The Challenge

For several years now, I have taken it upon myself to further my knowledge in a specific area of natural history. Previous years have seen me attempt to get to grips with beetles, with arachnids, with flies and with bugs. 

I think I was fooling myself that I'd ever gain a proper interest in bugs, I really struggled to become enthused with them and in the end I aborted that particular challenge. It was a similar story with the spiders, though I did largely overcome the mild case of arachnophobia I've had all my life. I still wouldn't willingly handle a Dysdera or large Eratigena with my bare hands, but I'm pretty much fine with handling things like Amaurobius and wolf spiders. Good progress was definitely made. Sadly I really didn't enjoy the IDing process (interpreting pedipalps and epigynes just gives me a headache!) Enthusiasm waned and I gave up with bothering arachnids halfway through the year. Still, records were made and if you don't try these things...

I became quite keen on beetles for a couple of years, but then I started looking at flies and the beetles essentially fell by the wayside. I really like flies, I'm particularly fond of calliphorids, scathophagids, dolis, empids and sphaerocerids. Tipulids usually make me want to weep, though I quite like winter gnats. I looked at flies for three consecutive seasons, and I think I will always be interested in studying them some more, but this year my main interest lies in a completely different direction. 

Since moving to Skye I've become more and more involved with the local naturalists, themselves largely headed by Stephen Bungard, a highly competent botanist and VCR for Skye. When I first started tagging along with these guys they were in the final throes of square-bashing for the (then) forthcoming Atlas 2020. Stephen would lead the Skye Botany Group into an under-recorded tetrad and we'd survey the heck out of it for plants. I began as a bit of a Clueless Charlie, but I couldn't help but pick up a few hints and tips after spending time in the field with a proper botanist. Stephen, perhaps sensing that I might one day contribute some worthwhile records, took me under his wing and slowly I've started to become less likely to freeze in horror at the thought of identifying a sedge or grass. I do still usually freeze, but I've wrapped my head around a small handful of them, again progress has been made! 

Stephen Bungard doing his stuff whilst blithely ignoring the huge fall to his right....

So my attention is now fully focused on plants. I've improved to the point where Stephen no longer asks me are you entirely sure about the *insert unlikely species* you included on that spreadsheet? though I do largely omit grasses, sedges, rushes and Dryopteris ferns from my spreadsheets (no record is better than a duff record...) But I'm still very much an amateur botanist. For me, the whole point of 2022 is to deep dive into plant ID, tackle difficult groups, generate a whole heapload of records and, importantly, to enjoy myself!

This is probably an opportune moment to introduce you to a very good friend of mine. Everyone meet The Ghost. Ghostie, do please say hello to everyone...

 

Tsk, he's such a naughty little tinker...

I've known this dodgy so-and-so for many years now. I did briefly entertain the hope that I could lose him once and for all by doing a midnight flit up to Skye. But no, he tracked me down and has been up to visit on several occasions. Time and distance mean nothing to The Ghost, he truly is one of a kind. But he's great fun to be around and is a higher ranked PSLer than I am, despite my apparently being "one of Britain's top naturalists" (that's right, folks - you heard it here first!) It's probably just that he's had longer to find stuff than I have, the old duffer. 

In his spare time, Ghostie likes to wind me up. He also likes to set Challenges to see which of us is the better naturalist. A typical Challenge could be, for example, "let's see if I can record more species of leafhopper this year than you can of spider". I don't know why I bother, he beats me every bloody year. 

This year the Challenge is simple. It's a straight head-to-head "let's see who can see the most species of wild plant this year". He did offer to allow me to include bryophytes, charophytes and freshwater algae seeing as I live on the barren tundra wasteland that is Skye whilst he lives in the gloriously luxuriant south where plant diversity is easily fifty-six times greater than it is here. I declined the offer of cheating, though I do intend to include charophytes (if they're good enough for the BSBI they're good enough for me). I think he may be surprised by how well I do this year. Mind you, I say that at the start of every Challenge....

I had a terrific botanical year in 2021, adding a huge 78 plants to my pan-species list. Slowly but surely I'm chasing down Ghostie's plant total. A few years back he'd seen over two hundred more plant species than I had. Now it's down to little more than sixty. 

I spent a little while trawling through various county reports and plant registers in an attempt to glean some decent Scottish plant gen. I made myself little annotated maps. I slowly started to formulate plans for seeing loads of species across all areas of Scotland. Stupidly, I let Ghostie in on it. "I reckon I can see 200 new plants in 2022. And that's without even leaving Scotland! I'm going to end 2022 with a higher plant list than you have!" I boldly claimed. "I reckon you're talking b*llsh*t" came the reply.  

I had a little think. I totted up the plant species I'd seen so far that year. I thought about all the time I'd spent catching spiders and flies when I could have been concentrating on plants. "I reckon we should see if either of us can reach 1000 plant species in 2022" I announced. Ridiculous, I know. In my entire life I've seen 1440 species of plant, many of those just once or twice ever, and now I'm challenging Ghostie in a race to 1000 in a single year. Madness. And yet he snapped it up and agreed on the spot. He knows he has a massive advantage just by living in the far south, but he's a busy chap unable to dedicate day after day to botanising. I have oodles of free time and few urgent distractions. In the summer months it starts getting light up here a little after 3am and then stays light until well after 11pm and I'm very happy to do overnighters in the wilds kipping in my car or under my trusty tarp. I intend to do a lot of overnighters this summer!

End of the day, I quite fancy my chances. Let battle commence, me ol' mucker! 

The reigning champion. For now...