Plants

BSBI New Year Plant Hunt
Type: Survey
Location: Uk wide and Ireland
Season/duration: 1 - 4 January 2026
Time needed: no time restrictions
Experience needed: none, BSBI have guides to help you identify many common plants
Description: Spend some time in nature over the new year period, go on a walk and identify as many plants as you can. There are always lots of group hunts listed on the BSBI site.

Urban Flora of Scotland Project
Type: Survey
Location: Scotland, towns or cities with a population of more than 1000
Time needed: no time restrictions
Experience needed: plant identification, guides and keys available on the BSS website
Description: The Botanical Society of Scotland want your help in documenting plants in urban spaces using iRecord. Urban flora is essential to understanding a lot of things, our history, current air quality and as cities are warmer than countryside urban flora is useful in researching the effects of climate change on plantlife. When documenting plants, use the broadest sense of the word, include not just flowers or trees but mosses, lichens, fungi and algae too.

National Plant Monitoring Scheme
Type: Survey
Location: UK wide
Experience needed: ideal if can identify "indicator species", although there are opportunities to learn or be mentored
Description: To take part you must be assigned a random 1km square in your area by the NPMS, after that you will be given more information.

Plant Alert
Type: Survey
Location: gardens across the UK
Experience needed: be able to monitor the plants in your garden
Description: Plant alert is a project that hopes to predict what ornamental garden plants could be a future problem for UK plant and wildlife. They want you to document any ornamental plants in your garden that are spreading to the point of overgrowing other plants or parts of your garden you do not want them, as well as any invasive non-native species in your garden (such as Japanese Knotweed, Rhododendron and Himalayan Balsam).

Woodland Trust's Ancient Tree Inventory
Type: Record a sighting
Location: UK wide
Experience needed: tree species identification
Description: Old trees are incredibly important and need better protection, help Woodland Trust to protect ancient trees. If you know of or find an old tree, take lots of photos and record the tree's species, location, girth of the trunk and wether the tree is on public or private land.

Bloomin' Algae
Type: Record a sighting
Location: UK and Ireland, Norway, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Belgium
Description: Using the Bloomin' Algae app you can record sightings of the harmful blue-green algae. There are guides to diffrentiating between duckweed and filamentous algae (both harmless) and blue-green algae. Be careful that you don't come into contact with the algae as it produces toxic chemicals harmful to both wildlife and humans.

a sneeky fungi in the plants section!
Plantlife's Waxcap Watch
Type:
Location: UK wide
Season/duration: September and late November
Time needed: no time restrictions, can submit as many surveys as you like
Experience needed: none!
Description: download the Survey123 app, pick a site of grasslands near you, the best way to spot waxcaps is to walk slowly in a zig-zag pattern some can be tiny and tricky to spot