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This week Adam is plant-hunting – and in conversation – with a botanist who’s dedicated his career to protecting the botanical biodiversity of Wales: Dr. Trevor Dines, Conservation Manager for the conservation charity Plantlife Cymru.

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Trevor takes Adam to Anglesey and Snowdonia in search of some of North Wales’ rarest plants. They begin at Lligwy Beach on the east coast of Anglesey, where in 2000 Trevor discovered a plant that was entirely new to science, a hybrid of the greater horsetail and the common horsetail. As the discoverer of a new species, Trevor had the right to name it and so the horsetail is called Equisetum x robertsii after his friend and mentor Dick Roberts, the former botanical County Recorder for Anglesey.

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The next stop for our two intrepid plant-hunters is Cwm Idwal where they go in search of the rare bog orchid. As they search, Trevor talks about his life-long passion for botany, starting with an encounter with an early purple orchid on the family farm when he was a child; leading on to his editorship of the definitive plant atlas of the British Isles, The New Atlas of British and Irish Flora; and now his conservation role with Plantlife Cymru.

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Further up the Ogwen Valley Trevor tracks down another rare species. Marsh clubmoss is a focus of Plantlife’s species recovery programme which studies particular plants in the wild and then works with farmers and landowners to replicate those conditions. Trevor also reveals the unlikely connection between marsh clubmoss and the history of the condom!