Get out and about and help the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland by joining in the 2023 New Year Plant Hunt. Data from the New Year Plant Hunt is contributing to understanding how wild and naturalised plants are responding to changes in autumn and winter weather patterns.  

Spend three hours sometime between New Year's Eve 31st December to Tuesday 3rd January to record flowers which could be catkins on trees or grasses and, even if you find nothing in bloom, nil records are important too and will feed into the analysis. 

Originally the main aim of the New Year Plant Hunt was to provide a fun and engaging project for botanical enthusiasts during the quiet winter months. Ten years on it now also provides valuable insights into how many species normally flower during the winter and, along with initiatives such as the Woodland Trust’s ‘Nature’s Calendar’ project, it is helping to build up a picture of how our flora is responding to changing weather patterns as a consequence of climate change

To gather the information the society has updated the New Year Plant Hunt app which includes a recording form, guidance and plant ID facility. For those not using the app, recording cards to print are available on the website, specific for each region across the country, with a list of local contacts to send the information to.  

Everyone is welcome to take part in the New Year Plant Hunt - you don't have to be a BSBI member or an experienced botanist. The Support Team can be emailed to assist with any queries and there are some useful links and tips if you are just getting started with plant-spotting. They also have lots of free plant ID resources that you can use. You can also upload a photo of an unidentified plant in the app and the experts will try to identify it for you. 

There may be group Hunts happening near you, so if you'd like some company, try contacting your local group organiser or BSBI County Recorder and checking on social media #newyearplanthunt to see if anything is planned for your area.

Results will be live streamed on the interactive map so that you can see lists of what other plant-hunters are finding across Britain and Ireland. A facebook group has been set up for sharing photos and discussing finds with fellow plant-hunters, the website will be live with Daily News and Views blog and #newyearplanthunt tweets will be streamed on the website.

The deadline for submitting your records via the app or email is midnight on Sunday 8th January 2023.

You can find the New Year Plant Hunt archive here