Cefn Hirgoed west (Mavis Cruet's Moss)

A thatch meeting at St Fagans (including a somewhat fragile-leaved Dialytrichia on a Beech trunk that needs a bit more investigation) left me driving home along the M4 at lunchtime.  I chose to spend my lunch break on Cefn Hirgoed - at the west end of Hirwaun Common (but nowhere near the Hirwaun on the VC41/42 border).  This is an excellent area, with at least 6km of continuous wet heath, rough grassland, wet areas and rocky bits, and I was only able to do the westernmost tetrad (SS98B) backed up by a cemetery list made in Sarn in 2011.

Highlight was the discovery of two good cowpats' worth of Splachnum ampullaceum, which has just three previous Glamorgan records: two old and one recentish made by Graham in the far north.  These were typically holly-leaved, with huge teeth and acute apices.  Nearby was another cowpat with 6 tufts of a much blunter-leaved moss, with very slight marginal toothing: the first Glamorgan record of Splachnum sphaericum (pending acceptance by Tom Blockeel) and one of very few south Wales records for this species.

The wet heath also held four patches of Sphagnum compactum, which is scarce in Glamorgan, scattered Straminergon stramineum and one patch of Odontoschisma sphagni.  A roadside ditch supported paroicous Cephaloziella stellulifera, fruiting Fossombronia wondraczekii, Pohlia camptotrachela and P. annotina, some Archidium and Scapania irrigua, but attempts at Atrichum tenellum failed.  A check of rocks slightly further up the ridge produced Ptilidium ciliare and Pohlia nutans, but annoyingly they turned out to be just across the tetrad boundary.