Scotland

There will be a wide range of talks to enjoy, including on research into montane woodland restoration, measures to help conserve Whorled Solomon’s-seal, the flora of Scottish Cemeteries, securing the future of rare bryophytes at Bavelaw Reservoir, revisiting Lee’s Flora of the Clyde Area for its centenary, an updated Eyebright taxonomy for us to digest, and the results of a national survey of the very rare alpine Tufted Saxifrage.

The ever-popular afternoon workshop sessions will cater for botanists of all experience levels, from Rushes for Complete Beginners to Glasswort ID and Mountain Dandelion Identification! There will also be an open discussion session on Conservation Translocations, chaired by the Head of Plantlife Scotland Alistair Whyte – a great opportunity to explore the why, where and how of translocations and share your thoughts with the wider Scottish botanical community.

The conference will also include the Exhibition - all participants are welcome to display exhibits - and the BSBI Scotland Annual General Meeting, and there will be post-conference Dinner. The Scottish Botanists' Conference is organised and supported by BSBI, the Botanical Society of Scotland, and RBGE.

*NEW* You are cordially invited to attend an open house event at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) Herbarium on Sunday 2nd November 10:00 - 16:00 (the day after the Scottish Botanists' Conference). The Herbarium will be opening the historic unmounted collection for consultation by conference participants for the first time.

Help us identify and select specimens to be prioritised for mounting, adding to the exceptional collection of plants and fungi from Scotland and Britain & Ireland.

The background

The British & Irish herbarium at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh has been digitised, and we are now turning our attention to our historic unmounted collection to select important specimens to add to the collection. We are looking for specimens of special interest such as rare species, species poorly represented in the Herbarium and First or Second County Records.

This is a rare opportunity to look through the unmounted collections behind the scenes, practice your identification skills, consult historic collections, and contribute to curatorial milestones in the national Herbarium.

 Significant collections of the following genera: Quercus, Rubus, Salix, Potamogeton, Taraxacum and Hieracium in addition to a number of mixed collections of vascular plants.

Significant collectors include: A. Stirling, G H Ballantyne, J. E. Cousins, R. J. Pankhurst, A. Kenneth, A. Craig-Christie, D.A. Ratcliffe.

Please RSVP to Lesley Scott (lscott@rbge.org.uk).

If you have one, please bring a laptop to access the BSBI Database and other online resources. Tea, coffee and a sandwich lunch will be provided.

We do hope you can join us and look forward to seeing you.

Search the RBGE Herbarium catalogue online.

This year’s BSBI Annual Summer Meeting was held in the Scottish Borders town of Melrose, from 4th - 7th August. Fifty-five botanists from across Britain and Ireland came together to explore the botanical delights of Roxburghshire and its neighbouring vice-counties, enjoying rare species such as Woodsia ilvensis (Oblong Woodsia) and Calamagrostis stricta (Narrow Small-reed), interesting pondweeds and charophytes, and a host of other plants. Thousands of plant records were made, with a total of 818 taxa encountered, including 42 new hectad records - a phenomenal return! Participants also enjoyed a talk from Max Coleman of RBGE about the Scottish Rare Plants Project, and tested their botanical chops with an evening quiz session! An indepth write-up of the meeting will appear in the upcoming BSBI Yearbook.

The 2025 Scottish Newsletter is out now, featuring fascinating articles, information on upcoming field meetings, vice-county reports and much more! You can read it online or download it as a PDF. Find out more below.

The 2025 BSBI training workshop and field meetings programme included the following events in Scotland:

• Learn to identify wildflower families in Perth (7th June)
• Start to Identify Grasses at Holyrood Park, Edinburgh (14th June)
• Start to Identify Grasses at Kirkhill, Inverness (13th July)
• Kinnoull Hill SSSI, Perth - 8th June: a training meeting aimed at beginners and improvers
• Little Kilrannoch, Angus - 22nd June: a visit to an iconic mountain site with unique plants including Silene suecica (Alpine Catchfly)
• Brambles, Dunbar, East Lothian - 5th-6th July: an opportunity to develop skills in bramble ID with the BSBI Scottish Brambles referee
• Evanton, East Ross & Cromarty, 12th July: a visit to record plants on the Cromarty Firth, beginners welcome
• Grasses, Sedges & Rushes at Ben Lawers, 19th July: a training meeting for these groups, for botanists of all levels
• Aquatic plants, Deeside - 9th-10th August: a two day meeting to survey aquatic sites in Deeside and build identification skills
• Northern lochs of the Galloway Forest Park, Ayrshire - 16th-17th August: a recording meeting covering various aquatic sites and aiming to refind old records of interesting species

The 2026 programme will appear on the field meetings webpage in January.

Looking for more resources? We've built up a great catalogue of training videos! For example, if you are interested in grasses try this excellent introduction to Grass ID for beginners.

The 2024 Scottish Botanists' Conference was held at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on Saturday 2nd November, with a record 220 participants from across Scotland and beyond! Visit the Scottish Botanists' Conference page to find out more about this year's conference, view the programme here, and catch up with the exhibits and workshop handouts online.

Conference goers enjoyed a wide range of talks, including updates on conservation initiatives for threatened species such as Small Cow-wheat, One-flowered Wintergreen and Twinflower, a groundbreaking approach to willow and pondweed identification using genetic barcoding, a year in the life of a mountain botanist, a novel approach to Giant Hogweed control using sheep grazing, and a guide through the curious tale of the invasive Rhododendron ponticum and just why it does so well in Scotland.

This year the ever-popular mini-workshops included Eyebright identification, ferns for beginners, how to take photos for Bramble identification, an introduction to Sphagnum bog-mosses, getting the most out of your smartphone for plant photography, and how to use the new BSBI recording app.

Get involved with our project to refind and re-record rare plant populations in Scotland - the Scottish HectAd Rare Plant Project!

We now have a County page for all Scottish Counties! They are a great source of information on local botany including local groups, field meetings, checklists, floras, Rare Plant Registers, reports and more. See the local botany page.

Matt Harding is BSBI Scotland Officer. You can read an interview with Matt on the BSBI News & Views blog.

Address: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20a Inverleith Row, Edinburgh EH3 5LR

Email: matt.harding@bsbi.org

Identiplant, the online training course for beginners in serious botany, is now run by BSBI and we're keen to increase the numbers of students - and the tutors to support them - across Scotland.

Are you based in Scotland and keen to support beginner botanists? Would you like to know more about becoming an Identiplant tutor? BSBI and The Conservation Volunteers (TCV) have partnered to establish an Identiplant Hub in Stirling.

See this poster for more information, and email identiplant@bsbi.org to find out more.

The Botanical Society of Scotland has been recording the plant life in our towns and cities for a long-running project called the Urban Flora of Scotland. This involves recording plant life 'in its broadest sense', including flowering plants, ferns, mosses, liverworts, lichens, fungi and algae growing anywhere within the town/city. Anyone interested in wild plants can join in!

In 2023, the Botanical Society of Scotland ran a two-day conference entitled Urban Floras - a Contribution to Biodiversity, at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Building on the Urban Flora of Scotland project, this conference had a packed programme with a fantastic line-up of speakers, including two of BSBI's very own vice-county recorders, looking at a wide range of aspects of the urban flora. Talks from the conference are available on the BSS YouTube channel.

Get involved with the Urban Flora Project in 2025 - a project to record flowering plants in our urban areas, initiated by our friends in the Botanical Society of Scotland.