Floral Surveying

In addition to my role on the Invasive Species project at the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, I have volunteered to carry out wildflower surveys at several sites across South Yorkshire. The purpose of these is to monitor change in plant composition over several years. This may take place through natural processes at some sites. Other sites are having seeds removed, so its important to ensure this is done sustainably and does not impact the swarth in future years. In contrast, seed is being added to some sites so the species composition is expected to change in those locations.

On Monday I attended a training session with some other volunteers to practice the survey methodology and get up to speed with the species we are likely to come across. The session was held on Maltby Common, which has some areas of magnesian limestone, whilst other parts of the site are quite damp and semi-acidic. This gave rise to an unusual mix of species in some places.

We reviewed 92 species, including some grasses, sedges and rushes.  I had come across many of these before, though it was good to reinforce my knowledge.  We reviewed some of the similar looking species - such as Cat's Ear, Rough Hawkbit (pictured) and Goat's Beard that all look superficially like Dandelion.

We came across two slightly less usual members of the Galium family: Lady's Bedstraw (Galium verum) was abundant in some parts of the site, and I found one small specimen of Field Madder (Sherardia arvensis) which has the distinctive galium-whorls but a pale purple rather than the more normal white or yellow flower.

Some of the rarer species we came across were Adder's Tongue and Pepper Saxifrage.  There were also several orchids: Common Spotted orchid, Bee orchid (pictured), Twayblade and the rarer Greater Butterfly orchid though this had finished flowering.

This weekend I attend the MMU's "Using a Flora" course where I hope to reinforce these skills even further, and I'm looking forward to start surveying properly in the next few weeks.