2021 County Report for Warwickshire

John Walton

We started Field Meetings in May the moment outdoor meetings were allowed again, and held 14 others during the Summer. We chose not to run any indoor meetings or workshops this year because of the threat of Covid infection. We continued to visit the Wildlife Trust reserves to provide a baseline for their planning decisions and supported various other conservation groups such as the Friends of Studley Common and the Friends of Brandon Wood.  Professor Ian Trueman, who is writing a new Flora of Sutton Park, showed the group some of the rarities at this fantastic NNR, and we pointed out the important species to the warden at Castle Bromwich Gardens.

We have only published one Newsletter this year, as we have also taken responsibility for running the local Fungus Group between September and January.

We ran a BSBI Field Meeting at Clowes Wood, which was a great success although one member managed to come a day early and there were significant problems with road closures.

We added eight new or rediscovered species to the county list.

Salvia hispanica Chia, not in flower,  had us foxed to start with when we saw a photo of it on Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland Facebook page, (thanks to Paul Stanley for the ID) and we were very pleased to see Potamogeton obtusifolius Blunt-leaved Pondweed thriving in a pond at Brandon Marsh where it was last seen in 1985.

We also added  Marselia hirsuta Bristly Water-clover  to our county list, but more details of that find will hopefully be published on to the  Adventives and Aliens page in BSBI News.