Local soil information

The abstract art of the Soilscapes map. A bit like a less colourful Patrick Heron perhaps.

This morning a student and I were poring over her fern collection, and grappling with the keys. She'd collected some from Lancashire... in fact, we thought one of the species could be the northern buckler fern, Dryopteris expansa. Hopefully she'll find examples of the more common broad buckler fern Dryopteris dilatata and be able to compare them.

Sometimes different (though similar looking) species can be distinguished partly because they grow in different parts of the country - in different habitats. Some prefer moorland, some like limestone, for example.  But how (she asked) would she know what the soil was like where she found the specimens?

You can try using the Soilscapes map from Cranfield University. It's quite detailed and will tell you whether your local soil is acidic or alkaline. It could be really useful for some additional information for your notebook / labelling.

You may also like the Geology of Britain Viewer from the British Geological Survey, which will tell you which bedrocks underlie the soil. It even tells you the geological history of the different types. It's possibly less useful unless you're looking at plants / lichens growing directly on the rock. But it's certainly very interesting.

Distribution maps and the NBN Gateway

You might find it interesting to see a distribution map of your species for this country - which you'll be able to find at the NBN Gateway.

This is a hub for biological records - they've amassed over 100 million of them from diverse sources. Pop your species name in the search box at the top right, and you'll be given its map and a link to download it.

The result might not be very enlightening if you've got a species that's very common and is found across the whole country (i.e., a swathe of coloured dots). But if you have one that's geographically restricted like my Pomatias elegans snail, it might reassure you that you've made the right decision against a similar-looking species which is found elsewhere..

from the NBN Gateway - Pomatias elegans distribution

Of course there are issues with this sort of thing - if you're looking at the map of an obscure fly, it might look rare even if it isn't - there's unlikely to be so many records (because not so many people are looking for them;  they might be hard to identify correctly; and because the records only reflect where people have looked - probably where they live and where they go on holiday, rather than reflecting an equal effort in each square). But there we are.

It might still be something you'd like to add to your notebook as supporting material and for interest.

~I see from the 1st April 2017 the NBN Gateway will get replaced by NBN Atlas UK, and it will be much easier to access records (other than those for 'sensitive' and rare species). To begin with the BSBI will only be transferring Scottish plant records, but hopefully English and Welsh records will follow.

'Where' - how to record locations

Crown copyright and database right 2015. Ordnance Survey (Digimap licence)

You do need to label your specimens with the location you found them. For one thing, it might be very useful in supporting your identification. Some species prefer particular habitats: woodland or coastal sites for example. Some species are very common in the south of England, but disappear towards Scotland. Some might be relatively new to this country and your specimen, as a record of its spread, could be of wider interest.

At a minimum you should include a 6-figure grid reference. This identifies the 100m square in which your specimen lies. This sheet by the Ordnance Survey is a good reminder of how to take a reference from a map.

 But if you want to bypass using your brain, you can use something like Grid Reference Finder which is very easy to use (right click to get the answer plotted on an OS map).

Much, much more fun to a map nerd like myself is the excellent Edina Digimap. 
You can sign up and access it through your university log-in. It allows you to zoom in ridiculously close, and even more excitingly there's a Historic Digimap (which is the nearest thing to time travel available at the moment). You can also waste hours looking at land use and geology. You also can download data for your GIS projects, so I recommend signing up.

You may be in possession of a gps or phone that uses the National Grid, and seemingly it may offer you 8 or even 10 figure grid references. But be wary - 8 figure implies a 10m square and 10 figure a 1m! It's unlikely to be so accurate. Six figures are fine (you can just knock the end ones off from each half of the result, so ST62131 77988 becomes ST621779).

(You might prefer Latitude and Longitude (gridreferencefinder.com also provides these) and you could use these instead of an OS reference if you want. There are various ways to express these co-ordinates - for example in decimal degrees, or as degrees, minutes and seconds. It would be up to you to choose: just be consistent. Decimal degrees seems to be the commonest thing. I do prefer the Ordnance Survey to be honest. But if you're a Google Maps fan, that works with lat/long. )

All those letters and numbers are pretty dry and meaningless on their own, so you should add some sort of description of where you're talking about, i.e. a place name.  You want to use something that would mean something to others, and be reasonably large scale. For example, 'Lockleaze', or 'Wetmoor Wood'.

You might also add a little description of the habitat ('on shingle', perhaps, or 'limestone grassland'). With fungi you might want to note the substrate the species was growing on ('on dead wood', 'on birch tree') and this might also be interesting to include for many invertebrates ('on cow parsley', 'on dung').

Sometimes you might have a standard label which encourages you to fill in other details like altitude - though altitude's a bit too specialist for most collections!

(for a lichen)

You could always devise your own label a bit like this, so all your labels look the same. And it does help you remember to record all the parameters.

(This amateur didn't underline her Latin names. Don't copy her slack habits.)

The herbarium label above includes a VC (Vice County) number. Victorian botanists divided the country into lots of similar-sized areas and they're still used for biological recording. If you were going to submit your records to a national recording scheme (and they'd welcome them), you'd want to include the Vice County. The Herbaria United website has an app for working this out. You don't have to use the VC on your collection though, unless you want to.


Read on for information about the 'when' for your labels.