2020 County Report for Derbyshire

Dr Alan Willmot

We had planned a full set of outdoor meetings to run through the year to visit interesting sites and develop our identification skills. Obviously due to the covid pandemic no meetings were held. In lieu of meetings I encouraged members of our local group to take part in the BSBI Garden Plant survey and to record plants in their local areas when out for daily exercise. A number of people took me up on botanising in their local area and we ended up entering something like 20,000 new records for the year. This was almost half the number of records entered for 2019 which I consider a notable achievement given the limited opportunities for recording. I circulated our annual newsletter in January as usual with detail of notable finds in the previous year. I also sent out a number of briefer newsletters during the year with information about new species to look out for to keep in contact with members of the group. During the early part of the year, I spent some time verifying records for our vice county on the Distribution Database.

Modiola caroliniana

This was found and provisionally determined by Mick Lacey on a new housing development at Clay Cross (SK388679) in February 2020 and confirmed by growing on material to flowering in May. This appears to be only the second British record

Typha laxmannii

This was found growing abundantly in a ditch on the site site of the demolished Maquis of Granby pub at Bamford (SK207822) in November 2020 by Mick Lacey. This is a first county record but now we know the plant we suspect we will find it elsewhere in the county.