2020 County Report for North Hampshire

Tony Mundell

As I am currently aged 76 and sometimes asthmatic, I rarely ventured out during the lockdown periods.

However, I did some recording in my nearest 1km squares. On one of those walks, in suburbia and close to shops, I looked at a pond dug to catch flash-floods. Here I added many species and was delighted to find a colony of Alopecurus aequalis (a rarity in Hampshire). A new site for it had been found elsewhere in 2019, but within a few months that site was destroyed when a large WW2 bomb was discovered and had to be exploded in-situ!

I did venture out during July and August. I was with one other botanist doing surveys requested by the Hampshire & IoW Wildlife Trust on army training land that they manage. This included a splendid complex of wet meadows at Foxlease with Marsh Stitchwort Stellaria palustris.

Early in 2020 several of us were involved in a study of Polypodiums in Hampshire. We made a lot of progress in understanding the genus. See page 17 of Flora News No.59 at https://hantsplants.uk/floranews.php That study added both Polypodium cambricum and P. × shivasiae new to VC12.

Others have contributed records. These included Tephroseris integrifolia refound at its three known VC12 sites, Medicago polymorpha, Mentha pulegium and Epilobium lanceolatum in new sites, and Dryopteris affinis subsp. paleaceolobata new to VC12. The Yarrow Broomrape Phelipanche purpurea that was found on a road verge in 2019 (and promptly mown off) reappeared in 2020 and was not mown.