Before the floods

I had a few spare hours last Friday but without aceess to a car, so I took a train ride to Treforest Estate to boost the coverage in tetrad ST18D. Little did I suspect at the time that this area would be among the worst hit by Storm Dennis less than 48 hours later.

The most interesting habitat proved to be the damp, NE-facing retaining wall which separates the railway line from a lane alongside it. Among the 17 species present here were several patches of Preissia quadrata spreading along mortar lines and adjoining stonework. Peter Sturgess has recorded this species from the same habitat in an adjacent tetrad.

The Taff riverbank felt like familiar hunting ground from my time spent exploring this habitat in Cardiff, with characteristic species including Homalia trichomanoides, Cinclidotus fontinaloides and Dialytrichia mucronata. There was also a small patch of Anomodon viticulosus, only the second time I've seen it by the Taff, and some Fissidens crassipes on riverbank rocks. Two days later these rocks would've been under several metres of water, and some of these bryophytes might now have been scoured off.

Epiphytes near the river included what appears to be Pylaisia polyantha on a fallen sycamore branch. There were no mature capsules with lids to make the identification straightforward, but the combination of multiple generations of capsules, evenly thickened exothecial cells walls in the capsules (photo below, bottom right) and some flat-ended basal cells in the leaves are hopefully sufficient to rule out Hypnum resupinatum.

The visit increased the total for this tetrad by about 50, from 28 to 78 taxa. I just had time to call into ST08Y before catching the train home. This tetrad already had a decent total of 47 taxa but was lacking in epiphytes, so it was quick work to boost it to 63 taxa after checking a few Ash trunks.

Moss on a pole

Well, on the stump of a pole.  Dicranum montanum was a long overdue 'lifer' for me and it was reassuringly distinct enough in the field (photo above) to immediately suspect it as being a good a candidate for montanum, though I only got round to checking my voucher last night.  It would appear to be genuinely scarce in Glamorgan, this being the first record since 2005, when it was recorded at Pencoedtre by an unnamed 'EcoTech' surveyor/subcontractor.  The only other 21st Cent. record was made by Sam in 2002 at Blackmill SSSI.  Given the unspectacularness of the habitat for this record (a weathered telegraph pole at a coal mine washery), there is possibility it occurs more widely.  The very sprawly-curly leaves of dry plants impart a distinctiveness quite different from the potentially confusing Dicranoweisia cirrata.

A sweet surprise on the Sugar Loaf

St. Mary’s Vale on the southern flanks of the Sugar Loaf, just on the outskirts of Abergavenny, apparently supports a dry south-eastern example of a wet western oak woodland community, and a few areas do indeed have quite a western feel, with a bilberry ground layer and scattered hard-fern.  The ground layer doesn’t have the luxuriant moss layer seen in western versions of this woodland community, but if you search around you can find scattered patches of species like Rhytidiadelphus loreus, Dicranum majus, Pleurozium schreberi and Plagiothecium undulatum.    The locality also has a well-known population of Bazzania trilobata, which is confined to quite a small area on the north-east facing slope of the valley.    

During a visit to the site last week, I quickly paid my respects to the Bazzania and then wandered along the slope further up the valley, hoping to find that the Bazzania was more widespread than thought.   Eventually I came to a small area with a very steep bank above a hollow, which pleasingly had about 15 patches of Bazzania - a reasonable distance from the main population.   

     The shiny patches are Bazzania - flash reflecting off the broad round-backed stems.

In a nearby rocky area the ground was an almost continuous sheet of R. loreus and it was good to see that much of it was fruiting.

On a couple of rotting logs were a few patches of Nowellia curvifolia, which I don’t see a lot of in this part of Wales.  Every time I see this species I am reminded of the town of Todmorden, where I spent many teenage days fishing the canal and where one of my working class heroes, John Nowell, was born, after whom the liverwort genus Nowellia is named.  Nowell was an illegitimate and impoverished handloom weaver, who somehow in his few hours of free time became a skilled bryologist, regularly corresponding with giants of botany like William Hooker, Wilhelm Schimper and William Wilson.  If anyone is interested in finding out more about Nowell, Mark Lawley wrote a brief biography about him, which is available on the BBS web site https://rbg-web2.rbge.org.uk/bbs/activities/field%20bryology/FB108/BBS%20FB108%20Bygone%20Bryologist.pdf
, but a more detailed account was published in the BBS Bulletin some years earlier - Foster, W.D. (1980). Famous Bryologists. 1. John Nowell of Todmorden (1802–1867). Bulletin of the British Bryological Society 35, 13–20. 

On my way back to the car I walked past a couple of small stones poking out of the soil, which had patches of a tiny pale-looking liverwort, which I assumed was young Diplophyllum albicans, but then I noticed some red gemmae and thoughts turned to a Tritomaria; however, the lens revealed a tiny spiky Scapania, presumably umbrosa – a check of the gemmae under the microscope showed they were mostly twin-celled and thin-walled.   Sam tells me it is new to Monmouthshire.

I didn’t see much else of any great interest, apart from a patch of Cololejeunea minutissima on a riverside tree, which I don’t think I have seen in this valley before, and some gorgeous coral slime mould.        

North-west VC35

I made a couple of quick stops in north-western VC35 to top up two tetrads on my way to the Brecon Beacons today. The first was SO11Q, where a previous urban list in 2005 totalled fewer than 50 species. Half an hour on Beaufort Hill produced 60 species, which combines with 16 that I didn't repeat from my previous visit to take the tetrad to a respectable 76. Highlights were:

• abundant Ptychomitrium polyphyllum (49 previous VC35 records, mostly in the west) on iron slag (photo above)
• some Didymodon ferrugineus on a track
• two patches of Sanionia uncinata (photo below) on a willow in a pool (25 previous VC35 records, mostly from the Black Mountains)
• fruiting Brachythecium velutinum on iron slag (photo below) (mostly lowland in the county) 

SO10P was even more productive, as there was very little overlap between today's 51 species in urban Tredegar and the ca60 recorded previously at Scotch Peter's Reservoir; the tetrad total is now a good 101 species. Frustratingly I left my phone in the car so didn't capture any images of Schistidium platyphyllum (until recently thought to be a scarce species) growing among abundant plastic refuse on the Afon Sirhowy. Highlights were:

• Schistidium platyphyllum (10 previous VC35 records but widespread on the upper Sirhowy and Rhymney) frequent by the Afon Sirhowy
• fruiting Syntrichia latifolia (first fruiting record for VC35) along with S. virescens on roadside Lime