2024 County Report for Breconshire

John Crellin

Brecknock Botany Group made 6500 records in the year over 24 meetings with many records coming from members of the group on other days.

We also had four indoor discussion meetings in the winter months.

Group members focussed this year on several almost unrecorded remote and difficult to access areas - to ensure the map coverage in the forthcoming Flora will be as complete as possible. A few more remain to visit early this year and two tetrads in the middle of the Army firing range impact zone remain inaccessible to us. (Two of us did get into one previously inaccessible area at the headwaters of one of the main Epynt rivers for a short whirlwind recording session under the close supervision of the Camp Commandant.)

We were joined by members of the Brecon Beacons Climbing & Mountaineering Club in a visit to the crags below Fan Nedd and were able to make new records of the rare plants that grow on them - last recorded in many cases in the 1970s. (This was arranged through our link with the Cambrian Mountain Society.)

At our BSBI meeting on 13th July we found several long unseen species at Craig y Rhiwarth, particularly Galium sterneri (Limestone Bedstraw), Convallaria majalis (Lily-of-the-valley) and Polypodium cambricum (Welsh Polypody).

We hope to publish Mike Porter’s Flora of Brecknockshire this year. All plant descriptions are drafted and there is a now lot of revising, proof reading and checking to do.