Scotland

The 2024 Scottish Botanists' Conference was held at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on Saturday 2nd November, with a record 220 participants from across Scotland and beyond! Visit the Scottish Botanists' Conference page to find out more about this year's conference, view the programme here, and catch up with the exhibits and workshop handouts online.

Conference goers enjoyed a wide range of talks, including updates on conservation initiatives for threatened species such as Small Cow-wheat, One-flowered Wintergreen and Twinflower, a groundbreaking approach to willow and pondweed identification using genetic barcoding, a year in the life of a mountain botanist, a novel approach to Giant Hogweed control using sheep grazing, and a guide through the curious tale of the invasive Rhododendron ponticum and just why it does so well in Scotland.

This year the ever-popular mini-workshops included Eyebright identification, ferns for beginners, how to take photos for Bramble identification, an introduction to Sphagnum bog-mosses, getting the most out of your smartphone for plant photography, and how to use the new BSBI recording app.

Our BSBI training workshop programme for 2024 included the following

• Learn to identify wildflower families in Dunfermline (18th May) or Fort William (27th July)
• Start to Identify Grasses at the Falls of Clyde (22nd June)
• Sort out your Sedges and Rushes at the Forest of Ae, Dumfriesshire (13th July)
• Start to identify composite flowers (the daisy family) in Inverness (10th Aug)
• Get stuck into Ferns for Complete and Utter Beginners at Arrochar (17th Aug)
• Get started with Plant ID for Habitat Surveys at Dumyat (31st Aug)
• Training for Trainers workshop at RBGE (5th October)

We also ran a variety of field meetings this year, including several aimed at beginners. Keep an eye out over for the 2025 programme of workshops and field meetings, to be released this winter!

Looking for more resources? 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 our project to refind and re-record rare plant populations in Scotland - the Scottish HectAd Rare Plant Project!

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.

Identiplant, the online training course for beginners in serious botany, is now run by BSBI and we're keen to increase the numbers of students - and the tutors to support them - across Scotland.

Are you based in Scotland and keen to support beginner botanists? Would you like to know more about becoming an Identiplant tutor? BSBI and The Conservation Volunteers (TCV) have partnered to establish an Identiplant Hub in Stirling, and we held a Identiplant workshop for prospective tutors there on Sunday 17th September.

See this poster for more information, and email identiplant@bsbi.org to find out more.

Get involved with the Urban Flora Project in 2023 - a project to record flowering plants in our urban areas, initiated by our friends in the Botanical Society of Scotland.