2024 County Report for Fermanagh

Robert Northridge

Due to computer problems I have had a backlog of records to upload and I have begun using the new BSBI Recording App for laptops to get them straight onto the DDb. I have so far uploaded over 8000 records from the last three years’ recording (not all of it in Fermanagh) and have several thousand records to go.

I have, with the help of Jen Farrar, the NI Botanical Skills Officer, run three field trips in Fermanagh to Crom, to Lough Navar Forest, and to Castle Cauldwell. All were well-attended and interesting plants were seen at all three sites including, at Castle Cauldwell, the only known tree in Ireland of Salix friesiana (a hybrid willow), the hybrid between S. repens (Creeping Willow) and S. viminalis (Osier).

I made a start at a county check-list. This proved to be a worthwhile exercise when I sorted the species by the number of records in ascending order. I looked at all the records of species with seven or less records and some interesting things emerged. There are records which are clearly errors, such as Cystopteris dickieana (Dickie's Bladder-fern) on Colebrooke Estate which was input during a BioBlitz and others, especially from inexperienced recorders or visiting surveyors, the accuracy of which it is impossible to determine. In the Fermanagh part of the DDb there are numerous record which have multiple entries: I came across one, for Equisetum × dycei (Water Horsetail × Marsh Horsetail), which has been entered five times!

There are a series of records with no recorder, no site name, only a 2-figure grid reference, and a date range such as 1950-69. It appears that these are records imported from the original 1969 Atlas which used the “extended British Grid” instead of the Irish Grid and so mapping these records is of doubtful value and may be misleading.