2020 County Report for Co. Wexford

Paul Green & Paul O'Meara

Despite the lockdowns and travel restrictions there was a good amount of recording done in Wexford, with 20,325 records collected. Several new recorders contributed records. The two joint VCRs Paul & Paula checked on a few doubtful records, and because of travel restrictions help out much more than usual with ID. One project was to try and visit monads where less than 20 species had to be added to take the monad over the 200 mark, all that were visited achieved this. Writing of the Flora of Wexford is well underway. Three plants that were thought to possibly be extinct in the county were refound, date given is when last seen: Eleocharis acicularis (Needle Spike-rush) 1987, Groenlandia densa (Opposite-leaved Pondweed) 1987; Saxifraga stellaris (Starry Saxifrage) 1990. All sites for Ceratophyllum demersum (Rigid Hornwort) were rechecked and all found to be C.  submersum (Soft Hornwort), and it is now thought that all records for Rigid Hornwort may have been errors. Validation continued on the DDb, and is still ongoing. The number of corrections has been rather alarming, and it is calculated that some 300 hectad dots have been removed that would have otherwise appeared on the distributions maps in the forthcoming Atlas 2020.