I love the different flavours of the Menorcan temporary ponds I visited recently. So ephemeral. These shallow peats in sandstone depressions near Ferreries were especially striking, a classic Mediterranean ephemeral wetland system, winter-wet and quietly structured by seasonal saturation.

A glorious dawn and Happy May Day all! Madrigals from the church tower and a very different setting from the beginning of the week, surveying ponds! Lots of sample sorting today, and plant vouchers cleaned and pressed. I will start after my second cup of coffee.

Really pleased to find in Menorca this week: Chara galioides in a small coastal pool. Under the lens: bright orange antheridia standing out against a relatively delicate thallus. Garish against the brilliant blue sky. Shallow, slightly brackish systems are very specialist habitats.

Creeping Willow (Salix repens) is super-miniaturised on the New Forest lawns. This is so beautiful at this time of year ♥️🌿 @bsbibotany.bsky.social

Small Adder's-tongue (Ophioglossum azoricum) today in the New Forest. About 1 cm tall! Growing in a winter-wet track depression with Lesser Spearwort (Ranunculus flammula). It has a remarkable 480 chromosomes. So cool 😎 @bsbibotany.bsky.social

#CowslipChallenge #WildflowerHour Ivinghoe Beacon We tend to think of grassland as “open”, but it has a canopy which is also seasonal. Cowslip (Primula veris) peaks before the sward closes, much as Primrose (Primula vulgaris) does before woodland leaf-out. The strategy is to beat the canopy.

Some very lovely plants I found last week in Crete. What an amazing place to botanise! Tulipa saxatilis, Muscari spreitzenhoferi, Anacamptis papilionacea, Silene colorata

I looked at an Isoetes while I was in Crete on holiday & under full inundation it forms a near-continuous marginal band. Mapping suggests ~2,500 plants rather than ~30 previous, so detectability/hydrology story. A geophyte persisting as a corm- a neat drawdown strategy. @bsbibotany.bsky.social

Glorious flower-filled meadow edges in Crete, despite the strong winds, hail, and a cold snap. Bent against the wind Anemone coronaria.

Wimpole Hall on Saturday with the Cambs Bryologists. Pulvigera lyellii on Ash with two small capsule-like structures present, possibly insect egg cases. I don’t think a lichenicolous basidiomycete. A second sample with similarly positioned "pearls." Anyone have any ideas? Lacewing?

Viola odorata var. dumetorum at the woodland edges. Yesterday at the Wimpole Estate in Cambs. #WhiteFlowers #wildflowerhour @bsbibotany.bsky.social

Goat willow (Salix caprea) on the way home yesterday. The previous day’s wind has brushed the catkins to one side, and the woodland edge shows the same prevailing pattern.

Looking for an early spring break to look at flora (and other things). Holiday to use up. Spain? Andalusia? Andalusia? Any where else? Suggestions would be very welcomed.

Important Buglife work- parasiticides. Evidence mostly from rivers. Ponds may differ; additionally, when turbidity & macrophyte disturbance influence invert communities. Dogs in ponds increase turbidity & disturb sediments ↓ plants & ∴invert habitat. Likely chemical & physical disturbance.

Little Paxton Pits yesterday. Drepanocladus aduncus at pool edge- a rain fed ephemeral pond.

Little Paxton Pits and a patch of skeletal soil over gravel. Winter Stalkball (Tulostoma brumale) and Eyed Flat-backed Millipede (Nanogona polydesmoides) sitting on Didymodon Brachythecium albicans, and Syntrichia ruraliformis curled against the sunshine.

Cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera) in full white bloom at Little Paxton today. Noticed marked variation, this specimen had flowers with very short anthers, and petals distinctly more pointed than others. Given how widely the species is planted, perhaps there’s been some crossing with cultivated forms.

Out looking at Charophytes for a study and popped by Purwell Ninesprings. In August there was 60% cover (pictured) and now only 10% Common Stonewort (Chara vulgaris). It looked in a terrible state even for winter- now with 80 cm of silt. It's a Groundwater-fed springhead on calcareous geology.

Windowsill-grown Pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium) var. decumbens has come into flower and is so beautiful! Looking carefully for differences with var. erecta, the non-native variety. These two Mint varieties seem almost impossible to separate- bar codes seem v. difficult. Looking at morphology.

Growing Vaucheria from chalky Gault samples from yesterday’s charophyte collection day. Reproductive structures, antheridia & oogonia, are essential for identification. I’ve found that even tiny traces of filament are enough to culture material through to maturity. Getting a picture of its ecology😀

Warming induced miniaturization of plant community genome size Li et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/JECEMU...

A new extreme of meiotic evolution: ✔️ 𝗻𝗼 crossovers ✔️ 𝗻𝗼 gene conversion ✔️ 𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹 meiosis & fertility Sex mimics clonality without becoming asexual, in the holocentric multicellular eukaryote 𝘙𝘩𝘺𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘢 𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘶𝘪𝘴. more about it: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Yesterday I was with the Cambs Bryologists at the Devil's Dyke, an Anglo-Saxon causeway of chalk, sometimes reaching 10 m in height next to a deep ditch. It supports chalk grassland CG3/CG5, with CG5 occupying a holding position between grassland & scrub. Rhynchostegium megapolitanum- path edges

This week I spent the day at the Natural History Museum trying to decipher a herbarium sheet of Nitella dixonii with more labels than plant🌿 Taxonomy is basically historical detective work with dried algae & decades of marginalia= notes, scribbles and polite disagreements written all over the sheet.

Did anyone else have this poster on their bedroom wall growing up? "Chalk Grassland." This was basically one of the gateway drugs into botany- not only the plants but importantly they communities they grew in. I loved this poster & it still lives vividly in my imagination. @bsbibotany.bsky.social

Winter walk from Stoke Common to Burnham Beeches ❄️ Surface water was extensive at Stoke Common & continued in a similar form as we progressed. By Farnham Common, water was no longer held and beneath the Beeches was dry & stony. I follow a route I later discovered forms part of "Shakespeare’s Way".

Gransden & Waresley Woods with Cambs bryology. Following one of the coldest nights of the winter, the ground was frozen solid, and the light stark and monochromatically bright. Plagiochila asplenioides looking very frosty.

Looking for the Drovers Tracks across the UK. Before the railways transported livestock to market, animals and birds were herded along these routes. Ponds along the way watered the animals. Do the plant signals still exist? Does anyone have a map of the routes? @amiesphilip.bsky.social

I set up a new folder for my field notes this evening. Starting my fifth year, I write about 100 each year. Part of ongoing informal evidence-gathering to refine ecological understanding, field notes provide a way to record observations that complement formal surveys. A way of thinking out loud!

Drawdown species at Wilstone Reservoir. OK, so we know about the Norfolk Bladder-moss (Physcomitrium eurystomum), Riccia cavernosa, Mudwort (Limosella aquatica)--- but what's the green filamentous stuff? It's the largest constituent of mud-pioneer species. It physically competes with the others.

Out with the Cambs Bryology Hunt on Saturday, visiting Hayley Wood. My last visit to the woods was extremely wet, and I was musing about the hydrology here and its role in supporting all the special plant species. Neckera complanata in a festive mood around an Ash stool.🤪

Many thanks to the team at Cambridge University Herbarium for my visit on Thursday, particularly Juliet. Looking at the diaries of William Nicholson to find a description of his Portugal field trip with Hugh Neville Dixon for the 1st record of Nitella dixonii . I found it earlier this year.

Just back from Madeira — cracking plants everywhere! 🌿 Intensive botanising = pure heaven. Great for ferns, fern allies, liverworts + mosses. Highlights: • Adiantum hispidulum — loved the pattern of the pseudoindusia on the leaf underside • Asplenium obovatum subsp. billotii • Vandenboschia speciosa

Today I recorded 272 Scarce Tufted-sedge (Carex cespitosa) today — a 72.5% survival rate at Panshanger Park! It’s the driest site and completely rain-fed, which made things tough this summer. NE Species Recovery Capital Grant, awarded to HMWT.

The new Red List for Vascular Plants published this week by @bsbibotany.bsky.social highlights the serious decline in Britain’s freshwater plants.

🌿 Scarce Tufted-sedge (C. cespitosa) monitoring at Fir & Pond Woods (HMWT Reserve). Early planting in very high winter water levels, then months of drought — a real test of resilience, aided by pre-tussock formation. Still, 71 % establishment success! 💪 @naturalengland.bsky.social

I've been growing my Vaucheria algae for six days, so far & producing antheridia & oogonia. That means I can identify it to species level. This one was from Port Meadow. We are beginning to suspect that they can indicate fine habitats, perhaps those of long management continuity. Ready on Sunday?

I wanted to look at the Mudwort (Limosella aquatica) at Port Meadow this weekend, following the report of it by @trisnorton.bsky.social I wanted to find the Smut fungus Doassansia limosellae, which was last seen in the UK in 1929. No luck though. Here is Mudwort in flower! @bsbibotany.bsky.social

Completely blown away today by how the Scarce Tufted-sedge (Carex cespitosa) was faring on the River Gade. It was with trepidation that I entered the river. Vegetation had grown tall this summer. 2025 was one of the worst for reintroducing a wetland plant. Summer drought followed high winter water.

A mere ten days ago I was at the 17th International Symposium on Aquatic Plants in Lisbon. Here on the field trip: A Cladium Mariscus Saw Sedge floating mat in the River Sado, topped with Salix atrocinerea. Other species were Royal Fern (Osmunda regalis), and Marsh Fern (Thelypteris palustris).

I was looking through my photos from Porto from earlier this year. Strapwort (Corrigiola litoralis) had been looking very fine. It grew with Coral-necklace (Illecebrum verticillatum) on a path with a seepage running across it. What a lovely plant!

OK, so the Cambs Fenland drains had a Water-plantain. The leaves had perished in the summer, & it may have been either A. plantago-aquatica or A. lanceolatum. Luckily, it was fruiting. A) A. plantago-aquatica= achenes had a single furrow on the back. B) A. lanceolatum= two furrows. Answer is A.

Sphagnum squarrosum in a swampy woodland pond in the New Forest on Monday. Such a pretty moss!

I spotted an Asian Hornet in Portugal. It was surprisingly unafraid. I saw there were 344 records for this species in the Lisbon area.

A fight going on in the rice fields of the Tagus Estuary near Lisbon. Azolla filiculoides and Lemna gibba fighting it out for supremacy. The Azolla fronds arching upwards to cover the Lemna, and the Lemna becoming as gibbous as possible to prevent this. They are seemingly resorting to fisticuffs.

A wonderful Mint workshop with @ambroisebaker.bsky.social in Yorkshire. Some really interesting mint species and hybrids were seen. M. x smithiana (aquatica x spicata x arvense). With M. x verticillata (arvense x aquatica) nearby and long-gone M. spicata possibly from a nearby garden.

Collecting seeds from Walter’s type location for Common Spike-rush (subsp. palustris), nearly 75 years since he made that first voucher. It felt like a momentous occasion. Wakehurst Millenium Seed Bank visit by Stephanie Miles & Sarah Willard. Many thanks Rob Dixon RSPB for facilitating the visit.

I had the chance to visit Hatchet pond after work on Friday, choosing not to try driving to Herts until the M25 had calmed. A pond that was well botanised, but also decided to take in the algae. The inlet to the pond with a patchwork of fresh and decaying Zygnema species.

Ivy-leaved Crowfoot (Ranunculus hederaceus) found today on the track in the Lymington Reedbed. A bare mud opportunity and not fussy about nutrient levels. Just look at the size of the Greater Plantain (Plantago major) I found a short distance away! Must be on steroids or else well-fed and watered.

Finally, in the New Forest I finally found Branched Bur-reed subspecies erectum! Everything else had been subspecies neglectum. Told apart by the ripe seed shape. Subspecies neglectum has a gradually tapering apex to the nut. This has definite shoulders.