Each year, the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland organises a New Year plant hunt, encouraging botanists and other interested folk out of their midwinter slumber to see what plants are flowering. And traditionally this has been our first #WildEssex event of the year, a walk around Wivenhoe Waterfront on New Year’s Day. Sadly not in 2025: as seems to be getting more frequent, we were subject to a severe weather alert for strong wind and heavy rain so for reasons of comfort and safety we took the decision to cancel.
All data collected in this citizen science project are fed into the national record of what is flowering at this time: for more information see New Year Plant Hunt – Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland (bsbi.org). It is good to be part of a bigger project to aid learning about how British and Irish wildflowers are responding to climate change, so it is fortunate we did a recce a couple of days prior to our planned walk, applying the same rules, and more or less following the same route as in previous years.
Our recce produced the ‘usual suspects’, shrubs that routinely flower in the depths of winter and annuals that flower at any time of year: Gorse, Hazel, White Dead-nettle, Groundsel, Annual Mercury, Shepherd’s-purse, Hairy Bittercress, Sun and Petty Spurges and Common Chickweed were among those we found, together with Daisies and Dandelions sparkling sparsely in lawns.
Some of the older walls and brickwork supported Mexican Fleabane, Trailing Bellflower and Ivy-leaved Toadflax, while other showy plants included Green Alkanet, Greater Periwinkle, Pot Marigold, Sweet Violet and Common Knapweed. And it was quite a surprise to find Ivy flowers still open in places.
Along the waterfront itself, in the cracks of the block paving, Four-leaved Allseed is more abundant than it has ever been since its arrival here around the time of the pandemic, but try as we might we could not find any in actual flower. But other subtle flowers such as Guernsey Fleabane and Pellitory-of-the-wall made it onto our list after close scrutiny, a real test for my newly-decataracted eye! The rapidly spreading Water Bent also increases in abundance every year.
On the salt-marsh, a few Sea Aster flowers remained from late summer, and some spikes of Common Cord-grass dangled their naughty bits wantonly to the wind. But much more dramatic were the very numerous, huge fruiting bodies of Cord-grass Ergot, a fungus we found around here less than a decade ago and which now seems very prevalent.
Carrying on the seaside theme, three plants we have not recorded before on these forays are garden escapes that have put on their first flowering appearance outside the confines of cultivation: Sea Campion and Rock Samphire, native plants of sand and shingly beaches, and Sweet Alison, a familiar bedding plant, but often found wild in coastal areas, as reflected in its scientific name Lobularia maritima.
All in all, 37 species in flower represents a new high for us (see full list here New Year Day PLANT HUNT Year on year) compared with 34 in 2024, 23 in 2023, 35 in 2022 and 30 in 2021, although one should fall short of celebrating – many of these plants should not be flowering now, and are doing so only because of the harm we have inflicted upon our climate…
But our feeling was that while we saw more species in flower, there were fewer flowers of each species to be found: the landscape was much less floriferous, more akin perhaps ‘proper winters’ of decades past. I got exactly the same impression at Boxted the day previously where I led a village wildflower walk for the second New Year in succession.
There is of course another way of looking at it. Plants are not the only things responding to climate change: although we saw no insects being active in the dully, foggy weather of our walk, it is undeniable that fewer insects are hibernating than used to be the case. And year-round activity needs year-round nectar and pollen resources, so any insect-attracting flowers such as Gorse and dead-nettles are important, even in the context of much richer supplies inside our gardens, as for example the gorgeous, subtly showy blooms of Virgin’s-bower Clematis cirrhosa.
While there is a little turnover of species year upon year, in some way there is also comfort to be found in the litany of names, old friends in many cases, even down to actual individual plants, recited in a ritual that echoes that of the Shipping Forecast. In spite of our best efforts at self-destruction, the world still turns! Happy New Year!!
