2021 County Report for North Hampshire

Tony Mundell

In spite of the pandemic restrictions, I still managed to conduct various plant surveys with a few other botanists. This included a meadow at Hatch Warren and Diamond Wood at East Anton. Another small group of us helped at a Bioblitz at Alton.

I led three field meetings for the Hampshire Flora Group; at Itchen Stoke Mill, at Barton Meadows Reserve and at Edenbrook Country Park. At the latter we saw Hypochaeris glabra (Smooth Cat’s-ear) and its very rare hybrid with H. radicata (Cat’s-ear), growing with much Scleranthus annuus (Annual Knawel). Specimens of a willow from Itchen Stoke Mill, that I originally suspected were the hybrid between Salix viminalis (Osier) and S. caprea (Goat Willow) were identified as S. gmelinii by the BSBI Referee. This species has been confirmed at several VC12 sites, but it gets no mention in Stace 4, so it is probably sometimes mistaken as a hybrid of S. viminalis. I see that there are 30 records for it on the DDb.

 

In all 2,795 records of 839 species dated within 2021 were added. These include 12 that were new to VC12. With others I spent some time searching for earlier records of various Hieracium species. Sadly H. rigens (Rigid Hawkweed) is now definitely lost from both its former sites. An unsuccessful search at a former site for H. anglorum (Anglian Hawkweed) did add expertly determined records for H. cheriense (Cher Hawkweed), H. grandidens (Grand-toothed Hawkweed) and H. triviale (Grey-headed Hawkweed).

 

For botanical activities in Hampshire see https://www.hantsplants.uk/floranews.php