In 1970 the population of Juniper Bushes growing at Dstl Porton Down was estimated by Lena Ward and portrayed in a map which she constructed.
In 2010 a group of four Wilts Bot Soc members, who belonged to the Conservation Group at the site, decided to repeat this exercise using GPS technology which previously had been unavailable.
The results of this work, including a brief analysis of how the population has changed, can be seen by clicking on the links to the right.
Towards the end of this work it was realised that, contrary to popular belief, some natural regeneration was also occurring. The sites where young seedlings were found have also been mapped so that their relationship with the older populations can be appreciated.
The results of this work can be downloaded by clicking the links below:
An earlier article about a study of Juniper regeneration in the Porton Ranges between 2014 and 2017 is available here.
The Rare Plants of Wiltshire 2000 to 2020 summarises key information on those plants found in the county that have the most restricted distributions and that are at the greatest risk of loss or extinction. All species that are native or archaeophytes are included and it also comprises neophytes that are considered of botanical interest to Wiltshire.
For many years, the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) has advocated that each county should produce a rare plant register and Wiltshire is fortunate that the first register for the county was initiated as early as 2004. The Wiltshire Rare Plant Register compiled and written by Sharon Pilkington incorporates information collated between 1984 to 1991 for the Wiltshire Flora as well as on-going recording by the Wiltshire Botanical Society (WBS) and recording effort by members of the society that targeted rare species during 2005 and 2006. The results of this work was published in 2007.
This register was originally conceived to be a direct follow-on from that publication i.e. by commencing in 2007 but early on however it was found that data for the 1984 to 2006 period had continued to be adopted into the BSBI's database allowing the rarity of each species to be re-evaluated.
At the end of 2019, the WBS decided to continue with Atlas-style recording for the years 2020 to 2024. The reason was to cover and record within as many 1km squares as possible to enable a new 'Flora of Wiltshire' to be produced. As this new book would use this twenty-five year period as its basis it was deemed appropriate that this 'Rare Plants of Wiltshire' covered those years also. The current version was updated in November 2022.
There are many online companies that specialise in printing and binding single copies or small numbers of books and other printed material from e.g. Word and PDF files. If you would prefer a printed copy of the latest Rare Plant Register, why not give them a try? They are not very expensive and can often deliver within a few days. Here are a couple of suggestions, but a quick Google search will undoubtedly find others:
We send out a Newsletter once or twice a year, with accounts of our outings and indoor meetings and news of local plant life. In 2020 and 2021 we issued a series of Covid Special Editions every month or two to keep in touch with members during the coronavirus pandemic (Issues 50a-j). Since 2022 we have returned to the longer standard newsletter format.
For guidelines for contributors of articles please click here.
Contributions are always welcome; please email the Newsletter Editor, Richard Aisbitt. Back issues of the newsletter are available to download below.
Richard has also kindly produced this Index to newsletters 1-54.
From 1997 to 2013, the society published scientific articles in a (usually) annual journal (Wiltshire Botany).
The journal is no longer published; however, back copies can be downloaded by clicking the links below. Whilst we have attempted to reproduce each issue completely, in a few instances this has not been possible.
This section includes a range of articles and listings that may be of interest to members.