Join the New Year Plant Hunt

People are often surprised by how many flowers they find, but in some parts of the UK and in particular habitats, finding anything in bloom can be a huge challenge. Lists with few or even no results are just as important as long lists. If you have searched and found no flowering plants then your result is still valuable and we want to hear from you – use the ‘null records’ option on the app so we can include your null result in our analysis.

Only wild or naturalised plants, not garden plants. They must be in bloom please, plants that only have buds or seed heads don’t count – more info here.

If you don’t know the name of the plant, you can upload photos instead and our experts will try to identify it for you.

Your photos should include a picture of the whole plant and also close-up views of the leaves and flowers. Take photographs from the side (it’s harder to identify plants from above)

BSBI has some online resources to help identify plants.

Please only name plants that you can identify with confidence and avoid being over precise unless you are certain (e.g. don’t pick a sub-species if you only know the plant well at species level).

Some common flowers such Dandelion (Taraxacum sp.) can’t usually be identified precisely at this time of year, so please record them only at genus level (i.e. as ‘Dandelion’ / ‘Taraxacum‘).

Yes! We’d welcome multiple lists. If you survey on more than one day or conduct two separate surveys on the same day (e.g. one in morning and then another somewhere else in the afternoon) then send separate lists.

We prefer lists to be equivalent to the area that someone might cover on foot. If driving some distance between sites please use a separate list for each location.

You can start a new list or switch between your lists using the options on the ‘Your lists’ menu.

Plant Hunt participants are asked to provide their names and an email address. We use this information if we need to contact you about the list you’ve sent, but we won’t retain email contact details after the project has finished.

You can choose whether or not to allow your name to be retained in our permanent archive of plant records, but we consider the recorder’s name to be an important integral part of a botanical record.

If you prefer, please feel free to use an informal name or a pseudonym.