2024 County Report for Monmouthshire
Stephanie Tyler and Elsa Wood
Number of records in 2024: 5370
We have carried out weekly tetrad surveys and also meadow surveys for the Monmouthshire Meadows Group and in September/October concentrated on aquatic plants. We have led monthly walks - teaching and recording - from April to September with Botany Group.
One of us is a member of Local Wildlife Site Panel (NRW, Gwent Wildlife Trust, Monmouthshire County Council, BSBI) and attends the Council’s Biodiversity Partnership meetings; we have liaiscd with SEWBReC about record inputting and we ran a grassland course for them; we submitted an article on plant finds in 2024 for the SEWBReC newsletter
We are revising the 2023 RPR for vc35 and are well underway with an on line update of Trevor Evans' Flora of Monmouthshire. We contributed to a local woodland book (The Life of Manor Wood) produced by The Narth and District Footpath Group
Interesting finds have been published in the SEWBReC newsletter and the BSBI Welsh Bulletin but include a find of Astragalus glycophyllos Wild Liquorice at Rogiet Poor Land ST452884 by Lowri Watkins, only the second extant site for the species in vc35. The record of a plant of Rorippa islandica Northern Yellowcress found by SJT and EW in ST1889 on a damp track through coal tip near Trethomas was new to the vice-county.