Meeting report

Jersey is the largest island in the archipelago (118 km2) and forty years ago it was much the best recorded. The historic records from the island and those of the resident bryologist Edith
du Feu (from 1960 onwards), together with contributions from three visitors, Alan Crundwell in 1957, Harold Whitehouse in 1962 and Jean Paton in 1969, are very usefully summarised by du Feu (1966) and du Feu & Paton (1972). Jean’s week-long visit was a particularly productive source of records. In recent decades, however, Jersey has been overtaken bryologically by Alderney, thanks to Jeff Bates’ Flora of that island (1989), and by Guernsey, where the late Charles David did much recording. As a result, when we arrived in Jersey only 23% of the Channel Island records in the BBS database were from Jersey, although it constitutes 60% of the total area. If the records localised to at least a tetrad are considered, a mere 6% were from Jersey…