BSBINews - BSBI Archive - Botanical Society of the British Isles

Notes from the Officers - Coordinator's Corner
Committee is going to have to look hard at
some of the counties and, in some cases, start
looking for new people to assist with them.
Species Accounts
To complement the new maps on the Maps
Scheme, I would like to now expand the
Species Accounts section of our web site.
There are lots of difficult, new and interesting
species in the British and Irish flora that people
would like to know more about. I think we have
now got a unique and valuable formula that
people appreciate. This is reflected in the usage
stats on the web site. We get about 20,000
people a month now visiting the BSBI's suite
of web sites, and the two most popular features
are the Maps Scheme and the Species
Accounts. In the last month, for instance, some
200 people will have read our account of Wild
Gladiolus, Gladiolus illyricus. Add that up
over a year, and include the folk around the
world who do not have access to our paper
publications, and you realise that this is a
bigger audience than a paper in Watsonia or a
BSBI Handbook will achieve.
The web-based Species Accounts are also a
surprisingly permanent feature. The web site is
archived every week or so by the British
Library and the Internet Archive, amongst
others, which means that each account is
permanent, date stamped, and available forever.
If you write a novel idea into one of these
accounts, you will be permanently identified as
the author and inventor. So what I am hoping is
that more BSBI members will adopt a species
and write us an interesting account. Have a
look at the one on Climbing Corydalis, Ceratocapnos
claviculata, for instance. Some 30
people have read it this August alone, and
Nicole Voss tells me she has received data
from five people and specimens for DNA
analysis from three. The account is not a
passive declaration of information about a
plant, it creates an active flow of ideas and
cooperation.
If anyone would like to adopt a species,
please get in touch with me. The BSBI has
about 3,000 members and there are about this
many species occurring in the wild, so if a
reasonable proportion of members wanted to
adopt one to study, that would just about get the
job done.
FISC Success
We had some 35 people take a FISC exam
again this summer. Eight different ecological
consultancies have sent staff this year and some
return every few years to see if they have
improved. The highly structured approach used
in the FISC enables people to decide what they
need to learn. An important part of our process
is to get plants from around the country, so that
botanists who are familiar with the area where
the test is taking place do not have an advantage.
We are therefore enormously grateful to
our collectors, John, Clare, David, Arthur and
Kevin for continuing to support it. There will
be more FISCs in 2010 and BSBI members are
welcome to come along. The price remains just
£50, which we think is highly affordable
compared to any other qualification you could
get. Talting a FISC is more than just finding out
how good you are: the very process of having
an independent assessment of your knowledge
and skill makes you look at your work in a
different way.
iSpot
One of my principles is that anyone who thinks
of something new deserves our support, at least
to an extent. If you come up with a new web
site or database or even just a clever way of
identifying plants then it behoves the BSBI to
give you a chance. Well, a multi-million pound
Lottery funded project isn't the sort of thing
that would normally get (or need) my vote, but
I have to admit that their iSpot web site seems
to be a first. On this site people can post their
photographs of animals or plants and ask for
help in identification. The site is well
constructed to apply the principles of biological
recording and, from the material they have
collected so far, it is clear that a huge number
of species can be reliably identified this way. A
record backed up by a photograph is often as
good a record as you could want, and definitely
better than a tick on a record card. So I wish
them all the best. They are asking for BSBI
members to register as referees and offer their
expertise in identification. If you fancy doing
this, I think it could really be a valuable educational
tool. Visit ispot.org.uk.
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