Lanarkshire, v.c. 77

Michael Philip and Peter Wiggins

The vice-county of Lanarkshire is large, encompassing the current political entities of South Lanarkshire, North Lanarkshire, a large portion of the City of Glasgow and part of East Dunbartonshire. In total, this area involves 661 tetrads (2,459 sq. km).

The landscape has remote hills and high moorland in the south, upland and fertile lowland farm country, areas of former mining development (whose spoil-heaps, or ‘bings’ as they are locally called, provide much botanical interest), and the extensive urban sprawl of greater Glasgow.

Essentially it is all about the Clyde, formed from streams in the Lowther Hills, meandering across farmland from Biggar to Carstairs, plunging over the spectacular Falls of Clyde at Lanark, developing grandeur along the Clyde Valley, and becoming one of Scotland’s most celebrated and historic rivers through the centre of Glasgow. Along this major watercourse, many tributaries emerge from steep-sided valleys and gorges, which offer both challenges and rewards to the botanist.

Following the high level of recording seen in recent years, ensuring a thorough Lanarkshire record for the new Atlas 2020, we are looking forward to some new kinds of fieldwork activity.

We hope to undertake smaller local projects and species studies - as well as exploration of the still large number of remote monads in our vice-county which have never yet been recorded. This apparent lack of curiosity on our part is to some extent explained by the fact that, until quite recently, much of the recording in Lanarkshire was done at tetrad (and even at hectad) level.

*NEW* Our full programme of Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire and Dunbartonshire outings for 2024 can be found here.