Last year was a big one for me, where my life changed in two major ways. One is that I started seriously studying plant pathogens, which I have found I have a deep passion for and know I want to study for the forseeable future. The other is that I graduated from university. I have made some exciting finds this year.

Disease is something few people love. There are exceptions though, particularly among those who appreciate the diversity and ecological role of plant disease. The early conservationist, Aldo Leopold, described the role of tree diseases in creating food and shelter for the animals on his farm in Wisconsin: I met Chris Preston, a Cambridgeshire botanist, when I was in the first year of my degree.

Since 2022 I have been recording the flora of some islands in Strangford Lough. I received a Plant Study Grant from the BSBI to work on this in the Summer of 2022 but as it turned out I had committed to a much bigger project than I first thought! I recently submitted my records and can now finally say I have finished my first large recording project.

This is an adapted version of my poster, which is also available as a pdf or png. As with all my work on this site it is CC BY 4.0 (free for use/adaptation as long as I am credited). The Meadow Maker Yellow Rattle ( Rhinanthus minor ) has become well known in restoration ecology and wildlife gardening as a “meadow maker”, which can transform a species-poor patch of grasses into a biodiverse and flower-rich one.

Slievenacloy Nature Reserve is an Ulster Wildlife reserve in Antrim. It is very well managed for upland grassland, with a wealth of Devil’s-Bit dominated grassland.

On the thirteenth of August, I was at Killard National Nature Reserve, Co. Down, with my mum. We were looking for Frog Orchids and other species rare in the county like Quaking Grass and Field Scabious. She found a plant she didn’t recognise and asked me what it was, and it was Autumn Lady’s Tresses. I knew I hadn’t seen it before and wasn’t sure it had been recorded anywhere near before.

The model in this post is based on the one in Cameron et al. (2009), improving how seed dispersal is modelled and the dynamics are visualised. I have become a bit obsessed with hemiparasitic plants recently. When I found Cameron et al.’s paper on how Yellow Rattle can create interesting spatial dynamics in grasslands¹, I got quite excited. I have been learning python this year so I thought I may as well try to replicate their model.

A factor that I believe has been overlooked in the ecology of hemiparasites is that they could have a significant effect on water availability in grassland communities, by increasing the total evapotransiration in the ecosystem.

This was a small project we threw together over three days on our Plant Sciences fieldtrip to Portugal. Our project compared the strategies used by two parasitic plants in the Orobanchaceae and a shared host species in the Fabaceae.

My favourite butterfly, which I first saw during lockdown. They are the most delicate of the white species (Pieridae) found in Ireland and flutter through grasslands in May and June. Taxonomy For a long time, scientists wondered why Wood Whites ( Leptidea sinapis ) were fairly widespread and common in Ireland, when they were so rare in England.