

James (in green) and NHSN botanists
 ready for their Hunt at St. Peter's today
Image: Matt Williamson

For tonight's round-up of New Year Plant Hunt results across Britain and Ireland, I'm handing over to the fabulous James Common. James is one of BSBI's County Recorders for North Northumberland and works as Senior Naturalist with the Natural History Society of Northumbria (NHSN). His main interest is urban plants and he is currently working on an urban Flora covering Newcastle and North Tyneside. If you attended last year's British & Irish Botanical Conference, you'll have met James: NHSN co-hosted that event, at University of Newcastle, and James' presentation on the urban flora of Newcastle was one of the day's highlights. 

So without further ado, over to James:

"Today marked Day Two of the fourteenth New Year Plant Hunt (NYPH), with botanists from all corners of Britain and Ireland flocking outdoors to find, record, and importantly, enjoy the wide variety of wild and naturalised plants to be found in bloom during winter.

Pale Pink-Sorrel spotted on today's Hunt
Image: James Common

As an enthusiastic follower of BSBI’s New Year Plant Hunt, it has been inspiring to see so many people engaging with the project on social media and even better to peruse the wonderful lists shared from what seems like every corner of Britain and Ireland. From Thurso in Caithness all the way south to Scillies, how fantastic it is to see the NYPH making a difference on a national scale and growing larger with each passing year.

Once again, today there have been some impressive totals shared. Take Helen Dignum and team’s list from coastal Pagham, West Sussex, where 66 species were spotted in bloom including natives such as Sea Samphire and opportunistic neophytes including Corsican Hellebore. As Louise Marsh mentioned yesterday, mild coastal areas tend to yield more species at this time of year - further demonstrated by Dennis Kell’s list from Felixstowe where exotics in bloom included Sicilian Chamomile and Seaside Daisy.

Narrow-leaved ragwort at St. Peter's
with passing botanists
Image: Matt Williamson

Big lists were not restricted to coastal areas, however. Over in County Limerick, Paul Murphy and the Raheem Ramblers notched up an impressive 59 species including White Ramping-fumitory, and in Newcastle, a group from the Natural History Society of Northumbria led by yours truly managed 57 species along the banks of the Tyne. These included surprises such as Black Horehound and Viper’s-bugloss, and new arrivals to the region in Guernsey Fleabane and Narrow-leaved Ragwort. As you’ll see from the group shot (above right), it was great to have local people of all ages, backgrounds and experience levels along for the trip – that’s what the NYPH is all about!

Black Horehound
Image from Plant Atlas 2020
Image: Chris Gibson & Rob Still

Down south in Peterborough (please bear in mind a Geordie is writing this) a list shared by Sarah Lambert demonstrated perfectly the diversity of urban areas with neophytes such as Hare’s-tail, Sweet Alison and Narrow-leaved Ragwort blooming alongside hardy natives in Round-leaved Crane’s-bill and Butcher’s-broom. This and other submissions from towns and cities across the Britain and Ireland contrast starkly with those from rural areas where neophytes can be rather hard to come by. This contrast was noted in the results of in last year’s survey (available here).

Large lists and rare plants are not the aim of the NYPH, equally important is the chance to spend time in nature and connect with the natural world, often in good company. So many examples of this have been shared over on social media that it is difficult to keep track but a couple of things that made me smile when researching for this post included Debbie Alston’s Butcher’s-broom (and super afternoon tea) in Eastbourne, East Sussex and Charlotte Rankin’s fun day out with the team from Cumbria Wildlife Trust (image below left).

Six-year-old botanist Ada getting
 to grips with Winter Heliotrope
Image: Dan Ryan

Dan Ryan also shared some glorious pictures of himself and six-year-old botanist, Ada, enjoying Winter Heliotrope and lots more beside on their local walk. Incidentally, one simply has to compliment Ada on her floral fashion sense. Such is also the case with NYPH stalwart, Moira O’Donnell, too whose botanical boots are sure to bring a smile to your face on a dreary winter’s day.

It is always interesting to keep an eye on the most ‘frequent plants’ observed as part of the survey. Often there are some changes from year to year as different species react to variable weather conditions. Interestingly, so far this year, the top seven plants observed by botanists mirror exactly those from last year. It is only after that that changes become apparent with Yarrow dropping six places to number fourteen on the list. Hazel too has fallen a few places and sightings of Smooth Hawk’s-beard are scarcer this time around – indeed, it has been conspicuously absent from both NYPH walks I have attended here in the North East. I wonder how this will change as more lists are submitted over the coming days?

Staff and volunteers from Cumbria Wildlife Trust
 on their New Year Plant Hunt
- with one of our New Year Plant Hunt
spotter sheets! 
Image: Charlotte Rankin

At the time of writing this, 645 surveys have taken place so far in just two days, revealing 466 species of wild and naturalised plants in bloom this winter and representing no less than 8602 valuable botanical records. Whilst great fun, the survey serves an important role by drawing attention to how our flora is adapting to changing weather patterns. It would be amazing to think that with your help, the fourteenth New Year Plant Hunt could be the biggest yet. You can do it…"

Huge thanks to James for this round-up! James' blog about his wildlife finds in North East England is well worth a read and you can follow his wildlife posts (always illustrated by some great photos) on Twitter and on Bluesky. You can also book now for the Botanical Skills webinar on Cotoneasters which that James is giving for BSBI on 28th January.

Good luck to tomorrow's plant hunters and let's catch up again here tomorrow to check out what they found where!

New Year Plant Hunt 2025: Day One

Today was the first day of the BSBI's fourteenth New Year Plant Hunt, when thousands of botanists head out to look for wild or naturalised plants in bloom in midwinter. 

It was wonderful to see plant records flooding in to our Results website, from plant hunters across Britain and Ireland: whether 48 species recorded on Jersey (the southernmost Hunt of the day) or seven records from chillier Inverness (the northernmost). 

As always, coastal areas yielded more species: 81 species, including a gorgeous Fumitory (below left) recorded by the Norfolk Flora Group Team B, currently in pole position on the list of Longest Lists. Down in Mevagissey in Cornwall, where the weather was mild enough for some plant-hunters to wear shorts, Dan Ryan's team notched up 78 species, including some "arable lovelies" against a stunning backdrop (on right) and he declared the Hunt "the best event of the year". 

Over in Portaferry, Co. Down, Graham Day - who has recently published an excellent new Rare Plant Register - recorded 57 species, including Stinking Chamomile, Tall Ramping-Fumitory, Shrub Ragwort and the invasive Three-cornered Leek. The Glamorgan Botany Group, which included star botanist Tim Rich, one of the two original New Year Plant Hunters (along with the fabulous Sarah Whild) and winner of our latest 'Outstanding Contribution to British & Irish Botany' award, found 72 species in bloom, including five different Speedwells as well as three delicious edible plants  - Fennel, Wild Parsnip and Wild Carrot - which we assume they weren't tempted to forage! 

But the Hunt isn't just about long lists: the aim is to find out how our plants are responding to a rapidly changing climate, with warmer wetter autumns and winters, and fewer frosts, so the reports from people who went out hunting and found very few, or no species at all, in bloom are just as important. The BSBI recording app makes it possible to report 'nil records' and that all goes into the mix when we come to analyse the results.

The Hunt is also about blowing the cobwebs away and enjoying getting out in nature, whether with friends and family, on your own (to enjoy some quiet time after a busy Christmas), or on one of an ever-growing selection of Group Hunts. Kim, Shane and their team enjoyed a "happy morning" on their group hunt in Portrane, County Dublin and found 18 species in flower including Tree Mallow. BSBI Chief Exec Julia Hanmer had a "fantastic" day out hunting with the Gloucester Naturalists and Tristan Norton in Southampton reported a "satisfying" New Year Plant Hunt, with 34 species in bloom including Musk Stork's-bill and Sea Mayweed. 

There were fewer wild plants in bloom inland, although the recent mild weather meant that many of us following the same routes as on previous years' Hunts recorded way more species this year. Markus and Nadine were out in Brightwell, near Wallingford, and logged a "personal best" of 52 species including Great Mullein, Sweet Violet and Stone Parsley. The South Lincs. Flora Group notched up 48 species in Sleaford, including Grey Willow and Upright Hedge-parsley. 

I was out in inner city Leicester (on left) with our urban botany group, where 15 of us recorded 43 species in bloom, twice as many as we found following the same route last year after heavy frost. We also came across a patch of verge with three species in bloom which haven't been recorded at all in that 1km x 1km square for eight years: Field Madder, Eastern Rocket and Yellow Oat-grass. 

There's nothing like a New Year Plant Hunt for teaching you something new about an area you thought you knew like the back of your hand! Thanks also to three members of Leicester Friends of the Earth (above right) who joined us to compare notes on how our wild plants are responding to climate change and the knock-on effects this might have for all our wildlife. BSBI is not a campaigning organisation but our data underpin nature conservation projects across Britain and Ireland. 

Many people reported seeing the 'usual suspects' in bloom - the species that feature in the list of most frequently-recorded plants and which we put onto our spotter sheets, to help people just getting started with plant-spotting. 

There were a few surprises though - for example, both Debbie & Dave Alston in East Sussex and James Common in Newcastle found Viper's Bugloss (on right) in flower. We'd usually see that flowering in late summer and presumably it hadn't been knocked back by frost so it just kept right on blooming. In previous years we've found that more than half the species recorded during the Hunt are in this category, late bloomers who have kept going - will that be the case again this time? We won't know for sure until all the data are in. 

The first day of the Hunt is usually fairly quiet but even so, by the end of the day, we had received more than 4,200 records from 300 Hunts, and 368 species had been recorded in total. What will tomorrow bring? Watch this space!

British & Irish Botany: issue 6.2 published

We have just published the latest issue of British & Irish Botany, the BSBI's online, Open Access scientific journal. This new issue of the journal, with Stuart Desjardins (University of Leicester) now firmly bedded-in as Editor-in-Chief, features six papers which we are confident will be of interest to botanists across Britain and Ireland.

Sambucus canadensis x nigra
Image: A. Amphlett

First up is a paper by Andy Amphlett, joint BSBI County Recorder for Easterness, of a hybrid Elder reported from four locations in northern Scotland. There are no other confirmed reports of hybrid Elders in Britain or Ireland, so this is exciting! We all know the common native Elder Sambucus nigra but S. canadensis, the other parent of this newly-recorded hybrid, is a scarce alien in the UK and isn’t known at all from Ireland. Andy’s paper is beautifully illustrated with photographs showing the diagnostic characters of both parents and their offspring, and he has prepared helpful tables comparing the diagnostic features, making it much easier for any of us to go out hunting for this new hybrid.

Next up we have a paper from David Wilkinson and Janet O’Regan about the life and work of Emily Margaret Wood, a pioneering C19th botanist, illustrator and ceramicist. In her short life – she died at the age of just 42 – she made a huge contribution to botany and other natural sciences in the Liverpool area.

Emily Margaret Wood's
orchid illustrations for the
Flora of Liverpool
Image courtesy of
Wirral  Libraries

Our third paper, by Dan Minchin and colleagues, tells the remarkable story of buoyant bindweed seeds traveling thousands of miles across the North Atlantic. Starting their journey in the Americas, these drift seeds ended up stranded on a beach on the southwest coast of Ireland. Five seeds with a similar outward appearance were collected from St Finnan’s Bay (Co. Kerry) and, despite their long journey, three were successfully germinated and grown into plants. Scientists at the Natural History Museum in London then extracted DNA from their leaves and used barcoding techniques to identify them. The seeds were found to belong to the exotic Ipomoea tiliacea (Convolvulaceae), which is the first recorded instance of this species demonstrating such long-distance dispersal.

This article builds on Dan’s earlier work from 2023, which documented the first record of seed from the pan-tropical Yellow Water Pea Vigna luteola washing up on a European shore. Botanists along the coast are encouraged to be on the lookout for both of these taxa. While there is currently little evidence that these distant propagules can become established on our shores, they may represent future additions to our flora, particularly as our climate continues to warm. 

For those wanting to explore this interesting topic further, the BSBI Handbook on exotic drift seeds and fruits stranded on beaches in north-western Europe is now available as an eBook.

Clematis vitalba invading fixed dunes on
the Sefton Coast
Image: P. Smith

The fourth contribution is from Phil Smith who reports on how Traveller’s-joy Clematis vitalba has become invasive on the Sefton Coast sand-dunes. As its Plant Atlas entry shows, this widely naturalised garden plant has expanded its range in recent years, especially in western and northern Britain and Ireland, and especially in ruderal habitats and on base-rich soils. Phil’s paper sets out the impact this plant is having on both fixed and semi-fixed dune habitats, and discusses the various control methods being trialled, both on the Sefton Coast and in New Zealand where biological control has also been attempted.

Next up we have an account from Tim Rich of an Endangered hawkweed, Hieracium mammidens, from south-east England. This latest paper by Tim, author of many such contributions to this journal and several BSBI Handbooks, adds to the already considerable BSBI resources on hawkweeds. But Tim turns his attention to many other taxa apart from hawkweeds; check out the video of his talk at the recent BSBI AGM about his research into Wild Asparagus. Tim was invited to give this talk in recognition of his becoming this year’s recipient of the BSBI Award for Outstanding Contribution to British and Irish botany.

NHM Herbarium specimen of
Campanula medium collected in 
Edinburgh, 1841

Our final paper in this issue is from Chris Dixon, Curator of British and Irish Seed Plants at the British & Irish Herbarium in the Natural History Museum (NHM), London. Chris is also BSBI Vice-County Recorder for East Gloucestershire and his paper ‘Bellflowers as bellwethers’ draws together these two parts of his botanical life. He asks ‘how many unappreciated early records are there in herbarium collections?’ and compares recently-digitised specimens of bellflowers (the family Campanulaceae) from the NHM Herbarium against first vice-county records in the BSBI Distribution Database (to which BSBI members have access) in order to demonstrate how herbarium specimens, when cross-referenced with BSBI’s plant records, can lead us to a fuller understanding of the British and Irish flora. The value of herbaria has long been under-appreciated but it seems the tide may be turning.

We already have nine papers in the pipeline for issue 7.1, coming to you early next year, and we are always keen to hear from any botanists interested in submitting a manuscript. We’re especially keen to help students and early-career botanists looking to publish their first paper in a scientific journal – we can guide you through the process and help you learn the ropes! Here are the subject areas we cover and here are the submission guidelines, or you can email me and Stuart if you'd rather have an informal chat before submitting. But for now, we hope you will enjoy this latest issue of British & Irish Botany.

Rare Plants by Peter Marren: special offer for BSBI members

A new book about Britain's rare wild flowers is always going to be of interest to plant-lovers, especially when the book is written by one of our top natural history authors who is also a BSBI member - and when fellow members can look forward to a hefty discount when they order their copy!

Peter Marren has more than twenty nature books under his belt, numerous articles in broadsheets and a regular column in British Wildlife magazine. He has been a BSBI member since 1975, and in 1999 he won the 'Presidents' Award' for his book Britain's Rare Flowers; the award is made each year by the Presidents of the BSBI and the Wild Flower Society to the book deemed to have made the most useful contribution to the understanding of the flowering plants and ferns of Britain and Ireland.   

Peter's new book, due out this month, is Rare Plants, an account of Britain's threatened plant species; it's part of the British Wildlife Collection from Bloomsbury Publishing, who describe it as "a beautifully illustrated account of some of our most endangered plant species, exploring why they matter and what opportunities we have to protect them before it’s too late. Prize-winning author Peter Marren describes the allure of Britain and Ireland's vanishing wild flora, from the simple joy of plant hunting to the wonder and (sometimes) weirdness of the plants themselves, as well as their important place in our landscape and culture. He also explores the condition of rarity in the context of our changing world and climate: why do plants become rare, what threats do they face, and what opportunities do we have to protect them before it is too late? The book concludes with an overview of different conservation techniques, using test cases such as Lady's Slipper Orchid and Starved Wood-sedge, and asks at what point careful management becomes gardening, and how far we are justified in intervening in the life of a wild species".

Rare Plants is published in hardback on 28th November and features more than 300 colour images - check out the sample pages below. The RRP is £40 but if you're a BSBI member, you can claim 20% discount and pay only £32. Just go to the password-protected members' area of the BSBI website and follow the instructions to claim your discount. Not yet a member? Join us this month and as well as the discount on Rare Plants, you can also take advantage of our autumn membership special offer and start enjoying all these other members' benefits straight away. 

BSBI membership: save money with our autumn special offer

Sea Rocket Cakile maritima in Cornwall
Image: David Steere 

For the last two years, we have launched our autumn membership special offer by saying that 'in a rapidly changing world, our wild plants have never been more in need of the support, understanding and appreciation that BSBI is uniquely placed to provide'. 

You won’t be surprised to hear that we’ve seen even more evidence over the past year about how our climate is changing: thousands of you went out recording for the 2024 New Year Plant Hunt and found a total of 629 different species across Britain and Ireland managing to flower in deepest midwinter. Amazing but also a bit worrying? And our Plant Atlas 2020 analyses and summary reports flagged how British and Irish wild flowers, and the many other species of wildlife who depend on them, are increasingly threatened. 

We have never been more reliant on, and grateful for, the contributions of BSBI's fabulous volunteer members. That’s why today we are inviting you to join our growing ranks, if you haven't already, and asking our existing members to help us spread the word about the benefits of BSBI membership - for you and for our wonderful wild flowers. 

So, at a time when we are all counting the pennies, why join BSBI? And why now? There are three good reasons!

First of all, if you join BSBI in October, your membership starts at once so you could enjoy up to 15 months of membership benefits for the price of 12 months. You wouldn't need to renew your subscription until January 2026.

Secondly, we've expanded our range of membership benefits in the past year and there are even more in the pipeline:

• Members receive three issues each year of BSBI News, our colourful magazine packed with information about British and Irish wild flowers: visit our sampler page to check out the latest sampler, and take a look at some of the free articles from recent issues – that will give you an idea of the contents.
• New for 2024/25: Members can now apply for access to the BSBI Distribution Database – with more than 50 million plant records, it’s one of the largest databases of biological records in the world. As members, you’ll also be able to download our new recording app so you can upload your plant records direct from your phone or computer to the BSBI Database, ready for verification by our experts. 
• Membership gives you favoured status when applying for BSBI training and plant study grants - if you're thinking of doing a plant ID course, such as BSBI's online Identiplant course or one of the many courses offered by external providers, you can apply for a grant of up to £250 to help you. These grants are also available to non-members but members are prioritised in the award process.
• Membership brings you big discounts on the series of BSBI Handbooks; pre-publication offers for members are usually around a third off. There’s a Handbook on Roses due out early in 2025 and there are several other titles in the pipeline.
• Members have exclusive access to almost 100 expert plant referees to help you with identification, to members-only volunteering opportunities and to 100+ scientific papers free to download from the password-protected members' area of our website.
• Membership also brings you big discounts on selected botany books, such as Frustrating Flowers and Puzzling Plants by John Warren and the forthcoming second edition of Harrap’s Wild Flowers, as well as other ad hoc offers and discounts from our partners. 

Concerned about the environmental impact of your membership? By opting for digital membership and choosing eBooks rather than printed Handbooks, you'll be minimising your carbon footprint. 

But there's a third, very important, reason for joining the growing ranks of BSBI members - it's not just about all the many practical and financial benefits you'll enjoy. You'll also be helping us to support British and Irish wildflowers. 

How? Because while many of our >4,300 members carry out amazing work studying, recording, monitoring and helping to conserve wild plants across Britain and Ireland, feeding into projects such as Plant Atlas 2020, the State of Nature 2023 report, the many county Floras and the National Plant Monitoring Scheme in which BSBI is a partner, many others are simply happy to know that their subscription helps support our work to advance the understanding and appreciation of wild plants and to support their conservation across Britain and Ireland.

Check out our nature conservation policy and our strategic plan to find out more; find out how our botanical heatmaps, developed with Natural England, are helping ensure that we get the right tree in the right place (and not in the wrong place!); check out the members who won awards in 2023 for outstanding contributions to botany; or leaf through our latest Annual Review to find out what the Society achieved last year thanks to all our wonderful members.

Want to know more about exactly how we spend the subscriptions we receive from members and the funding from external bodies? Our Annual Report and Accounts are always published on this page, while our Ethical Position Statement and our Reserves Policy can be viewed on our Governance page. Want to check that we will always respect your privacy and handle your data with the utmost care? Check out our Privacy Policy and Data Handling Policy.

Ghost Orchid: feared extinct in UK,
not seen since 2009 until
it was rediscovered in 2024
by BSBI member Richard Bate
Image: R. Bate

If you are already a BSBI member, we'd like to say a huge thank you to each and every one of you for all that you do, and ask you to spread the word to friends and colleagues who you think might enjoy becoming a member - and don't forget that a gift membership of BSBI makes a great present for a loved one!

Our ranks are growing - by almost 30% in the last three years - so if you haven't yet joined us, why not head over here and become our next new member? 

We can't wait to welcome you and send you your membership welcome pack. 

Together we can keep working towards a world where wild plants across Britain and Ireland thrive and are valued - and so are the thousands of amazing BSBI botanists who support them.

Interview with BSBI President Micheline Sheehy Skeffington: Part Two

Micheline enjoying some urban botany
 on a post-industrial site in Wales
Image: L. Marsh

In Part One of our interview with BSBI President Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, we heard about her early days botanising and studying in Dublin, in France and then in the Indonesian tropical rainforest, but by 1985, with her PhD under her belt, she was back in Ireland as lecturer in plant ecology in the Botany Department of then-named University College Galway, UCG (now University of Galway).

LM: So Micheline, what happened next?

MSS: On returning from my year in Indonesia, I resumed my lectures and soon took on my first postgraduate student, Lieveke Van Doorslaer, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. With the aim of helping conservation, we worked with Connemara National Park, Director Dr Noel Kirby who suggested we study the enigmatic Lusitanian heather Erica mackaiana, so widespread on Roundstone Bog. Using old 1870s OS maps, Lieveke’s extremely careful mapping of species and hybrid at its known sites, led to our suspicions that it might not be native. In fact, a paper sent to BSBI’s then scientific journal Watsonia was rejected on the basis that fossil leaves had been found in the Boreal era! This began my long on-going interest in Hiberno-Lusitanian species - and we did eventually publish the E. mackaiana paper in New Journal of Botany.

LM: I remember it well, we published the paper in 2016! It’s now available to BSBI members via the password-protected members’ area of the BSBI website (email me if you’re a member and you’ve forgotten your password or if you'd like to join BSBI and gain access). So what else were you doing at this point?

Micheline botanising in Connemara

MSS: As well as postgrad work on rare plant species (for example with John Conaghan, now BSBI County Recorder for West Galway, who researched the ecology of Slender Cotton-grass Eriophorum gracile and Broad-leaved Cotton-grass E. latifolium in Ireland), I soon realised that farming and farmers were critical to nature conservation and much of my subsequent postgrad and postdoc research focused on sustainable agriculture in Connemara as well as in the Burren, linked to its Farming for Conservation Programme. We also worked with farmers on conservation management in the fascinating ephemeral lakes, or turloughs, that abound in the Galway region - and, of course, on the River Shannon flood-meadows, or callows. Many of my postgrads are now highly-esteemed consultants or in senior conservation posts in National Parks and Wildlife Service, which is very nice to see; several are BSBI County Recorders! We have many papers in national and international peer-reviewed journals.

Micheline and family members
 at the High Court, May 2017

LM: That is an impressive list of publications! And then of course many people will be aware of your long but ultimately successful struggle for gender equality in academia. Could you tell us about that please?

MSS: Well as far back as 2000, I made my first bid for Senior Lecturer. Little did I know then that there was a very thick, opaque glass ceiling above me that took a sledge hammer to smash! By 2009, I had applied four times but was told that, though I was shortlisted for the second time (and therefore deemed suitable), I was not ranked in the top 17 who were promoted. When I asked how many of the 17 were women, the Registrar checked, paused and then said ‘One’. To cut a long story short, I made a cogent case to the Equality Tribunal on the grounds of gender discrimination, gaining access to all the anonymised shortlisted applications -and won in November 2014! But I knew that five other women were also better qualified than some of those men and the women eventually filed suit with the High Court and Workplace Relations Commission, so we mounted a four-year campaign in their support. 

Micheline and Rose Foley, finalising the book

Because this dragged on, it had positive national effects. For example, by 2018 when the university finally settled with the women, the Higher Education Authority had made funding for all third-level institutions contingent on getting an Athena SWAN award. So people felt this story needed to be documented, and journalist friend Rose Foley, who had been in the campaign since the start, was ideally placed to do this. 

Five long years of writing, interviews and research later, our book finally came out late in 2023! A cracking good read, it’s an important and insightful account of university politics and how winning against all odds is possible. It is in bookshops in Ireland and Britain, but also here on the campaign website, where the details of the campaign are also chronicled.

LM: Hurrah! And there (on the right) is the front cover of the book, called Micheline's Three Conditions. Although I suppose that as the grand-daughter of one of Ireland’s most famous suffragettes, we shouldn’t be surprised that you were so tenacious in your fight for equality! Could you tell us something please about your family heritage?   

MSS: I like to say I come from a long line of jailbirds and troublemakers! My grandmother, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington was probably Ireland’s most prominent suffragette and went to prison and hunger struck in the struggle for Votes for Women. When she married her husband, Francis Skeffington, they each took each other’s name to become the Sheehy Skeffingtons, as he himself was a staunch feminist. So, when I took my case, I felt I owed it to them and indeed my parents, to stand up to injustice. They were socialists, as well as wanting Irish independence, but Frank especially was a militant pacifist and was executed without trial during the 1916 Easter Rising by a British army officer, arguably as a result of his outspoken anti-militarism. My father, Owen, carried on their tradition and became an independent Senator, elected by Trinity College Dublin alumni. My mother, Andrée, co-founded the radical Irish Housewives Association and campaigned for price control of basic foods during the difficult 1940s and 50s. So, I had quite a legacy to uphold!

LM: Micheline, congratulations on all that you have managed to achieve for women in academia! You have also held several other high- profile roles, such as your ministerial appointment to the Heritage Council, serving on its Wildlife Committee from 1995 to 2000, and you have also served on the Advisory Board for the Burren LIFE project. Could you tell us more about these roles and how you were able to promote the causes of habitat conservation and sustainable agriculture?

Micheline and President Michael D. Higgins
during the 1916 Rising celebrations

MSS: I was one of the appointees of one Minister Michael D. Higgins to the Heritage Council, which had several committees, including Waterways, Archaeology, Architecture and Wildlife. There was a radical bunch of us on the Wildlife Committee. The Council is in an advisory capacity to the Minister and the Wildlife Committee commissioned key reports on the impact of agriculture and of forestry on the Irish environment; a comprehensive review of conservation designations in Ireland, as well as the much-used Guide to the Habitats of Ireland compiled by the late much-missed Julie Fossitt. We organised an international conference on Burren low-intensity farming that tapped into Brendan Dunford’s work. He then set up the Burren Farming for Conservation Programme, as it became, which has been one of the most successful EU LIFE projects, winning international awards. 

Micheline in Uganda

It was a privilege to serve on their advisory board and I also learned a lot about farming for conservation there. I also served as Council member of the international Tropical Biology Association (which I was keen to support because it helps train up young biologists in Africa and Asia, alongside a bunch of European students who help subsidise them. I taught on one course in Uganda, where I learned so much about its habitats, flora and fauna. Of course, I served many spells on the BSBI Committee for Ireland, including as Chair.

LM: So when had you joined BSBI and how did that come about?

MSS: As very new Botany graduates, myself and two classmates heard of a BSBI outing to the Aran Islands. Having spent time there learning Irish, I have a great affinity for the islands, and we enthusiastically boarded the small plane bound for Inis Mór. We learned about it, as our Professor D.A. Webb and Maura Scannell wanted to fill in gaps for their Flora of Connemara and the Burren. An illustrious group attended, including Mary (M.P.H.) Kertland, Éanna Ní Lamhna and of course Tim Robinson, recently moved to Inis Mór from England, who was mapping every corner and field of the islands and guided us round sites. ‘The students’ were credited with locating the Sea-kale Crambe maritima site on the beach there! I continued to join BSBI outings, getting more involved as a postgrad in the late 1970s and serving on the Committee for Ireland from 1981. 

Micheline and Mary Briggs
(BSBI's first female President)
at the 1995 BSBI AGM in Ireland

It was while chairing this in 1993-5, that I co-ordinated the first-ever BSBI AGM in Ireland. In fact, the previous year, in 1994, I had invited Tim Robinson to talk about the Roundstone Bog heathers and, as he rarely left the confines of Connemara, he persuaded me to organise the Irish AGM in Roundstone! That whimsical paper was published in the 1995 Irish Botanical News. Tim and his wife Mairéad became firm friends and we miss them very much.

LM: Ah yes, I was browsing BSBI News back-issues the other day and in the Reports of Field Meetings from this issue (on page 65) I can see that Sylvia Reynolds thanks you for “so ably organizing the AGM in Dublin”. So, you became increasingly active in BSBI, including as County Recorder for South-East Galway - when was that? And is that where you do most of your botanising these days?

Micheline and fellow botanists in Co. Clare

MSS: When I joined the Botany Department in then-UCG in October 1980 the Head of Department, Prof. Michael E. Mitchell asked me would I take over recording in the three vice-counties he was responsible for; SE and NE Galway as well as Roscommon! In those days recorders were scarce indeed. I took on the two east Galway vice-counties, but soon became aware of the amount of work involved and later gave up NE Galway, with some regret, as it had helped me explore parts of the county I didn’t know. As I live in SE Galway, it is easy for me to botanise in familiar territory -which comprises some of the low Burren, a great number of turloughs and part of the Slieve Aughty Mountains. Further east there is the River Shannon with its flood-meadows and a corner of Lough Derg. I love exploring this very varied range of habitats. With Cilian Roden, we’ve recently been exploring the Slieve Aughty Mountains for filmy-ferns, though these seem frustratingly rarer in SE Galway than in the more westerly part, in Co. Clare!

LM: And then in November 2022, you became BSBI President! We’ll cover that in the third and final part of this interview, coming soon, but for now, thanks for talking to us Micheline.