I started my year in the best way – by going on a plant hunt! This was my second year participating in the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland’s (BSBI) New Year Plant Hunt (NYPH) and the 13th NYPH held by BSBI.

The idea behind the plant hunt is to build a database of how wild and naturalised plants are responding to changing weather patterns. The NYPH has been running since 2014 and volunteers record any wild or naturalised plants they find flowering between 30 December and 2 January. There are a lot of great resources and support available to help amateur volunteers like me, and if you enjoy walking and finding plants, then this is a brilliant start to the new year!

I only managed to get out well past lunchtime on the 1st of January. The circumstances were less than ideal for spotting flowers – it was cloudy and very rainy, which meant many flower buds were closed, and the light was already fading as the early January evening crept in. I drove to a wooded area outside Dublin and I was pleasantly surprised to find so many people walking in what I thought was pretty miserable weather. There were many dog walkers, which was to be expected, but there were also several families with young children trudging up and down the mountains through mud and rain. Most looked very happy, even the parents carrying little ones on their backs. Clearly I’m not the only one who feels that a nature walk and some fresh air is just the thing after the excess and excitement of the festive season.

“January, seemingly the longest month of the year, has the virtue of strength in the face of icy winds and freezing rain.
We keep putting one foot in front of the other, with faith that the world is turning towards the light, knowing that journey has started already. We watch for the first sign of spring, the snowdrops in the sheltered corner of a field, the beginnings of leaf buds on hedgerow and tree.”

The Turning of the Year, Eithne Massey

I was somewhat disappointed when I only found one flower in bloom on this walk: a lone herb robert. It was a tiny splash of pink against a velvety green tree trunk doing a twitchy dance in the wind and rain. I found some evidence of flowering ivy on the forest floor, but the light was too poor and the rain too heavy for me to make out any flowers scrambling up the trees.

Despite the low yield in flowers, it was an absolutely wonderful walk. Different mosses covered trees, rocks and crumbling walls like miniature rainforests. And the mushrooms! There were plenty of fungi in all their weird and wonderful shapes.

I became curious when I spotted some white foamy bubbles on a tree, near the roots. This is a soapy substance that forms on trees during heavy rain. The foam is caused by stemflow which is the water flowing over the exterior of a tree trunk during persistent rain. The rainwater intercepted by the tree converges into little rivulets and it funnels more water to the base of the tree than the actual rainfall. On its way down the stemflow collects a solution of nutrients and pollutants from the tree’s bark and this can sometimes create a foamy soap near the base of the tree:

“During dry periods, an assortment of particulates, plant chemicals, and air pollutants accumulate on the bark surface of trees. When rain collects on a tree’s canopy, these ingredients mix and concentrate towards the base of the tree. The foam is a result of a crude soap, flowing and bubbling due to turbulence on tree bark furrows. Soap is basically a combination of an alkali metal, such as sodium or potassium, and a mixture of carboxylic acids.” – Brandywine Conservancy

It was still raining the next day but I decided to go on another quick flower hunt in my neighborhood. This was much more fruitful: the unkempt flower beds and cracked sidewalks are wonderful places for little wildflowers to take refuge in during the colder months. I found many of the same plants as the previous year: creeping buttercup, petty spurge, ragwort, dandelions, groundsel, daisies, and sow thistles…

I recorded my findings on the NYPH app. An interactive map shows where all the lists have been uploaded across Britain and Ireland. Here you can see a copy of the BSBI map showing the lists uploaded in Ireland:

And here are some fascinating snippets from the 2023 NYPH:

The 2023 plant hunt was preceded by the hottest summer on record to date with severe frosts (and the coldest winter since 2010) the week before the new year. Although there was a 10% decrease in participants to the previous year, there was a 50.5% decrease in the recorded number of plants in bloom. This could be due to the extreme cold late in December 2022. 51% of the recorded flowers were late summer flowering plants that had managed to keep flowering, only 11% were springtime specialists, 38% were plants that are expected to flower at that time of year, and a whopping 49% were non-native plants or naturalised garden-escapees. – NYPH 2024 Press Release by BSBI

I’m looking forward to reading about the 2024 findings. This is a great example of how citizen science can help scientists collect data to understand more about changes in our environment.

I’m also looking forward to a new year filled with walks, wildflowers, and books. Thank you, as always, for visiting the Wild Library blog. Happy New Year.

“In Ireland, the year begins in music. The Dagda, the great god of the ancient Celts, had a harp that was a living creature.
We are told that when the Dagda played it, the year came forth from the music. Like a tune circling into itself, the seasons, marked by the changing weather and the changing face of the landscape, whirled along in a rhythmic progression.”

The Turning of the Year, Eithne Massey

Happy walking,

Chantelle