BOTANICAL SURVEY
Where specialist botanical survey is required, AEcol are competent to perform:
National Vegetation Classification (NVC)
Hedgerow Regulations Survey (HRS)
Bryophyte survey (mosses and liverworts)
Focus plant species searches and
Invasive plant species survey (also known as Schedule 9 survey)
However, we are not simply competent to surveys, we are also sufficiently competent and experienced to be able to provide advice in respect of what we find. For example, over the years we have designed and/or managed successful translocations of a grassland community that included nationally rare plant; divided sedge Carex divisa, hundreds of metres of important hedgerows, and individual plants from annuals such as the legally protected Jersey cudweed Helichrysum luteoalbum and nationally rare marsh dock Rumex palustris, to orchids and even marsh clubmoss Lycopodiella inundata.
We’ve also used bryophyte data to determine the effects of dust deposition on legally protected sites abutting two limestone quarries, and we’ve advised on management action to contain/control and eradicate invasive ‘Schedule 9’ plant species. Not including hybrids and subspecies, there are currently 35 terrestrial and freshwater plants listed on Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (& as amended). This legislation makes it an offence to cause the plants to grow in the wild (though it is not an offence to permit them to continue to grow where they are already present). Some of these plants, such as rhododendron, Japanese knotweed and Himalayan balsam and Australian swamp stonecrop (also known as New Zealand pygmyweed) are not uncommon but very unwelcome colonisers of quarry sites, and must be identified and dealt with. AEcol can not only identify these species (and a good many more); we also have experience in advising on successful biosecurity strategies.