NT18 Botany Bash

NT18 in all its glory

Already in 2022 one of my biggest target areas is going to be vascular plants. This is in large part inspired by a trip to Scilly in the summer, but also is the probably inescapable effect of having botanising barmpots all around me! I aim to at get at least 150 new species under my belt, but really I'd like it to be more edging towards the 200. Scilly (and The Lizard) should take care of the vast bulk of the low end of the target. But I'd like to add another 50 plus of good local material.

It's unlikely that I will be spending loads of time galavanting around the country twitching scarce plants, and certainly not as much as I'd like. However, armed with the BSBI square bashing tool I have uncovered the fact that in my local hectad (NT18) I have only seen something in the neighbourhood of half the plant record (think 400/800). That means I could make monster gains without travelling beyond the nearest towns. 

NT18 has 81 squares which aren't under salty water, so even if I recorded 100 species from each that would run to 8k records! With urban flora recording and sundry projects I already have >3k flowering plant records in the square. 

Undoubtedly when you spend time on the ground exploring varied habitats you will run into niches that support plants that are only in one or a few places. I reckon I should be able to record 500 species of vascular plant in a year. So that's what the target is. I may just leave the target at 500 and run it past year end should I come up short. Worst case scenario I'll have an even more intimate knowledge of the area where I live. And then there are all the other things I'll encounter along the way.

Here's a visual guide to where I've already been, at one level or another. Clearly not enough to catch the other 400 available species!

I'm going to have to now go through each 1k square and see how many plants are recorded in each. Fortunately, that's exactly the kind of nonsense project I love.

Also there's nothing better on 1st January than to hit the ground running with a mission.

Oh, I also now have one of these...

so bring on the aquatics!