I had a wonderful day out on the northern bit of Merthyr Common yesterday, exploring the crags and shaly overhangs above the Nant Morlais in SO0709.
A box full of samples still to go through, but highlights so far include
Hygrohypnum ochraceum (in the stream)
, Bartramia pomiformis (abundant along a 30m section of crag),
Preissia quardata (single patch only),
Scorpidium cossonii (with large
Aneura growing through it, see pic),
Polytrichastrum alpinum (frequent over a large area) and
Palustriella commutata. Evidently, there is a fair bit of base enrichment here.
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| Preissia quadrata |
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| Scorpidium cossonii and large Aneura |
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| Bartramia pomiformis |
Another nice surprise was this small clump of Fir Clubmoss, which I missed when I carried out a botanical survey here for the Merthyr Tydfil SINCs project back in 2007.
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| Fir Clubmoss |
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I'll blog again if anything else of interest turns up in the remaining samples.
Well done George. That was a very under-recorded tetrad as well, I think. I'll be up that way today, taking a lunchbreak on Morlais Castle Hill and the limestone quarries prior to being involved with a film about Cwm Taf Fechan LNR.
ReplyDeleteYes, there were 29 previous records from a Pete Sturgess survey on the edge of the Ind. Est. Should be up to about 100 species once I've finished going through everything.
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