Rose-moss at Cwm Ivy Tor

When heading back after a bird count at Whiteford today I decided to take a quick look at the Rhodobryum roseum site at the base of Cwm Ivy Tor, where Veronica Shenston and myself first recorded it in 2011. Buoyed by the frequency of shoots in this area I thought I'd see how far up the tor the population extended. This small colony appeared to peter out fairly quickly as I headed up the slope, but just below the top of the tor it occurred abundantly on many of the grassy ledges shown in the photo above, even making up a significant part of the sward in places (photo below right is a close up of the area shown by the red penknife above SS4350594041). I was running late so I did not attempt an estimate, but there were possibly thousands of shoots along a 25m section of the ledge I walked.

North-west Gower is a bit of a hot spot for this species as Peter also found two sites at St Madoc's Christian Youth Camp in 2008 and 2009. All sites comprise well-drained, sandy soils around Limestone outcrops and are rabbit/sheep-grazed. The sites at Brandy Cove and Kenfig found by Sam now make it four post-2000 tetrads for Glamorgan.

Plenty of other interesting species and as always a few samples to check, but Porella platyphylla was very abundant on the outcrops with frequent Reboulia hemisphaerica on soil gaps.

Also on the walk back past the dune slack I saw a few good candidate Bryum warneum capsules and where the yellow dunes started there were some patches of Pleurochaete squarrosa growing amongst a carpet of Tortella flavovirens & Hypnum cupressiforme var. lacunosum. P. squarrosa is a good candidate for discovery in NPT Charles.