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This autumn, help us find Britain’s most colourful and important fungi – waxcaps.
Fungi are crucial to nearly all life on Earth, but they are not given the recognition and investment they deserve. Will you join our mission to change that?
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We use research and evidence to support all of our work at Plantlife.
Science and research inform our conservation activities on the ground and direct our policy and advocacy campaigns.
Using and creating evidence makes sure we achieve the best possible outcomes for plants and fungi.
We are proud to be accredited as an Evidence Champion by Conservation Evidence, based at the University of Cambridge. Conservation Evidence provide a free, authoritative information resource designed to support decisions about how to maintain and restore global biodiversity.
We have several research priorities focussed around our work on grasslands, temperate rainforests and plant and fungal species recovery.
Grasslands – Over 97% of the UK’s species-rich grassland has been lost in less than a century and it now covers just 1% of land. We are working across England, Scotland and Wales to restore these.
Temperate Rainforest – British Temperate Rainforests are of global importance, having the greatest concentration of oceanic lichens and mosses in Europe, they are rare habitats. At Plantlife, we’re working to protect their long-term future.
Species Recovery – We are leading recovery work of threatened plant and fungal species. We share our expertise in habitat management best practices in encouraging wild plants and fungi to grow and thrive.
Please get in touch with us if you wish to discuss your research ideas (contact details below).
You can get involved with the science at Plantlife by volunteering for one of our citizen science schemes. Volunteers are incredibly important to the work that we do and volunteering is a great way of learning more about the plants and fungi in your local area.
The National Plant Monitoring Scheme (NPMS) is a nationwide project where volunteers conduct several botanical surveys a year, at their allocated sites.
Waxcap Watch is a citizen science project that involves using an app to record the colours of waxcaps and other grassland fungi through surveys you carry out in your own time.
We work in partnership with a wide range of organisations. This includes universities, botanical and mycological societies, other charities and environmental organisations, government bodies and landowners.
We collaborate on student-led research, citizen science programmes, academic and industry led projects.
Our expertise in plants, fungi, biological data and GIS, together with our work to protect and restore species and habitats, enables us to use research findings to have a practical conservation impact.
We’re involved in a variety of research work. Here is a small selection of some of the projects we’re a part of.
Freya Read, a Masters student at the University of York, used species distribution modelling to identify climate refugia for 12 of our focal vascular plant species – potentially providing useful information for translocation sites. Using predicted 2080 distributions, Freya identified UK protected areas that act as in situ or ex situ refugia for focal plant species. This study revealed that many current habitats will become unsuitable by 2080, highlighting the urgent need to protect refugia.
An analysis has been carried out to help identify the UK’s richest lichen rainforest sites. It has brought together records of over 100,000 species collected over the past 20 years from the British Lichen Society, Plantlife project activities and the National Biodiversity Network Atlas. Read more here.
This project aimed to answer the conservation question ‘how can ancient grasslands be identified and defined, including using CHEGD* fungi as key indicator species, in order to better facilitate their protection?’
A proposed set of criteria and their associated assessment methods were identified, together with evidence gaps requiring further research and investigation. This work was funded by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES).
*CHEGD brings together the key grassland fungi groups which includes clubs, spindles, and coral fungi (Clavarioids), waxcaps (Hygrocybe and related genera), pinkgills (Entoloma species), earthtongues (all genera in Geoglossaceae), and then crazed caps, fanvaults, and meadowcaps (Dermoloma, Camarophyllopsis, Hodophilus, and Pseudotricholoma species)
Visit our publication page below to find out more, or read the full report here.
Read all of our latest scientific research, studies and reports.
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