So. I'm collecting cathedrals and minsters, checking off chapters of the Bible, and now I've found another ticklist to complete. The Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) has organised a 100 Plants in 2026 Challenge, which I found out about some months after it actually started, and I decided to join in.
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| Poppies, cornflowers and wall barley |
At least I'm not as mad as Mike Dilger, who went looking for ten times as many plants in 2021. A read through his book, One Thousand Shades of Green, made it clear that both the person and the challenge were very different.
Unlike me, Mike Dilger was already an accomplished naturalist. He had a day job presenting about wildlife on The One Show. He had a book called Wild Flowers of Britain & Ireland by Blamey, Fitter, and Fitter, which he refers to as his BFF. He had a magnifying lens and an understanding of taxonomy.
I, on the other hand, had a phone with the Seek app on it, and an ability to recognise things like daisies and dandelions. I had a tiny collection of botany books that included one called British Wild Flowers. It's a Ladybird book from 1979.
Now that I've got started, I can look through my starter guides and notice that I've seen many of the plants. But at the beginning, nothing I found outside was ever in the book! An app was much more helpful. It also meant I had a photo and plant name together, for easy reference later on.
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| Purple loosestrife |
Finding one hundred plants is much easier than finding a thousand. A thirty-minute loop from my house takes me along a lane whose verges overflow with greenery, and through two small nature reserves, one managed as a hay meadow, the other more wooded. I hadn't quite realised the richness of these tiny habitats until I started looking for plants. If I had begun early enough to catch all the spring flowers, too, I would have easily found 100 species just on this short walk.
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| Lady's bedstraw |
To find one thousand plants, Mike Dilger had to cover a wide range of habitats, from mountains in Scotland to heathland in Cornwall and fens in East Anglia. He went to specific nature reserves at particular times to try and track down flowers that bloomed only in those places. A very different approach to my wandering around and going, "Oh look, what's that one?"
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| Bell heather |
We have one thing in common. Plants are definitely not just a green backdrop any more. The more you look, the more you see, and the more detail you notice. I was surprised how quickly things changed on my regular loop: within a week, one flower would have faded, another would have sprung up. There was always something I hadn't seen before. And they get everywhere - I found half a dozen species just by keeping my eyes on the road.
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| Pineapple weed |
I'm three-quarters of the way to the hundred mark now. I've really enjoyed it. Of course, the bigger challenge is whether I remember what any of these plants are when they reappear next year. I have a feeling I will be identifying many of them all over again. Which may not be a bad thing - you can ` join me for the 100 Plants in 2027 Challenge!
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| Dark mullein |
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