Ireland

It's here! Click on the link to download the  BSBI Irish Field Meetings Programme 2018. It offers a mix of training days, traditional BSBI outings, recording weekends, and a show-stopper big gathering in Mayo in August. You can also find all field meetings in Britain and Ireland listed here.

The botanical recording event of the year has now ended but you can read all about the #KerryBSBIevent by clicking this link or this link. It ran from 1st-5th June on the stunning Dingle peninsula, Co. Kerry and was open to all, whether seasoned recorders, botanical beginners or improvers.  You didn't even need to be a BSBI member! The event was aimed at helping with recording for Atlas 2020 and we can report that more that 45 participants managed to collect more than 5,700 records over the course of the event. 

Right-click to download the flyer and booking form. Leader Rory Hodd and Caroline Mhic Daeid, fellow County Recorder for Kerry, were present throughout, as was BSBI Irish Officer Maria Long. So lots of help and support on offer! 

The event was really great fun, with targeted recording in some of the most spectacular scenery in Ireland, rough crew teams tackling mountains, and evening activities too! We were based in the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) village of Ballyvourney, at the beautiful Mills Inn.

Here we set up base camp, planned our routes, ate in the evenings, and discussed our finds and mapped our progress.Over the course of the four day event, 37 people took part, many of them local, and nearly 4,000 records were collected. A fantastic event and a fantastic success. Read more about it here, here and here. 

12 & 13 March at the National Botanic Gardens. We had a great conference, with a series of interactive workshops, and a number of great talks. Below are some of the talks for you to download and view.

The Rough Crew record in places that are relatively inaccessible and a challenge to get to, such as mountain areas and offshore islands. In this way they bring in valuable records from places that have suffered from a lack of recording, and thereby support local County Recorders with tricky work.

So if you like a challenge, are reasonably fit, enjoy remote and wild places, and are an experienced botanist, enthusiastic beginner or somewhere in between, then the Rough Crew could be for you!

We have an informal email list - to be included email Rory Hodd: rlhodd@gmail.com. 

A few stats for you about the New Year Plant Hunt in Ireland:

The most floriferous place in Ireland at New Year was Irishtown/ Ringsend in Dublin, with 58 species in bloom.

• 94 plant lists submitted by Irish recorders
• 239 species recorded in bloom
• 58 species on the longest list
• The Top 5 Irish wild plants in bloom were (in order of frequency): Daisy, Dandelion, Annual Meadow-grass, Groundsel, Gorse.

The first flower spotted in the New Year Plant Hunt was a Groundsel photographed by Jessica Hamilton within the first hour of the Hunt!

Read about how Irish recorders got on here and here. Visit the New Year Plant Hunt page to see an analysis of the 2018 survey across Britain and Ireland. The map showing all results is here and do keep an eye on our New Year Plant Hunt Twitter feed here. Well done to each and every one of you who took part, no matter how long or short your list was! 

Work on analysing all the data collected during the ISP is ongoing. We hope to have an article show-casing the findings in Irish Botanical News 2017, which is due in March. 

The ISP ran during 2014 and 2015. Work on analysing the data collected is being carried out now, and updates will be posted here. A total of 224 record cards were returned, with data being submitted for 31 of the 40 VCs across Ireland. There were 64 individually named recorders (of which 26 were County Recorders).

If you are interested in seeing the  guidance document or the recording card, click on the links, but please remember that this project is no longer running.

Click on the links below to see the species profiles (kindly hosted by NBDC):

• Moonwort  (Botrychium lunaria)
• Cyperus Sedge  (Carex pseudocyperus)
• Autumn Gentian  (Gentianella amarella)
• Toothwort  (Lathraea squamaria)
• Grass-of-Parnassus  (Parnassia palustris)
• Cowslip  (Primula veris)
• Common Wintergreen  (Pyrola minor)
• Cranberry  (Vaccinium oxycoccos) 

Aimed at helping with recording for Atlas 2020, the Mayo Recording Week 2015 was a phenomenal success! 42 botanists took part, and collected a whopping 10,824 plant records from 132 monads (1x1 kmsqs) in 33 hectads (10x10 kmsqs) all across Co. Mayo in 8 days. It was great fun with lots of new contacts and friends made.

*NEW* The flyer has just been published for the 2018 Irish Autumn Meeting & AGM: download it from the new Irish Autumn Meeting webpage.

Ireland's charophytes are making the news! Irish charophyte expert Cilian Roden contributed to this piece on Lough Carra - in The Irish Times.

The 2018 issue of Irish Botanical News has just been published - scroll down to the foot of this page to download your (free) copy!

Check out the new county webpage for Co. Antrim - they have a great programme of field meetings planned for this year!

Reports from County Recorders have now been collated - download the  Ireland 2017 VCR Annual Reports to find out what our amazing Recorders achieved last year across Ireland.

The 2018 Irish BSBI Conference was held on 24th March at the National Botanic Gardens, Dublin and was a huge success! Check out the #IrishBSBIConference hashtag on Twitter  read a report about the Conference by Jessica Hamilton and view or download the PPTs from the Irish Conferences page.

The latest issue of the Irish BSBI Newsletter is out! It has 16 pages of the latest botanical news from across Ireland, as well as plans for 2018. Scroll down this column to download your copy.

Following on from last year's Kerry BSBI event, there have been three very successful field meetings held in Kerry by the new #KerryBSBI group. Read about them here and here. You can find the Kerry BSBI group on Facebook and on Twitter.

County pages have been set up for both Donegal VCs, East & West and also for Kerry - take a look!

Available to download: Irish Botanical News No. 27, March 2017 - a bumper issue, with articles of broad interest.  

Presentations available to download from the Irish BSBI Conference (25th March 2017, National Botanic Gardens) include: keys for Veronica; Juncus ID;  flash talks. inc. Wildflowers of Armagh booklet, the Irish Red List; presentations on Atlas 2020 and the BSBI Distribution Database; a talk on D.A. Webb; and photos from the 'Rough Crew'.workshops. More info on the News & Views blog here and here.

New Red List for the vascular plants of Ireland can be downloaded here. The Red List is dedicated to BSBI's County Recorders.

• Issue 8, December 2017
• Issue 7, December 2016
• Issue 6, June 2016
• Issue 5, December 2015
• Issue 4, June 2015
• Issue 3, December 2014
• Issue 2, December 2013
• Issue 1, April 2013

John Faulkner, BSBI President and County Recorder for Armagh, found Field Woundwort Stachys arvensis - just a year after the Rare Plant Register declared it locally extinct! 

The BSBI's botanical find of last year was made in Ireland, with a new site for Killarney Fern (gametophyte and sporophyte) discovered during the Cork Recording Event. 

One to watch out for: Water bent Polypogon viridis was found in Donegal by County Recorder Ralph Sheppard. 

• ‘Rough Crew’, for adventurous botanists! – contact Rory Hodd (rlhodd@gmail.com)
• Dublin/East Coast BSBI Local Group – contact Colm Clarke (dublinBSBI@gmail.com)
• Clare BSBI Local Group – contact Stephen Ward (sdward@eircom.net)
• BSBI Plant Atlas Recorders Cork – contact Edwina Cole (edwinacole@eircom.net), or search them out on Facebook.
• Ulster BSBI Botany Group – contact Maria Long (maria.long@bsbi.org), or search on Facebook
• Longford/Westmeath roving recorders – contact Maria Long (maria.long@bsbi.org)
• Charophyte working group – contact Maria Long (maria.long@bsbi.org)
• Kerry group – contact Jessica Hamilton (Jhbsbikerry@gmail.com)
• Galway group – ciaran bruton (crnbruton66@gmail.com)