1000 or Bust

There are times when I sit down and ask myself 'what the hell where you thinking when you said that...'  The events of November 2021 are a perfect example of this.

I tend to keep a spreadsheet of the species I encounter in any given year and, during a moment of idle curiosity, I wondered how many species of plant I'd seen in 2021. It was around 550 species, all but 70 of which were from here on Skye. Hmmm, that was more than I'd expected! 

This got me thinking. If I could manage to see 550 plant species without really exerting myself, how many could I see if I quit being distracted by inverts and concentrated purely on plants? 

After a bit of digging around online, I figured I could easily add a couple of hundred species to that total if I explored a bit more of mainland Scotland. I needed a target number, something to aim for and to keep me actively searching all year long. I went apeshit and chose 1000 species...

I contacted The Ghost to let him know of my crazy plans. Somewhat surprisingly, he liked the idea and within moments our 2022 Challenge was set; we would each aim to see 1000 species of wild plant in Britain during 2022. Whichever of us recorded the most would be the winner. Bloody hell, what on earth had I done?

A month or so passed before I went public with this blog, whereupon my good friend Dorset Pete read about the 1000 Species Challenge between The Ghost and myself. Pete is an active pan-species lister who happens to be particularly keen on plants. When he first pulled his PSL together several years back, his plant list stood at 820 species. As a personal challenge for 2021, Pete had decided to equal that number in the space of a single calendar year. And fair play to him because he absolutely smashed his target, hitting 845 plant species before essentially slacking off at the end of autumn. He then wondered about doing the same in 2022, but of continuing throughout the entire year (so maybe 900 species) plus having the added bonus of spending a week in the Scillies in July (maybe another 100 species?) Thus Pete had already decided to attempt 1000 species during 2022. And then he read my blog...

And so, just like that, there were now three of us in the 1000 Plants in a Year Challenge. Previously I figured the worst that could happen is that I'd come second place in the Challenge, as I do every year. Turns out I was wrong, this year I could easily finish in third place!

As a point of reference for this Challenge, at the beginning of this year The Ghost has 1490 plants to his name, I have 1440 and Pete has 1227. Percentage-wise this means that we are aiming to record 67%, 70% and 81% of our respective plant lifelists in the space of a single calendar year. Regardless of whether or not any of us hit the (rather ambitious) target of 1000 species, the percentages will show who has achieved the most out of the three of us. 

Good luck to all of us. Un pour tous, tous pour un! Erm actually no, sod that. We're not the Three Musketeers, I'm in this to win it!

I'll use this page to keep a running tally of our scores, updated at regular intervals. Typically, I get off to a flying start before Ghostie slowly yet inexorably reels me in and ends up winning the Challenge. Pete is busy at work but is confident that once the plants wake up and daylight lengthens, he'll race into the lead come April. Or so he claims... All in all this should be a perfectly marvellous challenge!

***The Ghost - 1057 species - 31st Dec update***

***The Gibster - 1048 species - 31st Dec update***

***Dorset Pete - 1027 species - 31stDec update***

I feel a blogpost is required regards those scores.....watch this space!