The BBS recording cards

The current recording cards were created in 2005, replacing the RP22 (general) and RP23 (SE England ) cards which were first printed in 1992. The nomenclature of the cards follows T.L. Blockeel & D.G. Long (1998), A check-list and census catalogue of British and Irish bryophytes (BBS, Cardiff ).

Four cards are available:

• SE England (RP33) Vice-counties 7-32 and 53-54.
• Middle Britain (RP34) Vice-counties 1-6, 33-52 and 55-95 (ie the areas not covered by the SE England and NW Scotland cards).
• NW Scotland (RP35) Vice-counties 96-112.
• Ireland (RP36) Vice-counties H1-H40.

The most frequent species in the vice-counties listed are included on the record cards. For a map of vice-counties, see the v.-c. map page. In general, the appropriate card to use will be given by the vice-county list above, but there will be exceptions. Recorders in arable lowlands or chalk wolds of S.E. Yorkshire (v.c. 61), for example, might find that the SE England card is more suitable than the Middle Britain card.

Cards are available free of charge to bona fide recorders. Please order via Val Burton at the BRC (vjbu@ceh.ac.uk), or write to her at: Biological Records Centre, CEH Monks Wood, Abbots Ripton, Huntingdon PE28 2LS, citing the code number of the card you want (RP33 etc) and the number of cards you require. Please don’t just ask for ‘a good number’ of cards or ‘enough to keep me going for a year or two’!

Alternatively, .pdf files of the cards can be downloaded and used to print your own cards.

• SE England (RP33) Back / Front
• Middle Britain (RP34) Back / Front
• NW Scotland (RP35) Back / Front
• Ireland (RP36) Back / Front

Note on SE England card (RP33), March 2005 printing. Unfortunately the decimal points were omitted from some species numbers on this version of the card. For details of the errors, see here. Please discard this card and replace by the February 2006 version on which these errors have been corrected.

There is also a downloadable excel spreadsheet on the website with the Blockeel & Long (1998) names, abbreviated names and BRC numbers of all species, for those wishing to create their own county cards .

Notes on filling in records cards, on the composition of the aggregates listed on the cards and on the differences between the old and new record cards follow.

Details of how to submit records to BBS and BRC will be placed shortly on a new section of the website dealing with the proposed new edition of the Atlas of Bryophytes.

Completing field recording cards

The cards are intended for use in the field. They can sometimes also be useful in extracting information from sources such as notebooks, reports and publications, and thus converting such records into a format which can more easily be input into a database. In compiling field cards, please make the place and time of recording as specific as possible. Cards are most useful if they refer to a single visit to a single site or tetrad. Please don’t use different colours on a single card to distinguish different sites or visits – it is much more time-consuming and error-inducing to input four sets of data from one card than it is to input four cards, and of course the colours are lost on photocopies. A cardinal sin is to compile records from various visits over a prolonged period onto a single summary card or ‘master card’. This has caused much frustration for local flora writers who find that, when writing their floras years after the cards were completed, they are unable to trace the original details of the records. If you need to record a taxon which isn’t listed included on the species list on the back of the card, use the columns on the front. Don’t annotate the list on the back with tiny comments such as ‘s.s.’ or ‘var. obt’. The records are usually input by the BRC number which refers to the taxon on the list, and it is all too likely that your annotation will be overlooked and the printed number input. Please make full use of the column on the front of the card to record the precise localities of locally or nationally uncommon species, or other noteworthy information. If you have a long list of ‘write-ins’, don’t hesitate to continue it on a second card, repeating the basic site information in the boxes at the top. Don’t cram the records onto a single card so that they become illegible, or write records very close to the margins where they may be lost on photocopies.

The composition of the aggregates on the cards

Aggregates are indicated on the cards by an asterisk; the components of the aggregate are detailed below. Some synonyms are given in brackets.

Barbula *convoluta is B convoluta as defined by Blockeel & Long (1998), including the varieties they lump, var. commutata and var. convoluta. The asterisk has been added as it has recently been suggested that var. commutata should be treated as a species, B. commutata (B. sardoa).

Dichodontium *pellucidum includes D. flavescens and D. pellucidum.

Ditrichum *flexicaule includes D. flexicaule and D. gracile (D. crispatissimum).

Fissidens *pusillus includes F. gracilifolius (F. pusillus var. tenuifolius), F. limbatus, F. pusillus and F. viridulus.

Grimmia *trichophylla includes three species treated by Smith (2004), G. dissimulata, G. lisae and G. trichophylla. The taxonomy of this group has changed since the publication of Blockeel & Long (1998) which list G. trichophylla and G. retracta.

Racomitrium *canescens include R. canescens, R. elongatum and R. ericoides.

Racomitrium *heterostichum includes R. affine, R. macounii subsp. alpinum, R. heterostichum, R. himalayanum and R. sudeticum.

Rhynchostegiella *tenella includes R. litorea (R. tenella var. litorea) and R. tenella.

Schistidium *apocarpum includes species 68.5-17 in Blockeel & Long (1998) and Smith’s (2004) species 5-17 (‘Schistidium apocarpum complex’). They are S. apocarpon, S. atrofuscum, S. confertum, S. crassipilum, S. dupretii, S. elegantulum (with subsp. elegantulum and wilsonii), S. flaccidum, S. frigidum (with vars frigidum and havaasii), S. papillosum, S. pruinosum, S. robustum, S. strictum and S. trichodon. Additional members of the aggregate which might be found in the British Isles are listed by Smith (2004).

Sphagnum *recurvum includes S. angustifolium (S. recurvum var. tenue), S. fallax (S. recurvum var. mucronatum) and S. flexuosum (S. recurvum var. amblyphyllum). Two subspecies of S. fallax, subsp. fallax and subsp. isoviitae, are recognised by Blockeel & Long (1998) but subsequent genetic research has suggested that they should not be treated as distinct taxa - see Hill in Smith (2004). S. recurvum itself is an American species but the named is retained in our area as a conveniently unambiguous one for the aggregate.

Sphagnum *subsecundum includes S. denticulatum, S. inundatum and S. subsecundum.

Ulota *crispa includes U. bruchii (U. crispa var. norvegica) and U. crispa.

Chiloscyphus *polyanthos includes C. pallescens and C. polyanthos.

Phaeoceros *laevis includes P. carolinianus (P. laevis subsp. carolinianus) and P. laevis.

References

Blockeel, T.L. & Long, D.G. (1998). A check-list and census catalogue of British and Irish bryophytes. Cardiff : British Bryological Society.

Smith, A.J.E. (2004). The moss flora of Britain and Ireland, ed. 2. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Differences between the old and new cards

Click on the links below to view tables of the changes.

SE England (RP33)

Middle Britain (RP34)