The current position

Data entry

The current position for tetrad recording 2020–2024 is as the map below, at 11 December 2024. Note: only counts of 40 or more taxa are shown. More records are still to be uploaded for the 2024 season, and this map will be updated at intervals.

NB: to help distinguish the symbols of coverage where colours are similar, note that the dot-sizes are scaled. Click/select the map to open it in a new window.

Records were collected as follows (data from BSBI distribution database):

2020
22,583 (in 679 monads)

2021
19,557 (in 369 monads)

2022
26,304 (in 660 monads)

2023
28,837 (in 1023 monads)

2024
(awaited)

Total 2020~2023
98,117 (in 2213 monads, out of total ~ 7420 monads)

Accounts and maps archived below are from the lead-up to the end of the 2000–2019 cycle.

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~~~~~~~~~~ Archive ~~~~~~~~~~~

The tetrad map below shows the position (for vice-counties 69 and 70 only) at the date given, and is updated at intervals. Note that only tetrads with fifty or more species recorded have a symbol.

After prodigious efforts by our team over this last season, there are only 28 tetrads without a ‘50+ dot’, and these are all marginal (i.e. coastal, or across county boundaries, and hence with less than a 4 sq. km area, often much less, within vice-counties 69 and 70).

This is a position that might have seemed impossible for us to achieve, looking at the state of recording just a couple of years ago! (See the maps below.) Many thanks to everyone who contributed records from 2019 and from previous years.

(In 2019 Phill – as well as inputting very many thousands of our records (over 100,000 so far?), a huge contribution of time and effort – has himself gathered a quarter of these! We are deeply indebted to him! – JR)

The maps below show the position as it was before each of the recording seasons 2019, 2018, 2017:

The diversity of vascular plant species in the county increases somewhat from north to south, but is also obviously very dependent on altitude, soil-type, land-use, presence of river-courses, etc. A typical lowland tetrad in this part of the planet with a reasonable range of habitats should reveal at least 250–300 species after a thorough survey, with visits through the season. In southern Cumbria, this may rise to over 400.

Although the highest ground has a very limited range, at the scale of the tetrad most squares will have some lower ground with much greater diversity. This is more true of the Lake District mountains with their deeply dissected topography; some plateau areas of the high northern Pennines lie at middle to high altitudes throughout.

 

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