- New Year Plant Hunt 2020 - 31/01/2020
The New Year Plant Hunt is a yearly event held by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) that helps to record how plants are reacting to our changing climate. Over four days during the Christmas holidays, volunteers will simply head out for walks, of no more than 3 hours each, and record all species seen flowering. The aim of this citizen science project is to record all plants flowering in mid-winter, in order to help document the effects of climate change on plant phenology.
This year, a total of 1714 people took part in the event and over 14,000 plants were recorded blooming throughout Britain and Ireland. Botanists from TCD joined different local walks. Together with Cian White and fellow naturalists from UCD, we went for a nice walk… on a covered landfill site! Our goal was to study an area that wouldn’t necessarily be surveyed by a less committed group, and I think we did achieve this.
It is important to note, though, that this event is open to everyone, and not only to botanists. As a citizen science project, the data collected during your family walk along your favourite Christmas holiday route is more than welcome. Moreover, data collected from any location, including urban areas (or covered landfill sites, for that matter), is of value and interest.
In terms of science, the main results in 2020 were that it was a fairly average year in comparison to previous editions. More species were seen flowering than in 2017 and 2018, and less than in 2015, 2016 and 2019, but the results were not significant (apart from the decrease as compared to 2016). While this has not proven that the number of species blooming mid-winter increases with time, these results can be linked to the weather and climatic events in individual years, with more plants flowering because of warmer temperatures and fewer frosts.
In terms of the types of species seen flowering, it looks like species managed to prolong autumn into the winter months, rather than spring species starting their year early. More than half of the recorded species were autumn stragglers (Yarrow, Ragwort and Hogweed), against less than a quarter of springtime specialists (Primrose, Lesser Celandine).
Most importantly, only 23% of plants recorded were species that one might “reasonably expect to flower at New Year” as stated by the BSBI’s Head of Science Kevin Walker, such as the winter heliotrope or the Shepherd’s-purse, which would be winter specialists or all-year-round flowering plants. Sadly, over a third of the records were of non-native species.
I will not force you into a landscape view of our landfill site (which, actually, being covered, was fairly nice), so please have some nice flower pictures instead!
And happy 2020 everybody.
To find out more about Maude’s research, follow her on Twitter at @MaudeBaudraz.