2021 County Report for VC113a
Helen Litchfield
Annual Report for Guernsey 2021
It’s been an exceptionally busy year for local botanists. I work with local organisation, La Société Guernesiaise, who hold regular meetings on the 1st Saturday in every month. These are open to anyone on the island and we have been able to capitalise on the surge of interest in the natural world with substantial increases in numbers at all of our events. We added Evening Walks and ‘Food & Flowers’ events to our regular calendar and all were well attended.
Early in the year, I was invited to give a presentation on Guernsey’s Rare Plants by the WEA. This I did. The event was attended by Raymond Evison, renowned Clematis grower. After the talk, Raymond approached me and offered his help in commencing a scheme to protect and preserve our rare plants. In this way, Grow Guernsey Natives was born. Using seed collected by local botanists in previous years, Raymond brought his considerable horticultural experience and extensive resources to bear. The result was the handing over, in Autumn, of 700 young plants of seven different species. These are to be grown on and retailed by our local sheltered workshop. The project will launch in April 2022. Seed collecting was carried out throughout the year and we anticipate raising thousands of plants of over 40 different species in 2022.
A ‘Recording Group’ was set up and ventures out every Thursday morning. Each meeting is attended by six or so really keen botanists at all levels. It has been a pleasure to work through keys together and reach accurate identifications. I have been employed by Environment Guernsey to survey potential Areas of Biodiversity Importance and this has given us access to places that have not previously been surveyed. This has given rise to a number of under recorded species appearing in our records and their status updated accordingly in our Register of Guernsey Plants. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pbTIp40UsHS4j35imCgnUOMk3x3kwrYHJI0zXLEE8zM/edit#gid=332782248
