Recording in Date Class 7

Alex Lockton

It is very useful to be able to group records into date classes, particularly if you want to be able to work out which plants are increasing and which are decreasing. Until 2000, there was no standard unit for recording time-periods – people just made them up as they liked. Some county floras simply cover periods of 50 years or more, and some did not even distinguish plants that were recorded hundreds of years ago with what was there now. But since 2000, we make sure all records fall into decade-long date classes, and flora groups are supposed to try to make equal numbers of records in each period. Date Class 7 is the period 2020-2029, inclusive. To make this decade a challenge, I’d like to suggest that we focus on eradicating shanklins from the county. A ‘shanklin’ is a monad (1 km x 1 km square) which has no records ever; a hole in the botany layer, if you like. They are named after Jon Shanklin, who has been an enthusiastic hunter of such lacunae for us over the last decade or so. The map (below) of all recorded monads in our database reveals quite a number of these shanklins lurking in the shadowy corners of the county. (N.B., we do have records for every part of the county, but many are at tetrad level, which means we can’t be sure what was in each particular monad.) The challenge for DC7 – if you choose to accept it – is to visit each of these squares and make a decent list of plants. It would be pointless to just record one species. We know very well that the common species are there, and we could safely fill in the gaps with records of Poa annua. But we don’t know if there are any axiophytes or rarities, so a decent effort is required to make it worthwhile. If anyone would like to take on this challenge, feel free to check with me whether the monad you choose is still available. For those who are interested, there are 3740 monads or partial monads in v.c. 40, of which 455 are shanklins. The best-recorded monad of all time is SJ4912 (Shrewsbury) with 608 species, and the richest is (was) SJ4034 (The Moors at Ellesmere) with 140 axiophytes over the years. Happy hunting!

Shanklins in v.c. 40 (January 2021)