Saturday 11 April 2015

Pyriform ditch

I spent part of Thursday's lunch break looking for bryos in a ditch by the entrance track to Median Farm.  The most obvious moss there was Physcomitrium pyriforme, fruiting abundantly.  Alongside it was a narrow-leaved Dicranoid moss with yellowish setae that looked wrong for Dicranella heteromalla but I couldn't work it out.  Eventually I found a single unripe pear-shaped capsule and noticed that the lower parts of the shoots had red rhizoids and gemmae.  It was Leptobryum pyriforme: an uncommon and totally unpredictable moss in S Wales.  Pohlia camptotrachela and Fossombronia wondraczekii were also in there, and a Sycamore sported some Orthotrichum stramineum and O lyellii.


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3 comments:

  1. GMT11 April 2015 at 13:09

    Nice. I've been meaning to look at that ditch. Was this in the upper section of the ditch (nearest the farmhouse), which was scraped out last winter?

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  2. sambbryo11 April 2015 at 17:15

    Yes, the best patches of Leptobryum were at the farmhouse end of the ditch.

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  3. GMT11 April 2015 at 18:16

    Thanks - I should be down there next week so will take a look. I've only seen Leptobryum growing in plant pots.

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