2022 County Report for South Lincolnshire

Sarah Lambert and Malcolm Pool

In spring 2022 a list of just over 400 monads with fewer than ten post-2000 records was produced, prioritised by ease of access and habitat diversity. Over the course of the year sixty-two of these were visited, the majority by Malcolm Pool and Richard O’Connor. The data is still being entered, but this is good progress towards a future monad-based flora. Little progress was made on the Rare Plant register, but a draft is planned for 2023.

The South Lincolnshire Flora Group (SLFG) has continued to thrive with 104 members of the Facebook group. Seven SLFG meetings were held in 2022, two of which were held jointly with the Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union (LNU). We started the year with an excellent New Year Plant Hunt in Lincoln, recording 66 species.

Other sites visited were:

  • Bourne Woods in April, where we found a new population of Polystichum setiferum (Soft Shield-fern)
  • Whisby Nature Park in May
  • Dunston Beck in June
  • Wilsford in late July, a joint meeting with the LNU helping with a parish Bioblitz
  • Grimsthorpe Park in August, a visit delayed by Met Office weather warnings for extreme heat. Despite the very parched conditions we added Potentilla anglica (Trailing Tormentil) to the site list
  • The Wash at Gedney Drove End, where we were hunting for Salicornia spp. (glassworts) and found a large population of very magnificent Salicornia dolichostachya (Long-spiked Glasswort)

 

Buglossoides arvensis (Field Gromwell)

A sizable population of this Red List Endangered species was recorded from the grounds of an electricity sub-station  in the village of Heighington in April 2022.

Rumex × dufftii (Rumex obtusifolius × Rumex sanguineus)

Found flowering and fruiting on the bank of the River Witham in Lincoln during the BSBI New Year Plant Hunt, this is the second record for this possibly overlooked hybrid in VC53 which was present with both parents.