If a bryologist were visiting my home tetrad (ST17P), the first place they would probably head would be Llandaff Cathedral and the attached graveyard. It might seem odd, then, that I'd never done any mossing there until Saturday. This was because Barry had paid a visit in
2013. However, Barry's visit was quite fleeting so it seemed worth another look, and I didn't have access to the car so my options were limited to somewhere close to home.
I was particularly hoping to relocate two calcicoles recorded by Barry which I'd never seen:
Scorpiurium circinatum and
Didymodon umbrosus.
The
Scorpiurium proved easy to find and was fairly frequent around the base of the cathedral walls on the northern, southern and eastern aspects. It also occurred on some low walls nearby, as in the pic below.
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| Scorpiurium circinatum |
The
Didymodon was a different matter - I thought I'd failed to find it, but on checking my samples at home I did find a couple of tiny stems which could, perhaps, be this species - see photos below. It looks fairly similar to Barry's photo from 2013, but it seems to lack the basal hyaline cells mentioned in Smith so I think it must be something else (not just a wretched
Schistidium I hope!).
The cathedral walls also added two species for the tetrad:
Tortella tortuosa and
Pseudocrossidium revolutum.
I then had a look at the graveyard, which added eight more species for the tetrad including
Cirriphyllum piliferum,
Didymodon tophaceus,
Brachythecium populeum and
Homalothecium lutescens.
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| Llandaff cathedral graveyard |
The most surprising find, though, was a small patch of fruiting
Zygodon conoideus on a sloping grave (gemmae checked microscopically). Has anyone else seen this species on stone?
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| Grave supporting Zygodon conoideus |
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| Zygodon conoideus on gravestone, mixed with Frullania dilatata |
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Finally, this
Schistidium was growing on a semi-shaded wall top near the cathedral. The leaves have short, toothed hair points and the whole plant is quite large (stems to 5cm). I'd have thought this was
apocarpum rather than
crassipilum based on the short hair points, but the leaves aren't falcate. Any suggestions welcome, thanks.
