Wow, what a year! With 55 project participants, we managed to submit over 20,000 observations of plants in Ontario in 2018. A total of 1,951 species were submitted to the project, consisting of 1,827 vascular plants and 124 bryophytes and others. The 1,827 vascular plant species submitted represent almost two thirds of the approximately 3,000 vascular plant species known from Ontario! The geographic coverage was also impressive: with records being submitted from Pelee Island in the south, James Bay in the north, Lake of the Woods in the west and Hawkesbury in the east, nearly every corner of the province was represented except for the northernmost areas. The best-represented counties by number of species were Halton, Peel, Middlesex, Wellington and Hamilton.

Before getting into the Big Year rankings, I'd like to thank everyone for participating. Please comment on this post if you have any stories or observations about the project. I sincerely hope that everyone had fun participating in the Big Year. For my part, it motivated me to photo document species that I would have otherwise overlooked. I have no way of easily generating statistics about unique observations, but I bet that almost everyone who participated submitted at least one species that's unique to the project. So in a way, you're all winners! If there's enough interest, I might make a new project for a 2019 Big Year. Who knows, maybe this will be the year someone breaks 1,000 species!

So here are the stats: overall, 1,951 species were observed during the Big Year. I should specify that this number only represents SPECIES. As far as I know, there's no easy way to include higher-level taxa (e.g. genera) or lower level taxa (e.g. subspecies) in the tally. This means that for those of us who submitted lots of bryophytes at only family or genus level, those aren't included in the tally. It also means that if you observed both subspecies of Spiraea alba, that species only gets counted once. Bearing that in mind, here are the top ten observers in the Ontario Botanists Big Year by number of species:

1. Pat Deacon (@pwdeacon)
2. Will Van Hemessen (@wdvanhem)
3. Joanne Redwood (@jem9red)
4. Reuven Martin (@reuvenm)
5. Bonnie Kinder (@bkinder832)
6. Gwyn Govers (@gwynethgovers)
7. Burke Korol (@bkorol)
8. Zack Harris (@zackharris)
9. Josh Vandermeulen (@josh_vandermeulen)
10. Andy Fyon (@andyfyon)

It's interesting to note that nobody was able to break 1,000 species for the Big Year. This means that none of us observed even one third of the plant species known from Ontario!

Observations of rare species are of course important because they can be new records, rang extensions, rediscoveries of historic records, etc. The top observers of rare species in the Big Year were:

1. Pat Deacon (tie!)
2. Will Van Hemessen (tie!)
3. Joanne Redwood
4. Reuven Martin
5. Bonnie Kinder
6. Gwyn Govers
7. Burke Korol
8. Mike Burrell (@mikeburrell)
9. Colin Jones (@colindjones)
10. Andy Fyon

Observations of exotic species can be just as interesting because they can indicate the spread of invasive species or represent new occurrences of cultivated plants reproducing and spreading into the wild. The top observers of exotic species were:

1. Joanne Redwood
2. Bonnie Kinder
3. Reuven Martin
4. Pat Deacon
5. Will Van Hemessen
6. Josh Vandermeulen
7. Yulia Ryzhik (@yryzhik)
8. Quinten Wiegersma (@birds_bugs_botany)
9. Gwyn Govers
10. Burke Korol

In addition to the above, I've also managed to generate some statistics for "subchallenges" within the Big Year. You can generate your own statistics at any time by clicking "Species" on the left hand side of the project page and filtering by taxa or other attributes.

Most sedges (Carex spp.):

1. Pat Deacon
2. Will Van Hemessen
3. Reuven Martin
4. Burke Korol
5. Gwyn Govers
6. Zack Harris
7. Mike Burrell
8. Jenn McPhee (@jennmcphee)
9. Joanne Redwood
10. Josh Vandermeulen

Most orchids (Orchidaceae spp.):

1. Reuven Martin
2. Joanne Redwood
3. Will Van Hemessen
4. Gwyn Govers
5. Pat Deacon
6. Mike Burrell
7. Bonnie Kinder
8. Burke Korol
9. Andy Fyon
10. Colin Jones

Most grasses (Poaceae spp.):

1. Pat Deacon
2. Will Van Hemessen
3. Reuven Martin
4. Zack Harris
5. Burke Korol
6. Joanne Redwood
7. Gwyn Govers
8. Bonnie Kinder
9. Brent Turcotte (@brentturcotte)
10. Mike Burrell

Regions by number of species:

1. Halton
2. Peel
3. Middlesex
4. Wellington
5. Hamilton
6. Durham
7. Waterloo
8. Durham
9. Elgin
10. York