2024 County Report for East Kent, West Kent

Geoffrey Kitchener & Sue Buckingham

This report covers both East Kent (vice county 15) and West Kent (vice county 16) and is only a brief outline.  For a full report, please refer to Kent Botany 2024, which should be on the Kent webpages.

 

By the beginning of 2025, over 27,000 Kent records had been added to the BSBI database, from 847 monads.  Most of these were from Kent Botanical Recording Group (KBRG) members, but we have also begun reviewing and transferring over some iRecord and iNaturalist records.  Across 2024, eight plants were recorded as new to East Kent and 14 new to West Kent.

 

Eleven KBRG field meetings were held, including two sessions to study the Limonium (Sea-lavender) microspecies unique to Kent (see illustration).  Encouragement to record rare plant register (RPR) species was afforded by regular circulation of register parts to KBRG members.

 

Kent Botany 2023 was made available at the beginning of 2024; a full update of the RPR plant register in Spring; a newsletter in Autumn; and at the end of the year, a completed transcript of Francis Rose’s manuscript Flora of Kent, which runs to 643pp and has been eight years in the making.

 

Numerous general surveys have been carried out across the county as well as continuations of focussed monitoring surveys for Orchis purpurea (Lady Orchid) and Polygala amarella (Dwarf or Kentish Milkwort).  Considerable vice county recorder time was spent participating in Local Nature Recovery Strategy development.  However, it is difficult to construe local council commitment to nature recovery objectives in the face of Dover District Council’s grant of planning permission to develop the site of Britain’s second largest Himantoglossum hircinum (Lizard Orchid) colony, at Betteshanger in East Kent.

Lysimachia × doerfleri

Lysimachia × doerfleri, the cross between Scarlet and (true) Blue Pimpernels (L. arvensis and L. foemina) has been found twice in 2024, at Ranscombe Farm; the only previous British record was in 1950, in Warwickshire.

Alchemilla xanthochlora (Intermediate Lady's-mantle)

Alchemilla xanthochlora (Intermediate Lady’s-mantle), lost since 1976, has been restored to the Kent flora, with two patches found in Lyminge Forest.

Hieracium mammidens (Breast-toothed Hawkweed)

Hieracium mammidens (Breast-toothed Hawkweed), long without confirmed records in Kent, has been found by Tim Rich to be still extant in two West Kent sites.

Polystichum munitum (Western Sword-fern)

Polystichum munitum (Western Sword-fern) has been found naturalised in a Goudhurst lane, the first Kent record.

Vaccinium ovatum (Californian Huckleberry)

Vaccinium ovatum (Californian Huckleberry) has been found growing wild near Ightham, perhaps the first such escape in Britain; it was probably bird-sown from a nursery c.300m away who listed it in a 1958 sale catalogue.