Botanising on the hills above Barton

I've spent the morning on this lovely sunny day up on the Mendips above Barton.  I was making a botanical inventory on three of the seven plots I look after as part of the National Plant Monitoring Scheme - see: https://www.npms.org.uk/ This recording scheme started a few years ago and has three levels of recording - wildflowers, selected indicator species or inventory - so anyone can have a grid square and can have a go.  My phone app tells me I was out for nearly 3 hours and covered 4.7 km, so that is good exercise for today.  It is amazingly dry on the limestone, so some plants seem advanced, while others, notably the grasses seem delayed.  It all looks very Mediterranean up there. I was lucky enough to re-find two nationally rare species in one of my plots - honewort (Trinia glauca) https://www.brc.ac.uk/plantatlas/plant/trinia-glauca and Somerset hair-grass (Koeleria vallesiana) https://www.brc.ac.uk/plantatlas/plant/koeleria-vallesiana  They are not exactly spectacular to look at, but great to know they are still here and both are largely limited to the Mendips in the UK.




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