2022 County Report for North Wiltshire
Richard Aisbitt and Kat Newbert
Recording in 2022
We are hoping to reach a good enough coverage of Wiltshire to publish a new county Flora (there have been four so far, going back to 1858 – or five, if you count Aubrey’s 1847 ‘Natural History of Wiltshire’). Further visits in 2022 to under-recorded kilometre squares added over 25,000 records and filled many gaps. Downloads of records from other schemes – iRecord, iNaturalist, Living Record – and data sharing with our county BRC brought in another 40,000 records, many from earlier years.
Rare Plant Register
Martin Buckland has completed his update of the Wiltshire RPR and this is now on the BSBI Website (https://bsbi.org/download/34686/?tmstv=1672829948).
Field Meetings
The Wiltshire Botanical Society had a full programme of spring and summer visits, which included training events, with Brean Down in Somerset and Fritham in the New Forest as out-of-county highlights.
Training
Six students completed the Identiplant course with Wiltshire tutors.
Notable plant finds
We continue to see more halophyte species: Grass-leaved Orache Atriplex litoralis is a new find in VC7. It was found along with Lesser Sea-spurrey Spergularia marina, which is increasingly common. Also, Stag’s-horn Plantain Plantago coronopus can now be found on many salted roadsides.