Botanical snippets for August

BSBI botanists take a break: Inishowen, 2015
Image: J. Conaghan

Some great stuff on BSBI members' blogs this month!

Oisin Duffy reports on the recent BSBI Recording Weekend which took place on the Inishowen Peninsula in Donegal. 

Ryan Clark shares his story of how nature helps him through those low periods and makes a heartfelt plea for children to be encouraged to reconnect with the natural world. 

Gail Quartly-Bishop reports on the recent BSBI Bramble Weekend in Flintshire. The next BSBI training meeting focused on a single genus will be the Atriplex Training Workshop which runs from the 18th-20th September in the Bangor area and on Anglesey. Booking details here.

How to read a Pocock herbarium sheet
(Click to enlarge).
Image courtesy of Robert Pocock
Herbarium Project

Once again the Robert Pocock Herbarium Project shows us how historic herbarium specimens can inspire and inform 21st century botanists.

Great to see high attendance figures at this BSBI local group meeting in S. Yorkshire which attracted 28 people. The interactive map on our homepage shows just how many counties now have a webpage with free local resources for botanists, links to publications such as county Floras and details of local field meetings and recording activity. 

Lycopodium clavatum seen by John Crellin
Image: Floral Images

John Crellin stumbles upon some nice plants while out surveying for the National Plant Monitoring Scheme in Breconshire - like this Lycopodium clavatum.

And finally, a few useful things I picked up via the BSBI Twitter account:

BSBI member Martin Allen points out that there's a new version of Tablefit from CEH which has Stace Ed.3 names. 

JNCC shared this link to the new GB Invasive Non-native Species Strategy.

For anyone wanting to take their first steps in biological recording, the Field Studies Council offers this weekend training course in December. Thanks to a subsidy from the FSC's Tomorrow's Biodiversity Project, this course is particularly good value for money!