New Year - new start. The Brecknockshire New Year Plant Hunt

 This blog has been resting while I (and members of the group) worked on completing the Flora of the County which will be published in the spring. Sadly Mike Porter, who wrote almost all of it, did not live to see it fully published. Mike was County Recorder for Botany from 1968 until last year so this Flora will be the end result of a lifetime's work.

We (the Brecknock Botany Group) intended to do a group hunt for the BSBI New Year Plant Hunt scheme at Trecastle but weather warnings (a little OTT as it turned out) decided us to do several small local hunts - including one in which two of us who did brave it to Trecastle.

In all 65 wild growing plants were found flowering in the county with the highest tally being at Llangynidr by Anne and Joan. (26)

A few pictures:

Arabidopsis thaliana, Thale Cress at Trecastle, Claire Halpin

Several of us found Daisies flowering (Bellis perennis). This from Hay Graveyard by me.

Chaenorhinum origanifolium, Malling Toadflax thrives all year round near my house - not intervention from me at all and has been there since 2013 when it presumably escaped from a window box. Now naturalized in pavement cracks.

Lamium purpureum, Red Dead-nettle is a more recent arrival in the same habitat. Now well established.

Several of us found this grass which grows everywhere and "flowers" all year round. Poa annua, Annual Meadow-grass.