30 Days Wild – Day 19

I would urge everybody who has an interest in botany to get involved with the #wildflowerhour on a Sunday evening between 8 and 9pm – it’s a great opportunity to share your sightings and see what everyone else is seeing.

As people from across the country get involved, you can get a real feel for how the latitude affects phenology – species flower down in Kent and Sussex a good week or two before they typically appear here in the midlands whilst Scotland still had bluebells after all of my local ones were over.

Another great thing about it is as a tool to help you out with tricky ID’s – so often people will spot a flower and recognise it as something they saw themselves but couldn’t identify. An extra reason why this works so well is, latitude aside, the posts are current and seasonal, so you know that the species is in flower now.

#wildflowerhour was originally set up by @fennelandfern and is supported by @bsbibotany – you can get involved by simply posting a photograph of a wildflower, and a little bit about it, with the hashtag #wildflowerhour between 8 and 9 on a Sunday evening.