Thursday 3 January 2019

New Year Plant Hunt 2019 - CCG - Settle - Ingleton - Gargrave - Ripon

The 2019 BSBI New Year Flower Hunt took place 29 Dec-1 Jan


BSBI had a phone app this year, which meant you could take photos of the flowers and enter them directly (and if you knew what you were doing, and were nimble fingered they would come up on the national website straight away!) I tried this in Ripon (where I found 35ish species - need to check if I had some duplicates). 

But found it easier on Jan 1st at Settle to do my usual walk, make notes on a piece of paper with occasional photos and then enter details from my laptop in the warmth and comfort of my house. 

Either way, data entry does get easier each year.

In Settle Doris Cairns and I and I found 29 plants in flower


Showing our barren brome and ox-eye daisy on Settle Industrial Estate




Leafy Hawkweeds are just as hard to identify in winter as in summer



Bramble

Our Hazel (Corylus avelana) was not properly out, but it was more developed than I have seen it in previous years. I was surprised to see it was the 20th most common plant recorded in flower in the country. There were lots of photographs form elsewhere in the  to show it fully out.

We did not find the following in flower, though we searched the same sites as previous years, and found the leaves - and sometimes have found them in flower in the past:
Saxifraga tridactylites 
Erophila verna
(not yet out)
Centranthus ruber (probably over)
Hedera helix (only in fruit)
Snow drops were out but I did not go to the same place as last year where they grew, and the ones we saw this year were in a garden so did not count
.
It has been a mild week - and the most pleasant weather for recording that I remember.

I am sure we must have seen Shepherd's purse - I am gong to go out again and see if I missed it. (After all we only walked for just over two hours, and really were allowed up to three hours.)
---------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile Alison Evans went for a walk in Gargrave and found 12 plants in flower


Wavy Bittercress Cardamine flexuosa (though jut could be C. hirsuta)
Common chickweed- Stellaria media

Meanwhile Doris recorded plants at Ingleton on the last days of December, and I have yet to help her enter her results.

Do take part next year!

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