The Botanical Society of the British Isles (BSBI) is encouraging all county recorders to produce a County Rare Plant Register. Members of Somerset Rare Plants Group have been working towards a Rare Plant Register for Somerset since the group was first formed. With the publication of the most recent Red List, (Cheffings, C. and Farrell, L. (eds.) 2005. The Vascular Plant Red Data List for Great Britain. JNCC, Peterborough), work on the Somerset Rare Plant Register accelerated. It is intended that this will be available both as an online resource and as a book.

Two draft lists of species qualifying for inclusion can be seen by clicking on the links above. Each list is presented as part of a table which summarises the reasons for inclusion of each species. Extinct species are listed separately for now, to concentrate recording effort on the extant species.

Click on one of the following to see more details about the Somerset Rare Plant Register.
What is a County Rare Plant Register?
Geographical area
Criteria for selecting species for inclusion
Updating records
Writing species accounts

What is a County Rare Plant Register?
A County Rare Plant Register (CRPR) is a statement of our knowledge of the “rare” plants of a county at the time of publication. At its most basic, it may be simply an inventory of qualifying species, but the more information is included, the more useful it will be as a tool for conservation. Nowadays it is generally considered that there is greater threat to the survival of our rare species from ignorance of their distribution, leading to lack of protection or unwitting destruction, than from wilful damage. Rare species cannot be conserved and protected unless their locations are known precisely. It is essential that detailed information, in a standardised format, is provided for use by government agencies and conservation organisations, to inform planning decisions and for the development of appropriate management regimes.  Note that inclusion of location details in a CRPR does not confer right of access.

Geographical area
BSBI guidelines suggest that the geographical area for a CRPR should be a single Watsonian vice-county. In practice however, several counties which are split into two vice-counties, including Somerset (vc5 and vc6), are opting to produce a single publication to cover both vice-counties, with the vice-counties treated separately within the one publication. This is more meaningful to those end-users not familiar with the concept of vice-counties.

Criteria for selecting species for inclusion
The criteria used for identifying which species to include in the Somerset Rare Plant Register follow those recommended by the BSBI (see www.bsbi.org.uk/CRPR_Guidelines.pdf). Any species in Somerset which falls into at least one of the following categories has been included in the Draft Priority Species List. The categories are:

• Endemic species
• Internationally Rare
• Nationally Threatened (Red List)
• Nationally Rare (found in 1-15 hectads in Britain)
• Nationally Scarce (found in 16-100 hectads in Britain)
• Schedule 8 species
• UKBAP species
• Plantlife Back from the Brink species (BftB)
• vc5 or vc6 Rare (present at 1-3 sites* in either vc5 or vc6)
• vc5 or vc6 Scarce (present at 4-10 sites* in either vc5 or vc6)
• Alien species of particular interest in Somerset

.* Here a “site” is a moveable 1km square, sometimes called a “Wells” square, such that if discreet populations of a species are found within 1km of each other, they count as one site.
Initially all taxa on the Red List (and found in Somerset) have been included in the Rare Plant Register, including those currently on the Waiting List, Parking List, or Data Deficient. Following review, some of these will be dropped from the list.

Hybrids with a parent on the list have been included. Many other hybrids are also locally rare or scarce, but these will be listed as an appendix. In many cases, their distributions are incompletely known and they may only appear rare or scarce because they are under-recorded.
The three critical groups, Rubus, Hieraciumand Taraxacum, have not yet been included, but lists of these are in preparation.
All species now extinct in Somerset, except Neophytes, are included on the separate Extinct List. Each extinct species will have a full account in the Somerset Rare Plant Register; writing of these is in progress.

Updating records
A CRPR is most effective if the records within it are as up-to-date as possible. To this end, the existing records for each species on the list are being collated, checked and updated. Details of all post-1987 records will be included in the Somerset RPR, but it is hoped that by publication most records will be post-2000. Members of Somerset Rare Plants Group are now focusing their efforts on making new and updated records for species on the priority list.

Writing species accounts

Writing of species accounts is in progress.  Each will include names of locations, grid references, population counts and descriptions of distribution with historical details, maps and photographs. As species accounts are written they are being made freely available online: those species listed in a different colour to the rest of the text have accounts which can be viewed by clicking on the species name. Most accounts have been written by Helena Crouch – please email her with feedback, corrections, updated records or enquiries. Lists of references and abbreviations used within accounts will be available here shortly.