Surveying Plants

Bee orchid photo by Elizabeth Dack 1/3
Common poppy photo by David North 2/3
Cowslips photo by Julian Thomas 3/3
Plants are all around us and are an integral part of our lives; they fill our fields and hedgerows with greenery, our woodlands and verges with bright colour and the air with their fragrance. Norfolk has more than 1,000 species of wild flowering plants; these include grasses, sedges and rushes as well as trees and shrubs, which are simply large flowering plants. In addition there are many species of non-flowering plants, ranging from tiny mosses and liverworts to the larger more obvious ferns. Wild plants were once commonly gathered for food and to provide natural remedies. Nowadays, apart from blackberry picking and the autumn gathering of conkers and sweet chestnuts, people are less aware of the diversity of their local wild plants and where particular species grow. This means there are gaps in our knowledge of the distribution of many plants and surveying your local area can help to remedy this.


Have you seen…?

  • Harebell
  • Ragged robin
  • Common spotted orchid
  • Sea holly

Many plants, including the ones mentioned above, have suffered serious declines in recent decades and are no longer widespread in the Norfolk countryside. This reflects the loss of grasslands, marshes and other habitats together with changes to modern farming, such as more intensive herbicide use in cropped areas, allowing few wild flowers to survive on arable farmland. Some wild plants have declined so much they are now highly endangered.


Why not start a simple survey today?

The best way to get started is to begin with something simple. Keeping a list of wild flowers found in one small area, perhaps a section of roadside verge, your local churchyard, school grounds or a park, will enable you to develop your identification skills. Over the course of a year even a small area is likely to produce a list of between thirty and a hundred species.

To begin a simple site checklist use Survey Form W.

Alternatively you can survey a larger area, such as a parish or village, but focus on a small group of species that are easy to identify. To cover a large area you may wish to involve the whole community in the survey or encourage the local school to adopt the survey as a project.

Even with more difficult groups, such as ferns, if you develop an interest in your local patch, with practice and close observation you will soon develop the skills to separate quite similar species. In any one area there are likely to be fewer than twenty species of ferns so the challenges of identification can be overcome.


 

Want to focus on plants of a particular habitat?  

Some plants are known as indicator species and provide evidence of high quality habitats likely to be important for other wildlife. Click here for lists of indicator species for ancient woodlands and meadows.

 

You don’t have to be an expert…

There are a lot of plants for the beginner to come to terms with, but there is no need to panic. With practice and a good field guide you can easily begin to recognise individual species and if you wish to survey plants you will have a distinct advantage over those who survey birds, mammals or invertebrates because plants cannot run or fly away!

Start with the plants you know well: a survey of the distribution of a couple of species, for example primrose and cowslip, can produce fascinating and useful results.

 

Equipment

Simple plant surveys can be done with no more equipment that a pencil, notebook and map. However, the following equipment can be helpful:
 
  • A good hand lens.
  • A digital cameral with a macro setting.
  • A waterproof notebook.
  • A good plant identification guide.
  • A small plastic collecting pot or sealable plastic bag.

 

Collecting specimens

It is rarely necessary to gather plant specimens, and to uproot a wild plant without the landowner’s permission is breaking the law. Sometimes, to confirm the identity of a plant, it can be helpful to remove a single flower or leaf to study back at home. Comparing collected material with a range of reference books and illustrations can be fascinating and will help you learn. It will also allow you to seek an expert opinion. If you only remove single flowers and leaves and never uproot a whole plant then you are very unlikely to be doing any harm to a population of plants.

The one exception is the orchid family, some of which are legally protected against picking, and where in some cases a single flower spike may have taken many years to produce.

On sites which are nature reserves or SSSIs there are likely to be restrictions on any collecting and this should never be done without permission.

 

Download a plant survey form here

Plant Survey Form (Survey Form K)

Microsoft Excel spreadsheet
Microsoft Word document

Please remember to send your completed survey forms to Norfolk Biodiversity Information Service (NBIS)– make your records count!

Norfolk Biodiversity Information Service
Environment Transport and Development
County Hall
Martineau Lane
Norwich
Norfolk
NR1 2SG

Email: [email protected]
Website: NBIS

Help is at hand…

If you need help identifying a plant take some photographs showing:
 
  • The whole plant and its location/surrounding habitat.
  • A close-up of any open flower.
  • A close-up of the arrangement of the leaves on the stem and leaf shape.
  • Any buds, seeds or distinctive features.
Add notes to the photos giving details of habitat and associated species, location, date, flower size, plant height, any distinctive scent of leaves or flowers, and any additional features that might not show in the photos, for example, whether the stem and leaves are hairy of smooth.

Email the photos and your notes to [email protected] or upload the image here.

 

Check online…

Foxed by foxgloves? Muddled by mallows?

Norfolk Wildlife Trust may be able to arrange a beginners or intermediate botany course for your group if there is sufficient demand. Contact NWT by email or phone 01603 598333.

To get details of wildflower identification workshops in Norfolk check out our event section.

 

Want to branch out…?

Plantlife, a charity working to protect Britain’s wild flowers and plants, is running a Common Plants Survey which is a long-term project monitoring changes to wild flowers in our countryside. The success of the survey is completely dependent on volunteer surveyors.

 

Watch out for aliens…!

Invasive non-native plants can have a serious impact on our native wildlife. We support the Norfolk Non-native Species Initiative, which aims to reduce the spread of invasive non-native species already established in the county, eradicate them from priority areas, and prevent the introduction of further species.

A major hurdle to successful implementation of the Initiative is the lack of available information on the distribution of non-native species in Norfolk and records of these species will therefore be of great value. Particularly problematic species are: Himalayan balsam, giant hogweed and Japanese knotweed.

Send your records to Norfolk Biodiversity Information Service (NBIS), Environment, Transport and Development, County Hall, Martineau Lane, Norwich, NR1 2SG, email: [email protected]
Cowslips photo by Julian Thomas 1/3
Bluebells NWT Foxley Wood photo by Matthew Tebbutt 2/3
Bee orchid photo by Elizabeth Dack 3/3