Hebridean heroes and villains

Carex extensa

The Hebridean recording team is going from strength to strength, with recorders coming up from Nottinghamshire and Oxfordshire to join Paul Smith's merry band. 

On the first day out, southern recorders tend to squeal and coo over the Butterworts, Sundews and all the unfamiliar sedges, and marvel at not finding any Cocksfoot or False Oat-grass until after lunch. 

Today, we didn't see any Cleavers Galium aparine at all, although we botanised along a roadside and along the shore, and found almost 200 species over the course of the day. 

Gunnera tinctoria in a ditch on Lewis

On the saltmarsh, we found Carex extensa (Long-bracted Sedge) and in the last few days we have also seen Carex lasiocarpa (Slender Sedge), C. limosa (Bog Sedge) and C. pauciflora (Few-flowered Sedge, which we rechristened Windfarm Sedge because it looks just like a wind turbine).

A few days ago, Puccinnellia distans ssp. borealis was found... on a roadside. Plants up here really haven't read the book!

We have also found a few "baddies": Rhododendron ponticum is perhaps the most famous, but we also spotted this clump of Gunnera tinctoria. Only one bit for now, but odds are that if this invasive plant is not removed, it will spread and outcompete some of our native plants. 

Herbarium specimens tell us about people as well as plants!

The August issue of New Journal of Botany should be dropping through your letterboxes later this month, and one of the papers - by Quentin Groom, Clare O'Reilly and Tom Humphrey - offers a fascinating insight into the society's history. I asked Quentin to tell us more about their paper 'Herbarium specimens reveal the network of British and Irish botanists, 1856-1932'. 

Lydia Becker, British botanist and suffragist
Image: Wiki Commons

Quentin said "The Victorians were fanatical about botany. At the same time as professional botanists, such as Alfred Russel Wallace and Joseph Hooker, toured the globe for new species, amateur botanists at home did the same for the British Isles. This paper sheds light on the workings of these botanists, who they were, how they worked and who they worked with.

"Victorian botanists were the forebears of the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland. They established societies to help botanists swap specimens and build their collections. Their legacy is the hundreds of thousands of herbarium specimens found in museums, botanic gardens and libraries around the country - and, for that matter, all over the world.

"The role of amateur botanists in science should not be underestimated, but it is not easy to study. The contribution of women in particular is difficult to assess, because few published, yet they were prolific collectors and illustrators. Nevertheless, the mass digitisation and transcription of herbarium specimens by the Herbaria@Home project has enabled us to piece together the interactions between botanists, creating networks of botanical exchange to show who were the main contributors and who they exchanged specimens with.

"The results of this study have shown that botanists of this period were well connected, exchanging specimens liberally across the country. It also shows the gradual increase in female participation and the decline of the clergy’s involvement. This mirrors the societal context of the period where women were campaigning for suffrage and, at the same time, Darwin was laying the scientific foundations of modern biology and ecology.

"The work of herbaria@home is far from finished and as more specimens are digitised their hidden data will be revealed. So far, 140,000 specimens have been transcribed, but we know there are many to go. British and Irish herbaria house about 20 million specimens. These apparently withered specimens are not just curiosities, but windows to the past and source data for historical and scientific research. They obviously tell us about the plants that were collected but, as this paper shows, they also tell us about the people who collected them".

Hebridean Recording Extravaganza 2014 has started!

Mary, Claudia, Margaret and Paul:
 examining the roadside vegetation
Image: L. Marsh

A growing number of VC Recorders are organising recording weeks, where botanists assemble in a distant part of the country, taking over a hotel or hiring a house, and spend every day in the field recording plants and every evening checking their identifications, pressing specimens and packing up the trickiest ones to send off to BSBI Referees. 

But, as far as I know, only Paul Smith, VCR for the Outer Hebrides, organises a three-week long house party every summer - and the house is always filled to capacity. Last year we had to have two houses to fit us all in! This year, there are twelve of us helping Paul, and several squares have already been well and truly bashed. 

Triglochin palustre by the roadside
Image: P. Smith

Yesterday we botanised along the road near the house - in the Outer Hebrides, this is more interesting than it sounds! Last year, we found so much Carex maritima Curved Sedge (a Red Data List species) along one roadside that we decided to rename the plant Kerb Sedge. Although the BSBI Sedge Handbook describes this as a "rare plant of sandy coasts", the subsequent comment "able to withstand salt spray and silt accretion to a limited extent" may give a clue as to why it can grow happily along a Hebridean road! 

Aquatics afficianado Claudia ignores the lovely lochan
 behind her and talks ligules with Paul.
Image: L. Marsh 

Yesterday we found another plant that hasn't read the book either. Triglochin palustre Marsh Arrow-grass was growing along a road verge that didn't seem particularly marshy, and who are we to order it to grow elsewhere?

You'll be glad to hear that Claudia Ferguson-Smyth, the photographer whose images grace the cover of New Journal of Botany, has already taken some amazing close-up photographs of some of the plants we've seen and has kindly agreed that we can use some of them here, so watch this space!

Sad announcement from BSBI President

From our President, Ian Denholm:

"Today, 25th July, has proved to be a very sad one for BSBI. We learned of the deaths of two of our longest-standing and most distinguished members. 

Mary Briggs MBE was a Sussex-based botanist who served as BSBI Honorary General Secretary for an extraordinary 25 years between 1972 and 1997, and as the Society’s President from 1998 to 2000. 

Clive Jermy retired from the Natural History Museum in 1992 after an illustrious career as a specialist in ferns and tropical botany. He also co-authored the BSBI Handbook Sedges of the British Isles, published in 2007. 

Our thoughts are with Mary’s and Clive’s relatives and close friends at this sad time".

Eyebright Update

Chris & Jane Gilmour
Image: courtesy of C. Metherell

Chris Metherell has been in touch to tell us how he has been getting on with his research towards the next Euphrasia Handbook (Eyebrights). 

He said "First off was a trip to Jersey, Herm and Guernsey, where the Euphrasia  situation is a little odd, with very few species recorded.  We did our best to check out the records for E. stricta which is believed to be native there (introduced elsewhere in the UK), or at least was, we failed to find any!  

Playing safe... an Eyebright!
Image: courtesy of C. Metherell

"However most of the plants we saw were either E. tetraquetra or hybrids of that species.  We sampled about 15 populations for further analysis.  The photo (above) is me and JaneGilmour the Guernsey VC Recorder getting to grips with Euphrasia (on left) on a golf course! 

"Then to North Wales, where the lowland Euphrasia were well out, mostly E. arctica and E. confusa but of course the upland species were not flowering.  

"Off to Orkney later this month with Fred Rumsey.  We've done quite a lot of background work on the Euphrasia there already - John Crossley kindly loaned a sheaf of specimens ID'd by Peter Yeo in the 1970s, I collected there three years ago, and of course I've been trawling herbaria... So I think we should be able to build up a pretty good picture. After that it's back to the mainland to work our way along the north coast of Scotland to deal with the endemic species there. And of course they've been testing out the latest keys in Kintail!"

Plants: From Roots to Riches

Burnet Rose Rosa spinosissima aka R. Pimpinellifolia
Image courtesy of John Crellin
http://www.floralimages.co.uk/page.php?
taxon=rosa_spinosissima,1 

Don't forget - today is the day when botany storms the national airwaves with this new Radio 4 series Plants: from Roots to Riches, presented by Prof Kathy Willis from Kew.

If you can't catch the series live, then its 25 parts will be up on iPlayer for us all to enjoy at our leisure. 

The first part, which airs at 1.45 today (just before The Archers!) is called 'A Rose by Any Other Name' and will introduce the listener to taxonomy and the role played by Carl Linnaeus. Can't wait!

How do aquatic plants regulate ecological balance within lakes?

Good to hear from Ambroise Baker about his current research project, which involves two weeks of field work in Northern Ireland surveying aquatic plants. 

Ambroise botanising in the New Forest
Image: G. Southon

He told me "We are going to report interesting ecological and floristic findings from our field campaign respectively on our project website/blog and on my botany blog. 

"We are looking into how aquatic plants regulate ecological balance within lakes and would like to assess the consequences of biodiversity loss for the provision of ecosystem services. There is more information about the project on our website or for instance here".

Ambroise will be in the field from 26th July to 9th August, and promises to send us photographs and updates. His Blog is on our list of Blogs by BSBI members so you can follow Ambroise's botanical and bryological adventures and see the surveys he has been involved in, both in Britain and across Europe. During this field trip to Northern Ireland, he will also be collecting some vegetative material for John Poland.

Lake in Donegal with Nymphaea alba
Image: M. Long

If you are involved in interesting research work (or know somebody who is) please consider sharing some details and images here. Your fellow botanists are keen to hear what you are seeing in the field. 

And images like the one of Ambroise (above) must be very reassuring to any young people considering a career in botany. You go to nice places and get to lie on the grass and peer at stuff, and because it's "research", it's all ok - as Sandy Knapp says, doing science is like being given a licence to have a great time! I suspect Ambroise will be working really hard in the field and for very long hours, but I bet he will enjoy it so much that it won't seem like a hard slog at all.