Prunus cerasifera (Cherry Plum) flowering today

 Cherry Plum has just started flowering. Rather late this year, as I normally see it flowering in January. A strange spring as several species are rather late to start flowering this year.
Note the green twigs in the below photo. The young twigs are green for the first couple years.
This was a new hectad record today. A very under recorded species!

Galanthus nivalis x G. plicatus a new hybrid for Wexford

 This hybrid snowdrop was growing under a hedge west of Curracloe. It must of been a garden outcast at sometime. It was clear it was spreading as there were seedling of the snowdrop. The leaves have slight folded over margins as in G. plicatus.

Euphorbia mellifera (Canary Spurge) established at Bannow

 Canary Spurge flowering today at Bannow. This spurge is turning up all over the county. Well established in one wood. Bushes of the spurge are often over 2m tall.

Viola arvensis flowering in February

Field Pansy taken two days ago on a lovely sunny cold day. It was growing over the whole field in large patches. There was no other weeds in the field. The map below shows all the monads Field Pansy has been recorded in since 2000.

Thank you to everybody who contributed to recording in 2015 in Co. Wexford

With the year coming to a close I would like to take this chance to thank everybody who has contributed to recording in Wexford during the year. This has been our best year ever!

For once we have nearly kept up with the inputting of the records collected during 2015. This has been a phenomenal year for the county as to date just over 80,000 records have been entered into MapMate, that is 24,000 up on our best year, which was in 2014. Hopefully 2016 will see an increase in recording in the county, especially in the northern half which is lagging behind, there are still many tetrads with no records or less than 50 species recorded. In the southern half of the county all tetrads have had at least one monad visited, and in the SW corner of the county from New Ross south to the Hook and east ward across to Wellingtonbridge nearly every monad has been visited.  2015 also saw our best ever total of species recorded in a monad on a single visit, 270. This was at Blackwater T1234.

Of the list of 199 species not reported since 2000 in the county, 22 were re-found.  

52 new species were added to the county list, of these 10 were native, 35 were garden escapes or dumped from gardens and surviving, and the other 7 are rare casuals. Of the 10 new native species 8 are hybrids.

August had the largest number of records collected for a month, 14,699, followed by October with 12,145. All months apart from December saw over 1000 records collected.

The map below shows all the monads (black squares) with records.

Alchemilla xanthochlora (Intermediate Lady's-mantle) new native for Co. Wexford

 Margaret Bradshaw the BSBI Referee for Alchemilla has confirmed the specimen of Alchemilla xanthochlora I sent her from a road side at Ballymaclare, 6km south of New Ross. This is a new native species for Wexford, the nearest site in Ireland is c. 80km away. Almost went unnoticed as I put down Alchemilla mollis (Garden Lady's-mantle) on my recording card at the first patch I saw, still didn't cross my mind it wasn't A. mollis when I walked past the second population along the road verge. It wasn't until I was having a cuppa in the car that I thought to myself there is a lot of Lady's-mantle for a garden escape. Took another look, realising the leaves were more or less hairless, I knew it couldn't be A. mollis as that has very hairy leaves.

 Below, one of the verges the Alchemilla xanthochlora (Intermediate Lady's-mantle) was growing along.

Viola tricolor subsp. tricolor (Wild Pansy) at Curracloe

 Came across a stubble field blue with Wild Pansy, never seen so much before. Very good year for weedy stubble fields