Seligeria campylopoda etc

I had 15 minutes to spare as I headed towards a meeting, so grabbed the opportunity to look at an area of limestone woodland below the Wye Valley road adjacent to Black Cliff.  Within a minute I found 10 limestone pebbles covered with Seligeria campylopoda, embedded in the woodland floor below a Yew.  This really is an easily twitchable colony if anyone is in the Chepstow area: park (carefully) at the entrance to the Livox Quarry road, walk up the A466 for about 10 metres, then cross a low fence next to a yellow "garden open" sign and look for the small limestone pebbles.  Please don't collect any of the Seligeria because it's extremely rare, but enjoy its curved setae.  There are another 20 or so localities in the VC35 section of the Wye Valley, but this is the easiest to relocate.

view of the roadside fence from the colony - a poor iPod pic

Slightly further down the slope I found a single pebble sporting Seligeria donniana, which is only the 4th locality for this species in the lower Wye Valley.

Another brief stop on my way back from the meeting produced fruiting Campylophyllum calcareum on a limestone outcrop in Cockshoot Wood, just NW of Chepstow.  This is just the 4th location for this uncommon moss in VC35.  It was mixed with Rhynchostegiella tenella and would have been impossible to spot if it hadn't been fruiting.

Of all the days to leave my camera at home...