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The Essex Botanical Society  (introduction and membership)                   

BOTANY GROUP MEETINGS ESSEX BOTANY NEWSLETTERS

Join one of our Wild Flower Groups, learn your Flowers, Trees and Grasses at the same time as we are out in the field mapping our 1 x 1km squares.  Group One Epping (Tuesdays from 3.00pm), Group Two Great Dunmow (Wednesdays from 3.00pm), Group Three, Tendring (Thursdays from 3.00pm). We switch to 7.00pm evenings when the days get longer. Further details from Ken Adams [see below].

 

Introduction

The Essex Field Club/BSBI/BBS Botany Group is currently engaged in several projects relating to the  Flora of the County of Essex, its main target being the compilation of a new county flora `An Atlas and Third Flora of Essex’  to update those of Gibson (1862)  and  Jermyn  &  Adams (1974) and Wild Flowers of North East Essex by Terri Tarpey and Jerry Heath (1990). In addition the group assists/has assisted Ken Adams, (BSBI/BBS  &  EFC  recorder)  in  the  compilation  of  data  for such national initiatives and publications as:

Red Data Books of Britain & Ireland:

Stoneworts (1992)

Vascular Plants (1999)

Mosses & Liverworts (2001)

 

Atlas of the Bryophytes of Britain & Ireland (1991-1994) 3 volumes. 1st edition.

Scarce Plants in Britain (1994)

New Atlas of the British & Irish Flora (Vascular Plants) (2002)

Vice-County Census Catalogue of the Vascular Plants of Great Britain (2004)

Atlas of the British & Irish Bryophytes. (2014) 2 volumes. 2nd edition.

Members of the  group  hold regular field  recording  meetings  and  are  very  keen  to  welcome beginners and  help  them  learn  to identify plants in the field. The group also holds an annual indoor meeting to review progress and plan the next year’s recording. 

Botany Group Membership 

Membership of the Botany Group is open to all who are interested in botany, but our records, which are being loaded onto a MapMate database, are submitted to the BSBI database and the National Biological Records Centre at Monks Wood, and thence to the NBN, and are therefore only  acceptable from botanists we regard as reliable. Large numbers of dubious records abound these days in Wildlife Trust, Natural England and Local Authority databases and are continuously being produced by unscrupulous/incompetent Ecological Survey Companies, and it’s impossible to authenticate them, so we err on the safe side and largely exclude them. We have a band of dedicated botanists systematically recording in the county but we are keen to train young aspiring botanists to be able to identify plants reliably to the standard required to join our team. This is best accomplished by joining us on some of our regular Essex Botany Group (see above) or our Field Club recording meetings [see Essex Field Club Program button top right].

Joining the Group

Further information available from Ken Adams  <ken.adams@virgin.net>