2024 County Report for Westmorland, Cumberland
Mike Porter Jeremy Roberts Peter Bullard
ANNUAL REPORT FOR 2024 - CUMBERLAND AND WESTMORLAND
As usual our year began with another New Year Plant Hunt with more than 100 people taking part, far more than in previous years, and about 90 species recorded. This was followed by our Snowdrop Hunt during January and February which brought in about 250 records.
In March we held our Indoor Meeting at Gosling Sike near Carlisle, reviewing the previous year and making plans for 2024. This was followed by 7 Field Meetings, spaced out through the spring and summer months in various parts of Cumbria.
During the season we held two meetings looking at sedges at Tarn Moor and Orton, the first a National Field Meeting, the second to help Cumbria Wildlife Trust staff with identification. We also continued our efforts on the updating of the RPR for Cumbria and encouraged interest in the plants of Cumbria through our Facebook site, Cumbria Botany, which now has nearly 1000 members. Additionally, we produced three Newsletters and processed many records, some of them significant, via iRecord. As a result of field meetings and individual efforts, to date about 35,000 new records have been entered in the DDb, 19,000 from Westmorland and 16,000 from Cumberland.
However, the greatest demand on our time and energies has been the putting online of Geoffrey Halliday’s Flora of Cumbria, updating the maps and accounts and adding photographs. Various members of our group have devoted exceptional amounts of time to this project.
