BSBI Scotland

Ok, so the first photo isn't actually a basal rosette/leaves but an inflorescence - but it looks rather like one!!

Rounded, mid-green leaves with seven palmate, blunt-ended lobes, each with noticeably paler centres, around 3-4cm in diameter

A dense leafy basal rosette, with broad pale-green leaves with frilly margins, som net veining, and reddish central veins. Growing in a wall/disturbed ground

Small, delicate, lobed leaves reminiscent of a buttercup. In basic woodland along a river bank

A cluster of whitish flowers surrounded by broad, pale whitish-green leaf-like bracts. On bare ground by a wooded river

Mid-green, three part lobed leaves, forming a mat of frilly shapes in grassland

Narrow bright green leaves, with toothed margins, blunt tips, incipient pairs of leaflets at the base, and a reddish-green petiole. On a river bank

**QUIZ ALERT**
Basal rosettes! New in Spring or overwintering leaves, they're everywhere... but can you identify them?!

Test yourself on these six beauties, spotted in the last week 😍

Basal rosettes of Rue-leaved Saxifrage (Saxifraga tridactylites) dotted through an ‘urban moss and grot’ pavement habitat

Close up on a Rue-leaved Saxifrage rosette, showing forked leaves and (if you zoom in) glandular hairs

And discovered two days ago in Stirling for the first time, growing in moss outside Morrisons! Definitely a new colonist, at least two botanists have been checking this patch of grot for it annually for a while now!

Cigarette butt, peanut shell and grotty gull feather for scale 😉

Blue bowl, with cereal laid out in zebra stripes inside - white rice krispies, brown coco pops, white rice krispies and brown choco hoops. Not my finest parenting hour, but it was popular with its target audience! Please don't judge me too harshly!

Sunday morning bowl of plants!
Oryza sativa (rice), Triticum aestivum (wheat) and Theobroma cacao (cacao tree) combined to produce a zebra-striped bowl of catnip* for 5-year-olds...

*Nepeta cataria 😀

There's life in the dead stem yet!
Red Campion shoot growing and flowering from halfway up last year's stem - which was devoid of leaves otherwise.
#wildflowerhour

plantatlas2020.org/atlas/2cd4p9...

A great plant! Now common in Glasgow, and establishing in towns across the central belt eastwards towards Edinburgh #UrbanPlants

This is a super resource for anyone trying to build their understanding of plant assemblages - particularly for ecologists carrying out habitat surveys. Heartily recommended!

Great take on my Marsh Clubmoss find, by Scotland’s Poet Lycopodiate - thanks Ben! 🥰

Wonderful Ben, thank you! 😂🥰

Yep, Lycopodium clavatum, Selaginella selaginoides and Huperzia selago to go with Lycopodiella inundata.

It is particularly thrilling to refinding old records, I agree. The historical/cultural element adds something to the intrinsic value of the plant, at least for us as observers

Thanks Jo! Really chuffed with this one.
I think (fear) it may be one of just two extant Marsh Clubmoss sites in Dunbartonshire and Perthshire combined (across four vice-counties) - but surely there are more sites lurking, awaiting an intrepid botanist?!

So a fantastic February day's botanising - the first sighting of Marsh Clubmoss in Dunbartonshire since 1990, and at a site where it was last recorded in 1854 to boot!

To learn more about Marsh Clubmoss, head to plantatlas2020.org/atlas/2cd4p9...

Stag's-horn Clubmoss (Lycopodium clavatum) creeping through Heather, with its multiply branched shoots held erect and leaves ending in long white hair points visible to the naked eye

Two shoots of Lesser Clubmoss (Selaginella selaginoides) in a basic flush - typically held erect, branched at the base but not up the shoots, and each leaf with marginal teeth

Fir Clubmoss (Huperzia selago) - probably the commonest clubmoss in the uplands of Scotland. Its thick yellow-green shoots are held erect, and usually have upright branches of more-or-less equal length

As well as the star species, I spotted Stag's-horn Clubmoss, Lesser Clubmoss and Fir Clubmoss growing in the flushes and wet heath above Inveraran - a FOUR clubmoss species day!
Stag's-horn has leaves with white hair points, Lesser is small with toothed leaves, & Fir is erect and has equal branches.

An aerial view of the site above Inveraran, with the flush containing Marsh Clubmoss marked with an orange circle. The giant pylon substation just south of it, and the Sitka Spruce blocks to west and east, show how vulnerable this population has been to loss

The BSBI Plant Atlas 2020 distribution map for Marsh Clubmoss - black dots are 10km squares with post-2000 records, through lighting shades of grey for different date classes, to white circles showing 10km squares where the species has not been seen since before 1930.

I estimated 150 plants in the population - tricky to count given their creeping habit. The aerial pic shows the location of the flush - fortunate to have survived both conifer planting and the building of a large pylon substation!
The map shows the widespread losses this rare plant has suffered.

One of the densest patches of Marsh Clubmoss shoots, sprawling across the flush

One of last year's erect reproductive branches sticking up from a trailing yellow-green Marsh Clubmoss shoot, looking rather grotty and rotten - but evidence of a reproducing population

Before too long, I was delighted to spot the bright yellow-green, bottle-brush-like shoots worming their way through the most open patches of the flush, where seasonal inundation helped keep the sward sparse. There were even the remains of a few upright reproductive shoots from last year.

Looking up the pylon ride between two areas planted with Sitka Spruce, with the bare flush containing the Marsh Clubmoss in the foreground

Disappointed, I crossed over the river into Dunbartonshire, where Marsh Clubmoss was recorded 172 years ago. Tussocky & dense Purple Moor-grass & Bog-myrtle, not so good. On a hunch I turned up a pylon ride between Sitka Spruce plantations, following a drainage line that looked more promising...

Pale Butterwort (Pinguicula lusitanica), a western speciality of flushes in wet heath. It overwinters with a basal rosette, unlike Common Butterwort (P. vulgaris) which overwinters as a rootless bud. The leaves are much smaller than Common Butterwort, and a paler, almost sickly blue-green compared to the bright yellow-green of the larger Common Butterwort. One seedhead is still visible, held in my fingers

White Beak-sedge (Rhynchospora alba), a feature of flushes in wet heath and saturated areas of bog. Its distinctive white flowers turn to gingery-brown seedheads in the winter, shown against my hand in the photo, before dying back entirely.

The bright green young shoots of Whorled Caraway (Trocdaris verticillata), another western speciality. An umbellifer, its finely divided leaves (seen here under water in the flush!) and white flowering umbels make it a very attractive plant of wet heaths in the west of Scotland

This Nationally Scarce species was last found at Inveraran in 2013 on the West Perthshire side of the river, but there was no sign of it there in 2024 or this week. Nice plants such as Pale Butterwort and White Beak-sedge were still visible though, along with baby Whorled Caraway plants emerging.

Marsh Clubmoss (Lycopodiella inundata) shoots creeping across a wet, bare substrate. The shoots are bottle-brush like, bright yellow-green with narrow, untoothed leaves sticking out from the main stem.

A series of Marsh Clubmoss shoots criss-crossing the flush, looking like a group of yellow-green centipedes running across the muddy ground

**BREAKING NEWS** - Marsh Clubmoss refound in Dunbartonshire, at a site where it was last recorded in 1854!

Being more-or-less evergreen, clubmosses make great botanical targets all year round. With that in mind, I set out to hunt for Marsh Clubmoss near Inveraran on the shore of Loch Lomond 🧵

Crocuses

Primrose

Hellebore

Iris

Spring flowers providing a source of food for the early pollinators in the Lodge Grounds of #NorthBerwick.

#wildflowerhour #springflowers
#EastLothian

Check out the first instalment in a new series of guest blogposts: Musings of a Beginner Botanist, in which #BSBITrustee Nicola aka @wildplantwanderer.bsky.social gets started with serious botany!
How?
By signing up for #Identiplant, BSBI's online #WildFlowerID course!
bsbi.org/blog/2026/02...

There are a few places left on this BSBI Scottish Outreach event this Sunday: 'Conifers Identification - a guided walk', at Balloch Castle Country Park, north of Dumbarton. Should be a great day, if a little nippy! @bsbiscotland.bsky.social @bsbibotany.bsky.social

#BSBINews Winter issue is out!
#BSBImembers: head over to the members-only area of our website to view your digital copy (or, if you opted for print membership, check your letterbox!)
Not joined us yet?
Discover what's in this issue & how to access a sampler + 1 free article
bsbi.org/about/news/l...

This spectacular drift of snowdrops in a strip of woodland in #Clackmannanshire brought welcome sparkle to a dreich winter’s day #wildflowerhour @bsbiscotland.bsky.social

Take on the #100Plants2026 challenge, and open your eyes to the amazing world of plants on your doorstep!

🌿 Test yourself!

How well do you know the UK’s endemic plants — species found nowhere else on Earth?

Can you name all four in the photo?

Want to learn more? Join our Endemics webinar with @bsbicountries.bsky.social on 5th May 2026:

🔗 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1977171014...

@bsbibotany.bsky.social

A collage of photographs of nine flowers: Cherry Plum; Oxford Ragwort; White Dead-nettle; Hazel (male catkins); Primrose; Winter Aconite; Golden Crocus; Herb Bennet; Hazel (female catkins).

A rather late #TheWinter10 (only nine Im afraid) for #WildFlowerHour tonight. All photographed in south central Scotland this week.

Diversity data report | The RACE Report Read the latest diversity data submitted by environmental charities and funders to progress diversity and inclusion through transparency.

Today @bsbibotany.bsky.social is delighted to be at the launch of the 2025 RACE report.
We're proud to join 137 environmental NGOs submitting diversity data (8, like us, submitting data for the 1st time).
Find out more & download the report:
www.race-report.uk/report/diver...

A selection of flowers from this week for #wildflowehour - Winter Aconite, Dog’s Mercury, Green Field-speedwell and Yellow Crocus dotted around Stirling

Looking up at a small clump of Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) in the winter sunshine. The flowers are doubles, with extra tepals packed into the inflorescence

Another clump of double-flowered Snowdrops, white flowers open and outer tepals spread wide. The clump has been planted on the steep, base rich woodland on the basalt volcanic plug of Stirling Castle Mound

I’ve managed to resist up until now, but… here’s a Snowdrop!

This is the double-flowered form of the ‘normal’ Snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis), planted on the slopes under Stirling Castle and slowly naturalising. One for not-quite #wildflowerhour