Since 2022 I have been recording the flora of some islands in Strangford Lough. I received a Plant Study Grant from the BSBI to work on this in the Summer of 2022 but as it turned out I had committed to a much bigger project than I first thought! I recently submitted my records and can now finally say I have finished my first large recording project.

Slievenacloy Nature Reserve is an Ulster Wildlife reserve in Antrim. It is very well managed for upland grassland, with a wealth of Devil’s-Bit dominated grassland.

On the thirteenth of August, I was at Killard National Nature Reserve, Co. Down, with my mum. We were looking for Frog Orchids and other species rare in the county like Quaking Grass and Field Scabious. She found a plant she didn’t recognise and asked me what it was, and it was Autumn Lady’s Tresses. I knew I hadn’t seen it before and wasn’t sure it had been recorded anywhere near before.

by Jake Dalzell, Hazel Garrett, Catriona Forrest, Wayne Liang, Rosalind Mackey, Denis Pavlov, and Josh Simpson This was a small project we threw together over three days on our Plant Sciences fieldtrip to Portugal. Everyone on the fieldtrip used six different techniques to explore plant physiology and ecology, and each group came up with a research question that could be answered using some of these techniques.

Today I had the opportunity to work as a field assistant with a PhD student, Thomas Marquand. He is researching CO₂ and methane dynamics in soil in restored and reclaimed fens in East Anglia (with the Centre for Landscape Regeneration). We took samples from the fen exhibit in the Cambridge Botanic Gardens and used a spectrometer to measure CO₂ and methane concentration, and also δ¹³C-CO₂.

Today I went to the BSBI’s November conference in the Natural History Museum in London! I presented my poster on my summer project surveying islands on Strangford Lough, and got to do a 60 second flash talk. It was really great to meet other people who are passionate about plants and learn from them. Read the html version of my poster here. Watch my (very brief!) flash talk here.

03/11/2023 EDIT: actually a rediscovery, this species was recorded in Belfast pre-1930 Earlier this year, I found a species of grass I didn’t recognise, growing as a pavement plant in East Belfast. With a guide I identified it as Polypogon monspeliensis (Annual Beard-grass), a new species for County Down. This species is known from Dublin and Cork, and there is a previous Ulster record from Keady in Armagh.

This summer I am cataloguing the flora and plant communities of twelve islands [EDIT 20/11/22: it ended up being eleven islands!] in Strangford Lough, with the help of a BSBI Plant Study Grant. The goal is to have a complete species list of each island and a map showing all of the plant communities and where they occur. I have been kayaking to these islands and doing a thorough survey, and also quadrats in each distinct plant community.

In July I spent a few days in Sligo as a field assistant with an international, interdisciplinary team who are studying peritidal stromatolites. Stromatolites are layered rock formations created by microbes, and peritidal stromatolites form in the area of the shore that is affected by seawater from the tide or from sea spray. This makes them unique as they can experience large changes in salinity.

I have always had a fondness for things considered marginal in linguistics. The tide may be turning for at least some marginalia: work on ideophones is clearly on the rise, and initiatives such as Martina Wiltschko’s Eh lab at UBC and a new nonlexical vocalizations project at Linköping University show there is significant interest in this area. Part I from my notes on a workshop on ‘Ideophones and non-lexical vocalizations’.