Tom the Botanist

It’s November, I’ve finally got some time on my hands after what turned out to be a busy field season. I’m back in my home county of Worcestershire and I’ve decided to carry on doing some local monad bashing. I don’t think there’s a better way to improve your botanical ID skills than trying to record everything in a 1km x 1km OS Grid square (monad).

Ribbesford – SO7872 – 101 spp.

I’ve been meaning to visit Ribbesford since I moved to Stourport last year but never got round to it cause the parking seemed awkward and it was a popular spot due to mountain-biking, it’s no longer a bike park so a bit quiter so I gave it a go and managed to record over 100 species of plant (101 to be exact), this was including some bryophytes, but I’m pretty hyped that I managed to get a 100+ monad working alone….in November!

The highlight for me was finding this tiny scroph-like annual called Kickxia elatine (Sharp-leaved Fluellen):

Stourport SO8171 – 70 spp.

A quick walk down the canal from my house, to the local Mitton Chapel cemetery revealed some 70 species of plants, including two comfrey species: Symphytym x uplandicum (Russian Comfrey) and S. officinale (Common Comfrey). I’d like to walk further in this monad, as it goes right down to Stourport basin so I reckon it’d quite species rich.

I used the key in Stace to tell them apart, but what was very notable were the winged stems made up of decurrent leaves on S. officinale in comparison to S. x uplandicum. Upon close inspection the calyces were completely different too, both in shape and in pubescence.

Summary

So what does this tell us? What can we take away from this? That monad bashing makes you key out more, and teaches you new species that you’d take for granted otherwise. I walk this canal multiple times a month and know there’s comfrey down it, I had always assumed they were the same species, but they’re not.