Last year was a relatively poor year, which I put down to the cold spell in early December finishing off at lot of the late flowerers. This year’s cold spell was a little earlier and I think less harsh (though I saw press reports of the “coldest night for 13 years”), and doesn’t seem to have set back plants as severely, so as the weather is forecast to continue mild (other than in the clickbait press) the prospects may be better (depending on sensitivity to low sunlight and excess rain).
On the positive side, I noted 11 species (8 composites) when I went out for a walk earlier in the week, and I wasn’t particularly looking for plants in flower.
On the negative side, while we haven’t had frosts killing off the plants, Storm Henk is going to make conditions unsuitable for plant hunting over much of the country on Saturday. It looks as if heavy showers will be an issue for Sunday at least. And muddy ground conditions will also have to be taken into account.
I managed 16, 22 and 17 taxa for the 30th, 31st and 1st respectively. (The weather on the 2nd was rain from 9am, torrential after 11am, until after dark.) Some people in southern coastal towns record more species flowering that I could find in flowering in April.
