New UKCEH-led study warns of closing 20-year window in which decisions on climate & land use will determine fate of 200+ species of native #birds, #butterflies & #plants across Britain. But sustainable climate & land policies would save many of the species. www.ceh.ac.uk/press/we-hav... 🧪 1/

Well that is the end of 4 months of daily posts covering vegetative ID and botanical terms. I hope you have found them of interest and useful. Thanks to everyone who has 'Liked', commented and shared. I’m gathering more material but will take a break from daily posts for a while

It’s not every day that you spot Sea-holly as a #pavementplant! Super early season botany on the Sefton Coast, Lancashire

Creeping Willow male catkins looking fine this week for #wildflowerhour. More #shrubflowers than #treeflowers, but no less attractive for it!

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🍂 Some beautiful spring flowers are challenging to see in the wild. For example purple saxifrage, Saxifraga oppositifolia. Green cushions with gorgeous purple flowers, but in UK and Ireland only on mountains. Likes really inaccessible sites! #BUC2026

Great article by @donnalferguson.bsky.social in today's @theguardian.com about Darwin & Henslow's plant specimens & illustrations and the fab new @cubotanicgarden.bsky.social Certificate in Botany: www.theguardian.com/environment/... Links for this course & many others here: bsbi.org/learn/traini...

Based in Northern Ireland? Want to support @npms.bsky.social & help unlock plant survey sites across NI? Then we have a fabulous volunteer opportunity for you! Check it out: bsbi.org/about/people...

Name That Plant is an amazing #WildFlowerID resource created by @milneorchid.bsky.social! The website namethatplant.org is built on a photo library of >2,700 plant taxa. We were delighted when Richard very kindly agreed to let us use those fabulous images on the new BSBI website: bsbi.org/plants!

Fantastic discovery of Herb-Paris in Sutherland - the news made the @northerntimes.co.uk and @scotsman.com 😍 www.northern-times.co.uk/news/rare-wo... #downwithplantawarenessdisparity 😉

Congrats to @sarahwatts.bsky.social who won the Dr Cyril Hart Memorial Award from @forestrytrust.bsky.social for her research paper: "Why the present is not the key to past or future: moving beyond restricted relict habitat conditions to improve outcomes in mountain woodland restoration." 🧵 1/3

Yesterday our Botanical Skills Northern Ireland Team practiced how to use underwater drones to collect under-recorded aquatic plant specimens! The drone will also be used for our @bsbiireland.bsky.social #AquaticPlantProject & we hope to raise money for a 2nd drone to survey Scottish lochs.

The Pine Hunters is now available to watch online 📽️ This short film tells the story of two #ecologists as race to record the last of our ancient wild #Caledonian forest fragments. Watch for free on YouTube 👉 youtu.be/tHupftkYdZs?... #InternationalDayofForests

Herb-paris found out of known/expected range in Sutherland. Plenty of surprises, many pleasant, to come from plant hunting. #Lairg #Dornoch #Golspie @bsbiscotland.bsky.social @plantlifeuk.bsky.social @scotwildlife.bsky.social

More Colt’s-foot looking class!

The BSBI's mission isn't just about studying & recording our wild plants: it's also about helping everyone appreciate how gorgeous they are! One of the many ways we're doing this is by running online botanical illustration workshops. Check out this fab drawing by Noelin 👇 from our latest workshop!

Colt’s-foot brightening up an Edinburgh street as a #pavementplant #UrbanPlants It is also time for #storyplants, as this plant is used to flavour Colt’s-foot rock candy by Stockleys Sweets of Oswaldtwistle. Let’s hope they don’t use plants from the ‘dog pee zone’ 😂

Just stepped back to photograph this luxuriant population of Navelwort (Umbilicus rupestris) on rocks, and found that I was 'photobombed' (if that term can apply to something stationary) by a great population of the uncommon lichen Ricasolia amplissima on an oak trunk! Location: Argyll, Scotland.

I've been looking out for the Alder (Alnus glutinosa) female flower for a few weeks, and found fully open at Prestongrange Mining Museum on Sunday. A joyful sight. Next up will be Larch (Larix decidua) flowering. @bsbiscotland.bsky.social @bsbibotany.bsky.social @edinburghnats.bsky.social

Repeated droughts aren’t just drying our landscapes — they’re weakening the ability of soils to lock away carbon. New UKCEH research shows that organo-mineral soils lose carbon stability when droughts keep coming, even after they rewet. Frequency, not duration, does the most damage.  🧪 1/

Fantastic discovery @trisnorton.bsky.social! Opposite-leaved Pondweed is a genuine unicorn of a plant in Scotland - confirmed at just one site in the last 60 years, on Skye. 🦄🌿

In case you were wondering, here are the answers! Part 1: Giant Butterbur (infloresence), Bulbous Buttercup, Water Figwort Part 2: Hedgerow Crane's-bill, Great Lettuce, Moschatel 🙂

Spring Snowflake naturalised along the river banks near Crieff. Lovely plant, definitely #SignsofSpring for #wildflowerhour, even if I spotted it a day late…

The wonderful puff of Yew Tree Pollen #LordAncrumsWood #NewBattleAbbeyCollege #SignsofSpring #WildFlowerHour @wildflowerhour.bsky.social @bsbibotany.bsky.social @bsbiscotland.bsky.social

Coltsfoot, Tussilago farfaro, in full flower now, at @scotwildlife.bsky.social's Bawsinch NR in Edinburgh. Yellow sunshine flower in the sunshine. @bsbiscotland.bsky.social

Trees in spring. Alder, Lawson's Cypress, Yew. @bsbiscotland.bsky.social @bsbibotany.bsky.social @edinburghnats.bsky.social

**QUIZ ALERT** Basal rosettes! New in Spring or overwintering leaves, they're everywhere... but can you identify them?! Test yourself on these six beauties, spotted in the last week 😍

Sunday morning bowl of plants! Oryza sativa (rice), Triticum aestivum (wheat) and Theobroma cacao (cacao tree) combined to produce a zebra-striped bowl of catnip* for 5-year-olds... *Nepeta cataria 😀

There's life in the dead stem yet! Red Campion shoot growing and flowering from halfway up last year's stem - which was devoid of leaves otherwise. #wildflowerhour plantatlas2020.org/atlas/2cd4p9...

A great plant! Now common in Glasgow, and establishing in towns across the central belt eastwards towards Edinburgh #UrbanPlants

This is a super resource for anyone trying to build their understanding of plant assemblages - particularly for ecologists carrying out habitat surveys. Heartily recommended!

Great take on my Marsh Clubmoss find, by Scotland’s Poet Lycopodiate - thanks Ben! 🥰

**BREAKING NEWS** - Marsh Clubmoss refound in Dunbartonshire, at a site where it was last recorded in 1854! Being more-or-less evergreen, clubmosses make great botanical targets all year round. With that in mind, I set out to hunt for Marsh Clubmoss near Inveraran on the shore of Loch Lomond 🧵

Spring flowers providing a source of food for the early pollinators in the Lodge Grounds of #NorthBerwick. #wildflowerhour #springflowers #EastLothian

Check out the first instalment in a new series of guest blogposts: Musings of a Beginner Botanist, in which #BSBITrustee Nicola aka @wildplantwanderer.bsky.social gets started with serious botany! How? By signing up for #Identiplant, BSBI's online #WildFlowerID course! bsbi.org/blog/2026/02...

There are a few places left on this BSBI Scottish Outreach event this Sunday: 'Conifers Identification - a guided walk', at Balloch Castle Country Park, north of Dumbarton. Should be a great day, if a little nippy! @bsbiscotland.bsky.social @bsbibotany.bsky.social

#BSBINews Winter issue is out! #BSBImembers: head over to the members-only area of our website to view your digital copy (or, if you opted for print membership, check your letterbox!) Not joined us yet? Discover what's in this issue & how to access a sampler + 1 free article bsbi.org/about/news/l...

This spectacular drift of snowdrops in a strip of woodland in #Clackmannanshire brought welcome sparkle to a dreich winter’s day #wildflowerhour @bsbiscotland.bsky.social

Take on the #100Plants2026 challenge, and open your eyes to the amazing world of plants on your doorstep!

🌿 Test yourself! How well do you know the UK’s endemic plants — species found nowhere else on Earth? Can you name all four in the photo? Want to learn more? Join our Endemics webinar with @bsbicountries.bsky.social on 5th May 2026: 🔗 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1977171014... @bsbibotany.bsky.social

A rather late #TheWinter10 (only nine Im afraid) for #WildFlowerHour tonight. All photographed in south central Scotland this week.

Today @bsbibotany.bsky.social is delighted to be at the launch of the 2025 RACE report. We're proud to join 137 environmental NGOs submitting diversity data (8, like us, submitting data for the 1st time). Find out more & download the report: www.race-report.uk/report/diver...

A selection of flowers from this week for #wildflowehour - Winter Aconite, Dog’s Mercury, Green Field-speedwell and Yellow Crocus dotted around Stirling

I’ve managed to resist up until now, but… here’s a Snowdrop! This is the double-flowered form of the ‘normal’ Snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis), planted on the slopes under Stirling Castle and slowly naturalising. One for not-quite #wildflowerhour

*Decline in botanical education threatens response to climate action and food security* Early, hands-on encounters with plants, inspiring mentors, and emotional connections to nature are among the strongest drivers behind choosing a plant-related path. www.ucd.ie/newsandopini...

Calling all students - are you planning to collect plant-related data? Would some money help? Of course it would! Better not miss the deadline for a #BSBIPlantStudyGrant - 31st Jan! bsbi.org/learn/grants...

Today I #amwriting about lusus forms of #orchids. They're compellingly weird things, where the script has gone wrong - either radically, like this bizarre Greater Butterfly Orchid; or more subtly, like this fused Lesser Butterfly Orchid.

'Wild Roses of Great Britain and Ireland', the latest title in our series of #BSBIHandbooks, was published in print in November. We have now published the eBook version: bsbi.org/learn/public... Check out this interview with the authors, Gareth Knass & the late Roger Maskew: bsbi.org/blog/2025/10...

Exquisite female flower of Hazel, red styles just peeping out of its bud; and male flowers on catkins ready to release their pollen. Not the first female flower I've seen this winter on this tree, that was on 17 Nov, an all-time early flowering. @bsbiscotland.bsky.social @scotwildlife.bsky.social

Just 2 days left for teams of students on #PlantSciences degree programmes in Britain & Ireland to register for #BUC2026! First round of Botanical University Challenge is on 11 Feb online so save that date. @bsbibotany.bsky.social is proud to be a @bucbotany.bsky.social supporter again this year!

Two nice urban flowers for #wildflowerhour today: Cut-leaved Dead-nettle, with its 'cut' lobed leaves, and Henbit Dead-nettle, with rounded, unstalked upper leaves. Both in flower for #TheWinter10, if you squint hard enough! Both locally scarce, and new finds for this bit of industrial Falkirk.