Where required, we carry out more specialised botanical surveys focusing on target or individual species of critical and Schedule 8 taxa.
Dr Kate Thorne has previously held licences to disturb Luronium natans (a Schedule 8 protected plant) and in 2023 has been involved with the collection of seed from this and a few other rare species, for Kew and the National Botanic Garden Wales.
As the joint Montgomeryshire county plant recorder for the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI), Kate Thorne is involved with updating all Montgomeryshire (Powys) plant records with the emphasis on county and/or national rare and scarce plants. The field data is largely collected by volunteers, records being verified by the county recorder before entry into any database.
The volunteer effort from all counties from 2000 up to the end of 2019 has resulted in the publication of the Plant Atlas 2020 by the BSBI, in 2023.
In addition, the Rare Plant Register for Montgomeryshire was updated in 2020, and can be accessed on the BSBI website. Most counties now have Rare Plant Registers which have been drawn up by the relevant BSBI county recorders, to ensure awareness of sites where rare and scarce plants are to be found and, hopefully, to safeguard them. These, and all post-2005 records for Montgomeryshire, are held by the Biological Information Service (BIS) and are available when records are sought as part of ecological appraisals prior to developments.
From 2020, volunteers have continued to collect field data for the county, for input into both the BSBI database and into BIS.