2024 County Report for West Sussex, East Sussex

Nevil Hutchinson & Ruth Eastwood

2024 Report for West Sussex (VC13) and East Sussex (VC14)

It’s been an impressive year with over 16,000 records from West Sussex and more than 20,000 from the East. This represents increases of about 20% and 90% compared with 2023. It’s the fourth annual  increase in the number of records, so we can safely say that plant recording in Sussex is thriving. 

Our Rare Plant Register update continues, with records for 161 taxa including a number of null records. There’s still a lot of recording work to do before we embark on data analysis. 

The study of our Marsh Gentian populations has been given an added boost by the undertaking of genetics studies by Ruth Eastwood (Joint VCR) and we hope to report in more detail in 2026. 

Our members have been invited to begin looking at recording across the counties at monad level, and we will publish lists of monads with no records since recording ceased for the Flora of Sussex (2018). This should keep everyone busy as there are currently 948 monads in West Sussex and 1409 in East Sussex without records.

Membership of the Sussex Botanical Recording Society has reached an all time high of 331, up from around 230 three years ago. Certainly it feels as though there’s an accelerating growth of interest in field botany. Many new members are professional ecologists keen to improve their identification skills.

Our most exciting find was probably Carex filiformis (Downy-fruited Sedge) in a field near Whithurst in West Sussex - the first for either vice-county.