Anthoceros punctatus in Afan Forest Park

The Afan Portal of the Gyfylchi Tunnel, Afan Forest Park

There's a significant amount of Anthoceros punctatus to the right of the breeze-block-ed tunnel portal and on the right bank (approx. SS81709526). Not many 'horns' yet but the colony should be very photogenic in a week or so. Lots of Pseudephemerum nitidum and Fossombronia wondraczeckii/pusilla here too.

Anthoceros punctatus with a few 'horns'

Anthoceros punctatus  thallus with abundant antheridia and 'horns in progress'

Anthoceros punctatus antheridia (body length c. 120 microns)

Access to this spot has been very difficult in the past, but there has obviously been a deliberate effort to clear the area recently. Given the proposal to convert the Rhondda Tunnel to a cycleway it is possible that similar developments may occur here. It is probably NRW managed land, so some measure of awareness and protection for the colony may be prudent. 

Afan Forest Park

The larch felling program of the last few years has resulted in a proliferation of new tracks in the Park, where heavy vehicle tires have created habitats for all sorts of earth mosses and liverworts. Dicranella varia is probably one of the most important pioneers in this habitat, but others include infuriating little Bryum spp., Achidium alternifolium, Dicranella schreberiana, Trichodon cylindricus, Pohlia annotina, Pohlia wahlenbergii, Pseudephemerum nitidum, Fossombronia spp. and Riccia subbifurca (now recorded from two separate forest tetrads).

Pseudephemerum nitidum, Afan Forest Park

Fossombronia wondraczeckii, Afan Forest Park

Fossombronia wondraczeckii spores

Riccia subbifurca, Afan Forest Park

Action for Meesia

Meesia uliginosa has only ever been seen in Wales at Tywyn Aberffraw - the best dune system for bryophytes in Wales because of its highly calcareous sand and extensive slacks.  David Holyoak found it in one slack in 2001, alongside Amblyodon dealbatus and carpets of Leiocolea badensis, confirming the continued presence of Meesia in Wales following no records since 1968.  Despite David's precise (paced) directions I failed to find Meesia in 2013 and 2015, and a hands & knees search for 2 hours on Tuesday 11/10/2016 also produced no sign of this species.  The habitat has undoubtedly changed since 2001, with Leiocolea now patchy and no Amblyodon: maturation of the slack has surely caused the loss of Meesia from its one well-localised site.  Tragically this is not all - Aberffraw has also lost the last remaining Bryum calophyllum since 2001 and most of its Bryum warneum, and the lack of recent records of Catoscopium nigritum suggests that this pretty little moss has also been lost from Wales.  Even Southbya tophacea, which occurred in reasonable abundance when I first visited Aberffraw in ca. 2002 with David Stevens, has gone from the slack where we saw it.

AONB volunteers hard at work in the former Meesia slack

We have got to hope that it is not too late though: NRW have applied for EU funding to rejuvenate a suite of Welsh dunes, and large-scale action at Aberffraw may bring some of the rare mosses back from the brink.  Meesia may not be able to wait for rejuvenation to work, though, so we have tried a bit of scraping in its last slack, just in case there might be some dormant spores or buried plant fragments that could be encouraged into life.  Hannah Shaw from the Freshwater Habitats Trust organised a band of volunteers from the Anglesey AONB to dig out some shallow scrapes, carefully located to avoid damage to the bryophytes and vascular plants that remained in the slack.  Who knows if this will work, but at least we have tried!

Abietinella, with stem leaves showing features of both A. hystricosa and A. abietina

After my 2 hour crawl around the Meesia slack, marking out the scrapes, I had a short while to spare and headed north through the big (former Southbya) slack past a few relict patches of Abietinella and over a dune ridge.  Pete Jones told me last year that there was a slack with Pinguicula and Parnassia there, and as far as I knew this had never been checked by a bryologist.  To my great relief, this slack has less mature vegetation than the former Meesia site, and a richer flora, including good carpets of Leiocolea badensis and at least 20 patches of Southbya tophacea (SH36726949, but don't under any circumstances collect any!).  I only searched about 1/3 of this slack before my time ran out, so there is still a faint hope that Amblyodon or even Meesia or Catoscopium could survive there...

Southbya male and female

Long Mynd bryos

After a weekend with friends in Church Stretton a couple of weeks ago I had the rare luxury of a spare half day on a sunny Sunday. What could better use of this precious time than to look for rare bryophytes on the Long Mynd?

I'd Googled 'Long Mynd bryophytes' just before leaving home and was delighted to discover Des Callaghan's excellent and informative 2015 article in Field Bryology (link here). There was far more to seek out than I had time for, but I couldn't resist a hunt for the Schedule 8 species Jamesoniella undulifolia, with the Nover's Hill site being just a short walk from where I was staying. After 20 minutes on hands and kness among Sphagnum at the margins of a hilltop pool I found a few scattered stems - sadly I don't have any photos as I only had my phone camera which doesn't really do macro shots (as you'll see below). But here's a shot of the unremarkable habitat in which it occurs.

A couple of miles away I found a few shoots of Bryum wiegelii growing on one of the many springheads on which it occurs on the Long Mynd. There's a contender for World's Worst Bryophyte Photo below - you'll have to take my word for it that the Bryum is the pale greeny-pink stuff.

 

On the return to Church Stretton I checked out the outcrops at Devil's Mouth, a well known site for Grimmia montana and illustrated in Des's article. It would have been impossible to miss the hundreds of Grimmia cushions, which were often associated with the lichen Lasallia pustulata.

 

I didn't even attempt to look for the rare Sphagna which Des found during his recent surveys - my chances of spotting them would have been slim to say the least.

Tywyn Point scraped slack

Following yesterday's meeting at the offices of RAF Pembrey Sands, we were taken out onto the range, though time was limited as a Tornado was scheduled to come in for bombing practice. Richard Pryce and myself managed to sneak off for 15 minutes to do some recording in the southern ⅓ of the rectangular scraped slack (clearly visible on the Google aerial at SN365048[corrected]). The scrape was still quite barren, particularly bryologically, but the southern margin was found to be a little richer and Amblyodon dealbatus was among the 12 species recorded, with occasional non-fruiting plants found growing all along the 30m southern edge of the scrape. The Carms flora shows the species is already known from the site and was last recorded there by Sam in 2004 (I'm not sure if there have been subsequent visits since publication). I've asked Richard to send me a couple of habitat pics for reference...[Richard's photos now added below, apologies for my mugshot being included, but it shows the scrape edge habitat where the Amblyodon was found perfectly]

Of less significance, but equally as interesting was a small population of Leptobryum pyriforme, this being the first time I have encountered the species in a dune slack. Plants were a little shorter than typical, but the tufted shoot tips, lack of an expanded leaf base and the presence of abundant rhizoidal gemmae (including some around the stem bases) seems to make identification safe in the absence of capsules, but happy to be corrected. The lower two images show the cell structure and the interesting surface sculpturing of the tubers - I can't find very good images of these on line to compare with, but they seem to match illustrations well.

Ephemerum sessile new for VC34

I took Bea and Johnny to Beechenhurst in the Forest of Dean today for the 'Go Ape' and by good fortune found several of Bea's school friends there.  This meant I was atypically stationary in one area, chatting, and my eyes subconsciously scanned the ground.  They alighted on a dull-green patch of what looked like dense moss protonema, so I bent down and scraped up a bit of moss.  I explained to Bea's friends parents "it looks like a new moss for Gloucestershire", and sure enough it was: Ephemerum rutheanum subsp. sessile.  It was growing in gappy turf at SO61311232, just west of the Go Ape area, along with various other mosses that I didn't have time to check (a non-fertile Weissia looked interesting).

Nant-y-cafn square bash

After spending all yesterday on the computer I decided to get out for the last couple of hours of daylight and headed up the Dulais Valley to SN80D, which was in need of a boost. My plan was to target some of the coal spoil areas after a quick look at the Dulais. After a 10 minute session looking around the weir by the social club, I parked at the top of Brynteg above the Nant-y-cafn stream. I could hear noisy water so dropped into the ravine and ended up spending the last hour of light heading upstream towards the railway line, my route ending at an impassible waterfall. The valley was very steep sided, shaley, with dripping banks supporting abundant Pellia endiviifolia and fruiting Hyocomium armoricum (apparently capsules are very rare), [top three photos below]. Some very robust and regularly branching Pohlia wahlenbergii var. wahlenbergii [lower photo below], plants with shoots >5cm were very different to the usual material I see locally. Despite the hint of mildly basic conditions, no real calcicoles were noted and evidence of mine water percolating out through the shaley rocks reduced hopes of finding anything exciting. An interesting site all the same.

 

I climbed out of the now very gloomy ravine at 6:40, which left 15 minutes to pop onto the tip and add a few coal spoil species to the list; the track immediately east of the railway line produced frequent Archidium alternifolium and a little Bryoerythrophyllum ferruginascens amongst others taking the square onto 99. There are far more interesting looking tips than the tiny bit I looked at, and with the conifer forests, heathland unexplored, it shouldn't be too difficult to add another 20-30 species to this square.