Botany in Flatts Wood, Co Durham

Our first proper days botanising for a long while. We have been too busy renovating the new house lately - so we took a day off from that and had a great time! Some patches of winter aconite and snowdrops in flower at the top of the wood. Funny, I can't ever remember seeing winter aconite before. Found some yellow star-of-Bethlehem leaves just coming through in the area where we found it last year. None of it flowering yet. No sign of the toothwort coming among the hazels along the riverbank yet. Its been a warm winter (really nice mild spring day today) so maybe some more things will be in flower early in a couple of weeks when Clare is doing a 'first day hunt' walk - looking for species in flower on 1 March.
We tried out the new bryophyte ecology survey in the wood. Did 10 quadrats on the woodland floor. Its a well-designed survey method which will really expand our understanding of the ecology of some of our most common and abundant bryophytes. Hopefully it will also encourage more people to get interested in mosses and liverworts as the survey can be done by people without much identification experience. More about this survey later!

John