Ever reliable Mexican Fleabane

Today was all about the BSBI New Year Plant Hunt. Fourteen keen botanists convened in a Stamford car-park and spent the next three hours combing the pavements and green spaces of the town, trying to spot plants in flower. 

The criteria for 'flowering' are quite strict - the flowers have to be open enough to see stamens and stigmas. We spent quite some time trying to establish whether some of the smaller flowered species qualified, and one had to be brought home to be checked under the microscope. This Mexican Fleabane was one of the easier plants to record!

Compared to previous years, it was hard work and progress was slow. Some species, including Red Deadnettle, Sun Spurge, Groundsel, Shepherd's-purse and Winter Heliotrope seem to have been unaffected by the pre-Christmas chill. But many normally reliable winter-flowering species had only one or two open flowers, and some, such as Musk Stork's-bill were stubbornly vegetative.

I've recorded this area in previous years, and today's respectable total of 32 species was much lower than the 53 recorded by a similar sized group in 2020, and the 41 recorded by Pete and me in 2021. This decline has occurred countrywide and reflects the prolonged period of frosty weather in December. 

However, over the long term, the results of this Citizen Science project which has now been running for twelve years,  have shown an increase in the number of species flowering through the winter period in response to climate change. Our 2023 findings illustrate the difference between weather and climate which is often mistakenly exploited by climate change deniers!