2022 County Report for Ayrshire

Dave Lang

Though there may still be records to come in from others, 2185 new records were made in the field by the small VC75 Ayrshire BSBI group during 2022 - meeting up about twice a month from spring through to autumn. Locations visited were largely chosen with the Scottish Hectad Rare Plants Project (SHaRPP) in mind, though in some cases we simply visited areas that we had not botanised before. Unfortunately however, only one of the nine SHaRPP target species was actually refound – the Locally Scarce Potamogeton alpinus (Red Pondweed) on our last field trip of the year!

We continued to contact local members to advertise field meetings through our Ayrshire e-mail group, however many of those who often attended these trips pre-COVID have not yet returned and we may need to give some consideration to whether we want to put some effort into increasing engagement among local members or whether we are content to continue botanising with our core group of enthusiasts. One interesting addition to our usual programme of trips this year however was some assistance that we provided to some BSS-organised urban botanising trips to towns on the North Ayrshire coast.

Bidens cernua (Nodding Bur-marigold)

Bidens cernua (Nodding Bur-marigold)

In terms of other interesting finds, highlights included two new sites for the Locally Scarce Bidens cernua (Nodding Bur-marigold), which we previously had only three sites for in Ayrshire.

Pseudorchis albida (Small-white Orchid)

Pseudorchis albida (Small-white Orchid)

And confirmation of the continued presence of a solitary Pseudorchis albida (Small-white Orchid) spike at its only Ayrshire site.

Lepidium campestre (Field Pepperwort)

A new location was also found in 2022 for the Locally Rare Lepidium campestre (Field Pepperwort); along with several new sites for various other Locally Scarce or more common but GB Red Data listed species.