And so it begins

The first recording meeting of the final season of Atlas 2020 in Oxfordshire was on Sunday. Meeting in Nether Worton in SP43, the location was evidently a little out of the way as there were only four of us, but if you thought that then you missed out on good botanising. Rather than the more usual square-bashing strategy, the aim of this meeting was to record an already quite well-recorded area in order to improve it further and also to pick up some plants that have not been seen this century in the hectad in Oxon, such as the woodland plants Viola reichenbachiana (early dog-violet) and Melica uniflora (wood melick). Previously these areas had been visited later in the year and we were therefore sure to pick up new things.

We started at the churchyard of the tiny church of St James' in Nether Worton (SP43F), a tetrad with a respectable post-2000 total of 168 but some missing vernal species. The churchyard was pretty undistinguished, with typical hangers-on of heavily-mown churchyard grassland such as Plantago media (hoary plantain) absent. There were plenty of naturalised non-natives to lend colour though, such as Cerinthe major 'Purpurescens', an annual bedding plant from the Mediterranean which appeared to have seeded from the adjacent garden and was a first for the county. There were also many plants of Ranunculus auricomus (goldilocks buttercup) here and in the nearby verges. We didn't stay long in the tetrad due to lack of promising-looking land accessible by footpaths, and instead headed west toward the Great Tew Estate via a detour north over Iron Hill Down (SP43A).

After a few kilometers on Iron Hill Down I was feeling pretty desperate as the place was an arable wasteland, though there were some springs with a few common wetland plants in one area. Crossing the B4031 south into the Great Tew Estate the spirits lifted, however, with a flurry of ticking of semi-natural woodland and grassland plants, like Sanicula europaea (sanicle) and Poterium sanguisorba (salad burnet). Thinking aloud I suggested that some nice grassland looked perfect for Ophioglossum vulgatum (adder's-tongue fern) and then promptly found several of the tiny fronds of this lovely vernal fern. Turned out this was a new hectad record!

Continuing into the valley bottom toward Great Tew we came upon a series of wet woodlands with springs and streams. Here we found a small population of Scirpus sylvaticus (wood club-rush), a scarce plant in Oxon. As a species of feruginous wet woodlands, this north-western part of the county with its iron-rich limestone is the main area where it has historically been recorded. The population we found was first seen in 2015. Some of the other highlights of this area included Polystichum aculeatum (hard shield-fern) and Hypericum maculatum (imperforate St John's-wort).

We concluded the meeting back in Nether Worton with a pretty diverse haul of records for early April. In total we collected 340 records of 236 taxa: 197 in SP43A and 127 in SP43F. This put the tetrad totals up from 214 to 284 in SP43A and from 168 to 214 in SP43F. Certainly better than I was anticipating after a pretty dismal morning! The next meeting will be on 21st April — I hope you can join me.

Botanical advertisements

A short post to advertise a couple of items of interest.

First, on Sunday 7th April (that's this coming weekend) I will be leading the first of my 2019 recording meetings for Atlas 2020. We will be meeting at St James' church in Nether Worton (SP 426 300) at 1030 - please email me if you would like to come. These meetings are a great way to learn to identify plants, get to know the county's flora and meet other botanists. They will be held fortnightly throughout the season (unless I get overwhelmed with work as in previous years, but that's the plan for now). See the events calendar for future dates.

Second, former county recorder and Oxfordshire Flora Group member Sue Helm asked me to advertise a new book published by her husband Professor Dieter Helm, Green and Pleasant Land. If you attended the OFG conference a few years ago you will remember Dieter's excellent talk about the economics of natural capital, the subject of his previous book Natural Capital: Valuing The Planet, Plants might not be the subject of Dieter's books (though a favourite of Sue's Viola kitaibeliana (dwarf pansy) gets a few mentions in Natural Capital if I remember rightly), but plants are an example of what he calls 'natural capital' and according to Dieter it is our failure to account for these assets that has lead to the destruction of so much of our flora, among other wildlife. His new book is already on my pile of 'to read' books, and I am sure it will contain many thought-provoking ideas relevant to plant conservation, if in a rather different way to that which we are used to thinking about conservation.

The Year in Botany

We are well into 2019 but I am only just getting round to writing my now traditional OxBot 'Year in Botany'. It may have been a bit of a poor year for blog posts, but 2018 was another good one for botanising in Oxfordshire.

In terms of botanical highlights, many came at the beginning of the season. As summarised in previous posts, new populations of Eriophorum angustifolium (common cottongrass) and Oenanthe silaifolia (narrow-leaved waterdropwort) were found this year, Cystopteris fragilis (brittle bladder-fern) was refound for the county, and there was the strange case of Althaea officinalis (marshmallow) appearing at Otmoor. There were also new sites for other rare plants such as Myosurus minimus (mousetail) and Gymnocarpium robertianum (limestone fern). Recording also turned up new sites for the acid-loving species Juncus bulbosus (bulbous rush) in the Chilterns and a new hectad record for the locally rare Agrostis vinealis (brown bent) and Carex binervis (green-ribbed sedge), found at Foxhills.

The highlight of 2018 for me has been the volume of data going into the BSBI database, over 29,000 records. That is about 3,000 more than any previous year in the Atlas 2020 recording period, so as we enter the final year of recording it is great that we are sustaining and building upon the momentum of the last few seasons. Around 5,000 records came from Thames Valley Environmental Records Centre via our data sharing agreement, and Tim Harrison sent me an amazing 6,000 from SU79 and other parts of the Oxfordshire Chilterns. There were also solid contributions from outings led by Sally Abbey and Frances Watkins, and big individual contributions from Roger Heath-Brown, Frank Hunt and Clare Malonelee. I am very grateful for the efforts of everybody who sent me records in 2018.

If you would like to see the difference your contribution has made this last or any previous year, I have updated my Atlas progress map. In addition to showing the tetrad coverage, records and recording rate, you can now also see the equivalent for hectads, and compare the current recording period (2000-2019) with the recording period for the New Atlas (1987-1999). The squares now also link to hectad lists as well as tetrad lists, useful for identifying taxa that are still needing to be found for the current Atlas. Apologies if you don't like the grey colour scheme - if you can suggest an improvement then I will change it!

Finally, the Atlas is not just about going out recording and finding nice things but also about getting the data into shape for publication. I am sure you will be fascinated to know that this year I have managed to make substantial progress with checking the BSBI's data holding for the county, having looked at over 270,000 records. This has created further work, having identified about 1,000 records that need following up. Of course the best way to check records is to do so at the point at which they are sent me by the recorder - I am very grateful for recorders' help in resolving my queries about their records. This can be quite time consuming, so when you are out recording please do remember that any extra information you can provide with a record, especially status, accurate grid references and notes, helps with the verification process.

Looking forward, there's plenty to be excited about this year, not least the final year of Atlas recording. For instance, on Saturday 9th March the Oxfordshire Flora Group (OFG) is hosting a conference at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford on the topic of 'The Dynamics of the Oxfordshire Flora' - a programme for the conference can be found on the OFG website. There will of course be plenty of field meetings this year, and I have added a provisional programme to the events calendar. I hope to see you at some of these or other events this year!

BSBI recorders' conference

I have just returned from a thoroughly enjoyable BSBI recorders' conference at FSC Preston Montford near Shrewsbury. The conference is one of the main events in the BSBI calendar, when vice county recorders, taxonomic referees, BSBI staff, active recorders and anyone else interested in the British flora come together to discuss topical botanical issues and learn yet more about plants. The conference this year was very much focused on training and the future of botany in Britain and Ireland, and there was much lively discussion around these. The many workshops included docks and willowherbs, Abies (firs), how to press plants, and introductions to critical taxa such as Taraxacum and brambles. The slides and training material from all the talks and workshops will soon be available from the BSBI website.

We had a useful update on Atlas 2020 from Pete Stroh, BSBI science officer, recent appointee to the new position of English officer and Atlas 2020 coordinator. Pete told us about the likely outputs of the Atlas 2020 project: a printed book, similar to the previous New Atlas; a smaller less dense publication summarising the findings; and an online format, similar to the existing online New Atlas but with greater scope for extra detail on distribution, ecology and conservation. He also set us the deadline of the end of December 2019 for all data entry and validation for Atlas 2020 — if you are sitting on records please therefore think about sending me them this winter!

Local botanists using the BRC's iRecord website or app to collect and store their records will be interested to hear about progress in linking the iRecord database with the BSBI's Distribution Database (DDb). Our own Oli Pescott of BRC gave a talk on iRecord, informing the audience that all being well the two databases will be talking to each other by the New Year. Records imported to the DDb from iRecord will be held in a 'quarantine' area from where they can be liberated by county recorders.

You would think that I might have some nice photographs of botanists conferring by which to remember this excellent event. Not so. Without apology, the only images I collected were of dead plants stuck to paper, and dead roses at that. I had taken with me a stack of Oxon's best and weirdest roses to subject to the scrutiny of the BSBI Rosa referee. I was very pleased to have confirmed specimens from Sydlings Copse Nature Reserve tentatively identified as Rosa obtusifolia x micrantha (third from left below) and R. micrantha x rubiginosa (=R. x bigeneris) (second from left below). Both are rare roses and new county records. The former is also at Aston Rowant, as reported last autumn. Also confirmed was R. sherardii x canina (=R. x rothschildii, first on left below) at the reserve, making it one of the best sites for roses in the county. The referee was less convinced by my several possible R. obtusifolia x arvensis (=R. x rouyana) (below right). A really odd rose that had completely stumped me also proved unnameable (right). Such intractable specimens are part of the fun and frustration of roses.

The next BSBI event is the Annual Exhibition Meeting on 17th November. Will you be coming along?