Friday 11 November 2016

Miniature garden flora

A 1" patch of garden soil with Weissia controversa, Barbula unguiculata, Ephemerum minutissimum & Fissidens taxifolius.
Some casual recording in Julian Woodman's garden surprisingly produced eight species additional to the 170 already listed for ST18B. Arable/garden weeds would appear not to have been well sampled in this square (as I suspect is the case across much of the county) as most additions were from this group. It's always worth exploring friends and neighbours gardens when the opportunity arises as gardens can give a good boost to tetrad lists in non-arable areas.
Identified from this image by Sam as 
Weissia cf longifolia, but to be checked...

Ephemerum minutissimum - spores checked
Dicranella schreberiana
I called into Cornelly allotments for a very brief stop on the way to Julian's, in a failed attempt to take SS88A over the 60 mark, bit did record some nice patches of Microbryum davallianum growing amongst a carpet of Pseudocrossidium hornschuchianum and Lunularia cruciata, so not a wasted 10 minutes.

3 comments:

  1. Good work Barry. I've made a few visits to that tetrad, which have added some upland and epiphyte species to the long list already recorded from Coed y Bedw, but as you guessed the weedy species hadn't really been looked at.

    I wish I had Weissia and Ephemerum in my garden! (Or maybe I just need to look harder!)

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  2. It might be worth a closer look - I'll be looking at mine closer for sure...

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  3. Des Callaghan did a study of garden bryophytes, which should be findable as a PDF online. I recorded in several friends' gardens for it.

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