2020 County Report for Kincardineshire

David Welch and David Elston

Major efforts this year were preparing a Rare Plant Register and checking on locations of candidate species. I dug out older records for these which hadn't been submitted to DDb, while David Elston (DE) did much of the hunting legwork. The vice-county is sufficiently compact that Covid didn't greatly hinder summer fieldwork, and some useful new records were made.

Interesting finds in 2020:

• DW added to the vc list Epilobium × limosum (den margin at Benholm) and Euonymus latifolius (Large-leaved Spindle) (planted in policy woodland south of Banchory).
• DW made the second and third records of Hieracium sabaudum forma bladonii, from a farmyard in Durris and by Stonehaven railway carpark.
• DE added Melilotus altissimus by (safely) going on foot to see some flowers he had spotted when driving along the A90 near Muchalls.
• DE also ventured into Eslie Moss (Fettercairn) to obtain precise records of Briza media (Quaking-grass), Carex diandra (Lesser Tussock-sedge), Menyanthes (Bogbean) and Neottia ovata (Common Twayblade), and into Whitewater Moss (Garvock) to find Carex disticha (Brown Sedge) and Carex vesicaria (Bladder-sedge), the first record for this latter species in a vc 91 moss.
• An exciting find of a big colony of creeping Potentillas was made by Alison Peaker and Carol Blow in Drumtochty Forest, which will need refereeing help in the coming season to sort out.
• Considerable time was spent by DW on checks of a distinctive big-flowered bramble (Rubus) species, ready to produce a paper naming it; colonies occur near the vc 91 coast and more near Dundee.