This weekend is something called ‘Vårkollen’ in Sweden. Translated as ‘Spring Inventory’, or as I like to say ‘Springventory’, this is a research project organised by the Swedish Botanical Society in which they ask people up and down the country to check for specific signs of spring and report on what they see.
The project is carried out with the involvement of researchers at Sweden’s Agricultural University. The aim is to analyze how plants are affected by climate change. It is a citizen research project where thousands of volunteers from the general public report on the appearance and progression of coltsfoot, coltsfoot, willow, bird cherry and birch.
An example of something the project has unearthed is that the birch tree is budding 500km further north today than it did 100 years ago.
Results from the project are published on May 2.
Watching the Swedes 