WALES has become the first country in the world to have a complete record of its rare flowering plants and ferns.

The project, which started almost 40 years ago, has painstakingly compiled a county-by-county register of every single rare plant in that country.

No such detailed account of a nation’s flora exists in any other country in the world.

And now this “Domesday Book” of the plant world was celebrated at an event at Aberystwyth University.

The project was started by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland and had been supported by Natural Resources Wales and its predecessor bodies.

Dr Polly Spencer-Vellacott, BSBI Welsh officer, said: “Wales came up with the idea of County Rare Plant Registers in Cardiganshire in 1978, and it has now spread to all parts of Britain and Ireland.

“But this is the first time that any country has achieved this kind of complete coverage and it’s wonderful that volunteers across Wales have done all this work.”

People working in plant conservation can now identify sites for rare plants in all the counties in Wales.

Over the years the register has progressed from hand-written lists through typescripts and spreadsheets to databases on home computers to, finally, a web-based picture of the rare plants for the whole of Wales.

See this week’s south editions for the full story, in shops and online on Wednesday