Sussex Botanical Recording Society - ghosts and roses

At this time of year the Sussex Botanical Recording Society (SBRS) holds its AGM at Staplefield.

The Victory Pub, which does very nice lunches.

My first priority when I got to Staplefield,  was lunch.

Dicranoweisia cirrata (Common Pincushion) 

As there was a few minutes before the pub opened, I photographed a moss just outside, in the hope of identifying it later. Two of the more intrepid members of the Society were busy recording the plants on the village green. They joined me and we had a lovely lunch in the pub.

Treasure!

I was helping to arrange chairs in the Village Hall when treasure appeared in the form of books.  I selected a few including Walley Dod's Sussex Flora of 1937 and a big book of mosses. When I looked through Wolley Dod in the evening, the Uckfield I know was suddenly filled with the ghosts of long-gone cornfields, ponds and other places where wild plants once thrived. After the usual formalities, there were interesting and informative presentations.

• There a just a few churchyards to go for the New Church Yard survey. The records are at the Biological Record Centre.
• In 2017, I did Uckfield's Holy Cross churchyard 
• The Village Greens and Recreation Grounds survey is under way. 
• In 2018, I did the Rugby Club, The Dene, Luxford Field, Hempstead Playing Fields
• In 2019, I did Victoria Pleasure Grounds
• In 2020, I aim to do the Recreation Area at Harlands, where the toad pond is.
• There was a tour of the field meetings. 
• In March 2019, I took part in the Henfield moss field trip and have been struggling to learn more about mosses ever since!
• Later in the year, I took part in the Plaw Hatch visit. It was here that I first met  Sonchus arvensis (Perennial Sow Thistle) - and kept on seeing it for the rest of the year. I do wonder how I failed to notice it before.
• This year, I hope to go to the Ashdown Forest one in August.

I hope to go looking for roses this year.

It has been suggested that we look out for roses as many of those listed in Wolley Dod have not been re-found. We don't get that many wild roses round Uckfield and my "new" Wolley Dod doesn't mention Uckfield or the nearby villages much in this section.

Notes from Charlotte Smith talk.

Brad Scott gave a splendid talk about one of Sussex's earliest women botanists, Charlotte Smith, who was a successful writer in the 1700s. Her poetry and books give such vivid descriptions of wild plants and the places where she encountered them that I half expect to catch a glimpse of a bonnet and a long dress, the next time I go botanising.

There will be the usual photo competition:

• close up
• wild plant in churchyard habitat

All that remains is for me to dust off my recording sheets and get going again because "I aint afraid of no ghost!"

Sussex Botanical Recording Society and Snatts Road Surveys

I've just attended the Sussex Botanical Recording Society (SBRS) AGM.  SBRS members record flowers, ferns, mosses and all sorts of plants throughout Sussex.  I enjoyed an informative afternoon amongst lovely, knowledgeable people.  The meeting was held in Staplefield Village Hall. It was pleasing to find some primroses blooming nearby.

Primroses at Staplefield, where the meeting was held.

Churchyards

One very interesting talk was about the new Churchyard survey for Sussex. Helen, the coordinator, explained that:

• Churchyards provide several different habitats such as walls, grassland, paths, hedgerows and grassland
• They had previously been surveyed in the 1980s
• The surveys done so far (2016) have more species than 1980s but this may be down to people having better sources about information.
• That conservation areas need to have grass removed sometimes otherwise wildflower seeds cannot germinate.

One of the surveys was for the Snatts Road Cemeteries.  The scores on the doors were:

• number of species in 2016 - 147
• number of grass species - 13
• ancient woodland indicator species - 9
• unimproved grassland indicator species - 11
• orchid species - 1 

A separate survey (by a different organisation) was undertaken for Wealden in 2015. This was summarised in the Uckfield Town Council minutes for 11 July 2016 as follows:

Following a site visit and survey in summer 2015 it is recommended that the Local Wildlife Site boundary be extended to include half of the newer area of cemetery to the North of the road.  The grassland has a more acidic characteristic and the east half of this area is species rich with plant species Heath Grass, Devil's Bit Scabious, Eyebright and Trailing St. John's Wort.

There is more information about caring for graveyards and cemeteries at http://www.caringforgodsacre.org.uk/

Other useful tidbits

 Returning to the AGM ...

There will be an Autumn get together (as well as all the spring and summer field meetings) on October 28th.

Mathew said that if we were in doubt over an ID, had something unexpected or a hybrid to check with him. The BSBI website is http://bsbi.org/

The webmaster outlined features of the SBRS website:

• Latest sightings - needn't be confined to rare items. Anything interesting - maybe because it is the first of a type you have identified.
• There is a map, which you can click to find species found in a particular "tetrad". Some tedrads (listed on the website) have no items so it would be nice to get some.

There are useful pieces on way the recording organisations use map references on the BSBI and BTO websites.

Brad displayed splendid photos of mosses and liverworts. There is more information at:
photos - https://www.flickr.com/photos/23980231@N07/collections/72157675601655911/
website - https://sussexbryophytes.wordpress.com/

In a conversation about a survey, one of the committee explained the meanings of letters used in surveys.

P = Planted
C = Casual
N = Natural
S = Surviving
E = Established
U = Unknown

I had a chat about the NPMS squares scheme, in which people record plants in a particular square on the map. I've just had another look but nothing available close enough.