2020 County Report for Nottinghamshire

Mark Woods

Despite lockdown, surveys continued of under-recorded tetrads, but such activity was largely solo and the contributions from the Biological Records Centre were slightly less than previous years (but still a significant contribution). Now very close to complete county coverage at tetrad level.

The updated RPR (3rd edition) is about to be issued and is a major revision on previous years. Of particular note is the decision to include species listed on the 2014 England Red List, which has included some species that are still relatively common in Nottinghamshire.

Very few new species found in 2020, mostly neophytes and two native hybrids (Lolium × boucheanum and Dactylorhiza × venusta).

Substantial help has been provided by VC56 BSBI members to prepare a county checklist and a list of first and last records for the county. The latter is proving to be a much less straightforward than anticipated, but has proved to be very useful and has identified new sources of information and prompted a re-visit of herbarium databases and biological records centre records.

Progress with species re-introduction forum has stalled. Plans to collect cuttings of bilberry with students have had to be postponed, but desk-based work has continued and a list of species identified for further work is near to completion. The list will be submitted to Nottingham Trent University for dissertation research projects (post and under-grad).