Newsletter 132
FLORA REPORT
The period from October to December is always difficult for a botanist to report anything new. The only reports were of Ivy, wild strawberry and pale persicaria. There had been a few flowers hanging on whilst the leaves and horse chestnuts were falling. The ones I noticed were gorse, creeping buttercup, herb robert, Michaelmas daisy, red campion and some honeysuckle.
I did have time to start entering some of the hundreds of records from the Bioblitz. Of these, two were described as Rubus duxburiensis (A) and Rubus cuerden valley.(B) David Earle was the person who reported these. He is somewhat of an expert on brambles as well as being the BSBI representative for our vice county, vc59. Specimen A is present in the Yarrow Valley but nowhere else as far as we know. Specimen B is either the same plant, or possibly another bramble found only in Cuerden Valley Park. This means that Chorley has maybe two brambles that exist here and nowhere else in UK. For the birders reading this, I guess it is a bit like the difference between Canada Goose and Lesser Canada Goose. It got me excited anyway.
No doubt by the time you are reading this we will have seen our first snowdrops and primroses, but if you do not report them, we will not know. Thank you again to all the folk who do send records.
David Beattie