Scotland

Latest News

150 people participated in this year's Scottish Botanists’ Conference, held at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on 5 November. Click the link for recordings of the talks & more...

Jim McIntosh retired in December 2022 after 18 years as BSBI Scottish Officer - we thank him and wish him well.

*NEW* We now have a County page for all Scottish Counties! They are a great source of information on local botany including local groups, field meetings, checklists, floras, Rare Plant Registers, reports and more. See the local botany page.

*UPDATED* Get involved with our project to refind and re-record rare plant populations in Scotland - the Scottish HectAd Rare Plant Project!

Scotland Officer

Matt Harding takes over from Jim McIntosh as Scotland Officer in December 2022.

Address: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20a Inverleith Row, Edinburgh EH3 5LR

Email: [email protected]

Scottish Newsletter

Here is the latest issue of the Scottish Newsletter. For back-issues see the Scottish Newsletter page. The editor, Angus Hannah is retiring after 6 years, and we are very grateful to him for doing such a splendid job! We are now looking for a new volunteer editor. More...

Spring Conference

We joined forces with botanists across Britain and Ireland for this year's Spring Conference in March. There was a huge variety of interesting talks - all recorded and now available on the BSBI Spring Conference playlist. Of particular interest to Scotland is a talk on Conserving Oblong Woodsia.

Annual Reports

Every year we ask County Recorders to summarise the most interesting and exciting news from their Counties in less than 250 words.  You can see a collation of their 2021 reports in the Scottish Newsletter above, and individual reports appear on County pages with additional photographs and links. Previous years' reports can be seen below.

Beginners' workshops

All three of our beginners' workshops in 2022 were fully booked and we had great feedback from participants. We held one on sedges on the 18 June in Dumfries, one on Grasses on the 25 June in Hamilton and a Daisy family workshop on the 6th August in Fife. We are currently hatching plans for more workshops in 2023.

We've built up a great catalogue of training videos. For example, if you are interested in grasses view this excellent introduction to Grass ID for beginners from last year.

Get involved with the Urban Flora Project in 2022 - a project to record flowering plants in our urban areas, initiated by our friends in the Botanical Society of Scotland.

BSBI Plant ID workshop

Aileen Meek led an excellent workshop on Identifying Wildflower Families for beginners last year. 46 participated in the live event, but over 3500 have now viewed the Identifying Wildflower Families webinar making it one of the most popular in the BSBI Training playlist.

Scottish Local Groups

Get in touch with your local network or group to find out about local botanical field meetings:

Natural History Societies in Berwick, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Lochaber and Paisley also arrange field meetings that include botany.

Fern Field Meetings

All BSBI members are very welcome to participate in the British Pteridological Society's Scottish meetings. Click the link to see the programme and get in touch with the BPS leaders, if interested.